They say that the third time’s the charm, but I don’t know if I would apply that to the third WordCamp conference in San Francisco that took place today. While it may partially have been that maybe I’ve gotten a little bit used to it, now that I’ve been there a few times, a lot of changes happened this year that I didn’t really think were that much for the better. And so my analysis and recap of this year’s WordPress event begins…
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Tags: 2008, Automattic, BarCAmp, Blogging, conference, event, rant, San Francisco, WordCamp, WordPress

I’m at WordCamp 2008 today in San Francisco, and I’m looking forward to having an interesting but relaxing time. I have no video camera this year and no podcast interviews that I’m going to be doing today, which means that this year I actually plan to enjoy the conference.

I’m volunteering at the T-shirt counter today until 11:00, after which I’ll be free to go out an enjoy the conference. I’ll also be taking pictures and putting them on my Flickr photostream today, so you can keep an eye there.

If you’re visiting my blog as a WordCamper, I hope you enjoy my blog and are interested in subscribing. I’m also interested in finding people interested in guest blogging on my blog in the near future, so if you would be interested, please leave a comment to this post and I’ll get in touch with you!

WordCampers last year may remember when one Dr. David Klein went around WordCamp taking pictures of people and then making caricatures of them. Well, this year, he’s doing something different; he’s getting a whole bunch of WordCamp bloggers to do little mini-games on their blog. I’m going to be doing one on this blog starting at 2:15 PM, lasting for about 15 minutes, and is exclusively for WordCamp visitors to participate in (and win a prize, possibly), so check back at 2:15 as defined by the handy clock on the top of my blog.

So now, on to WordCamp!

Tags: 2008, Blogging, conference, event, San Francisco, WordCamp, WordPress

This weekend (actually, starting in less than an hour), Successful and Outstanding Blogger Liz Strauss (well, okay, she just runs a blog about successful and outstanding bloggers, though that doesn’t mean she can’t be one to) is doing a “Blog-to Show,” which she describes as being kind of like an auto show for blogs. Bloggers who applied this past week (including myself) are going to get the chance to be promoted on her blog for readers to go and check out. This is a great chance for people to discover many new blogs they may not have noticed before, so I highly recommend that you check it out.

For those of you coming to my blog from Liz’s showcase, welcome! Please pardon the dust from the reorganization I currently am doing on this site (I’m working on redoing and improving my blog’s categories to better reflect my blog’s content), I hope to be finished with it later today. I hope you enjoy my blog and will consider subscribing.

Thanks to Liz for putting together this great blogging event, and of course, a tip of the hat to Lorelle VanFossen for bringing this event to my attention!

Tags: Blogging, event, expo, Liz Strauss, Lorelle VanFossen, showcase

Today I’m at the Social Media Camp taking place at the Swedish American Hall in San Francisco. Admission here is free, so if you’re attending or want to drop by, feel free to do so! (Those of you that are here can feel free to say hi in the comments section.) My friend Daniel Brusilovsky will be giving a presentation here later today, which I’m here to see, and I’m also going to be taking notes on social media/social networking and how a certain non-profit organization that I volunteer for can take advantage of it.

Anyway, for the readers on my blog, expect a report on my experience here in the next day or so. And for everyone at Social Media Camp who have heeded my shameless plug(s), hello and thanks for visiting my blog!

Update: I’ll be doing a session on “The Art of Personal Blogging” at around 2:15 PM today in the second room.

Tags: BarCAmp, event, research, San Francisco, Social Media Camp, visitors

I was at a rally in Sacramento (California’s state capitol) today with the California State PTA, who was there protesting the proposed budget cuts to public education. They have a press release detailing the event. I was one of the speakers of the rally, and thought that I’d share what I said here.
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Tags: budget, California State PTA, capitol, event, governor, protest, PTA, Schwarzenegger, speech

Okay, I’m sure that if you’re looking at Webmacster87.info, you’re wondering, “Whoa, what happened? Where did the great big W go? Where did the beautiful-looking theme go?” (If you’re reading this post in some kind of RSS fead reader, go to Webmacster87.info and start reading this post over again.)

