by Josh on September 1st, 2009 3 Comments

Sometimes You Just Have to Do It

pathway

Sometimes the way forward is just that; forward. Sometimes the next thing you need to do is the thing that you should have been doing all along. Most times, we know where the next step is, we just don’t want to take it. We feel like we can’t, or aren’t allowed, or shouldn’t. We just need to start walking in that direction.

I play music. It’s something I’