Well, today is the third annual CSS Naked Day, and also the first one that I heard of in time to make the necessary preparations to participate in. The purpose of today is to promote the purpose of web standards and its importance in our everyday use of the internet. In fact, I think that Lorelle VanFossen said it best:

This is the third year of the annual CSS Naked Day which honors web design and designers around the world who help make our websites and blogs look “pretty” to the eye while still being totally functional under the hood. Dustin Diaz wanted to give the web world an opportunity to remind everyone of the benefits of CSS web page design. By removing the stylesheet for the day, the world would see naked web pages, giving a little more appreciation for the skills of web page designers.

Webmacster87.info is one of hundreds of websites going naked today for this cause. My blog will be entirely CSS-free all day today (in my timezone, anyway, as defined by the clock on my website), and since the event is done in honor of designers, I want this to honor my good friend Hans Reikmann (macattacks10), who has graciously volunteered his time to do numerous designs for me over the years, including the artwork for both this version and the previous version of my website, some of my 2005-era forums, and all of my podcasts.

If you want to go naked on your blog or website today, there’s still time, and Lorelle has suggestions for how you can participate. In the meantime, enjoy this low-fi version of Webmacster87.info!

Oh, and while we’re on the subject, today is the 100th Day of 2008! Woo hoo!

Tags: blog, community, CSS, design, event, internet, naked, standards, web design, Webmacster87.info

Easter is one of those weird holidays because it is one of the few holidays that doesn’t have a set-in-stone date. It’s not on a specific date, it’s not on a specific day of a certain month. The only hard-and-fast “rules” for Easter is that it always falls on a Sunday, on one of the thirty-four days within the range of March 22-April 25 (inclusive). As for how the date of Easter is calculated, it’s a very complicated and involved method that’s so complicated and involved that even Wikipedia doesn’t detail it. Furthermore, there has been controversy behind it many many times, including many attempts to “standardize” the date that Easter is celebrated, most of them to no effect.

Well, this year, Easter fell on March 23rd, the second-earliest possible date that Easter could fall on. Wow. However, today I was shown something that actually puts this date into some interesting context. The fact of the matter is that for everyone who went through Easter this year, they have gone through the earliest Easter that they will ever go through again in their lives. Wow! Here’s the facts:

Easter was on March 23rd this year, 2008. The last time that it fell on March 23rd was in 1913, meaning that no one under the age of 95 has lived through an Easter this early before. Furthermore, none of us will again, since the next March 23rd Easter will be in the year 2228 (220 years from now!). But what about the one possible earlier date for Easter, March 22nd? Well, the last time that happened was in the year 1818, and it will not happen again until the year 2285, 277 years from now! None of the over 6 billion people alive today have ever experienced a March 22nd Easter, and they never will.

Not that any of this has any practical importance, but it is interesting to think about.

Tags: dates, Easter, event, fact, holiday, interesting, landmark

Part of my participation in my recent Sojourn trip is that I need to give a presentation about my trip to a group in the community. So, in order to fulfill this and to thank them for the scholarship they gave me allowing me to go on this trip, I am going to be giving a presentation about Sojourn to Peace Action of San Mateo County this Sunday, March 9th, at 5:30 PM. If you’re in the local area and are interested in coming, please do! (By the way, it’s a potluck, so bring a dish to share.)

Check out their website for more information.

Tags: community, event, Peace Action, potluck, presentation, Sojourn to the Past

Well, if you know me, you know that I enter various stuff at the San Mateo County Fair every year, and if I recall correctly, this is my 10th year to enter. However, this is the first time where I actually found out what I won before I went to go see it for myself, but sure enough, the San Jose Mercury News apparently reported on one of the brand new divisions this year: Website Design. There were three award-winning entries in the new division, two of which were mine. At least someone else did enter, when I had called the County Fair office a month ago to ask for entry details for websites, I got a “That’s the first time that question has been asked!” response, which got me worried that I would be the only one entering.

Anyway, congratulations to Taylor Hansford who does the website for Pacifica 4-H (it’s the county fair, after all!) and won 1st place. My own Webmacster87.info won the red ribbon, and the 17th District PTA Website, which I maintain and entered under the class “Website for a Business or Organization”, took third.

Thanks, by the way, goes to Larry and Anthony who sent me the link and asked me “Why didn’t you tell me about this?” I haven’t been to the fair yet, so honestly, I had no idea that I’d won until they sent me the link.

There are some things slightly ironic about the San Jose Mercury News article. For one thing, San Jose isn’t part of San Mateo County, but I’ll let that slide since our fair is open to all the neighboring counties as well. However, they said that “Neither boys were available for interviews.” Besides that being bad grammar, I wasn’t even at the fair today, so of course I wasn’t “available” for an interview! The article also claims that they were looking for me and the other kid in the livestock section. I can’t speak for Taylor, but I’m not part of 4-H and don’t spend very much time in the livestock section. I might spend 5-10 minutes in there during the fair to look, but I don’t exactly hang around there waiting to be interviewed, if you know what I mean. Now, I did get a phone call today from the fair saying that the San Mateo County Times wanted to interview me, albeit about my being a judge for a contest in the Culinary Arts division, but they have setup a time to meet me there at 4:30 PM on Monday. So, San Jose Mercury News, if you’d like to say hi to me, I’ll be there on Monday willing to answer questions.

Anyway, I am glad that my websites received the recognition from the judges (hopefully they didn’t try to view this website in Internet Explorer, which doesn’t work that well), and I’m glad to have helped the San Mateo County Fair get their technology entries going. Who knows? Maybe next year they’ll have a division for best podcast. Stay tuned next week when I’ll post a full list of everything I entered this year and how well I did!

Tags: Awards, Bay Area, Blogging, event, interview, News, Personal, PTA, San Mateo County Fair, Technology, web design

I’m just about to go to sleep tonight, but first thing in the morning will be my third Tour de Peninsula–a grueling 33 mile bike event around southern San Mateo County that’s FULL OF HILLS. Oh boy–this is NOT a flat land bike race, it’s full of hills, particularly the infamous “Mount Neverest” as termed by the event for the exhausting trek up Ralston Ave. (in Belmont) from Alameda de las Pulgas to Highway 92. Still the bike event (it’s not a race) is a lot of fun. In 2005, I took the official 21 mile shortcut, but last year, partially inspired by a bet that I had with Larry, I completed the full 33 mile ride, nearly killing myself in the process. (Due to my success, Larry had to use Firefox for 72 hours.)

This year, I’m not as sure of myself as I haven’t done quite as much preparation for the event as I did last year, partially because I’ve been much busier and partially because construction crews have been tearing up the nearest overcrossing to the nearest good bike paths, so I’m a little unsure of myself. However, I have done a bit more preparation than I did in 2005 (in ‘05, I only learned that the event existed two days before I went and did it!), and I still mustered up 21 miles there. Heck, last Thursday, I did a long 26 mile trek to South San Francisco, up the San Bruno Mountains and back down on Sister Cities Blvd., and back to San Mateo, and I pretty much survived that. So I’ll probably try my hand at another 33 mile ride tomorrow, even though there won’t be the fear of having to use Safari for 3 days straight to push me on.

Actually, that might be a good idea. Even if there’s no one to force to use Firefox for 3 days straight if I finish the ride. Okay, yeah. If I don’t complete the Tour de Peninsula this year, all 33 miles, I’ll have to use Safari for 3 days straight, AND review it during my Month of Reviews. Okay cool. Now you doubters have something to look forward to.

Anyway, wish me luck, and pray that I survive tomorrow’s ride! As the Tour’s slogan says, “It’s all downhill from here.”

Tags: Bay Area, bike, event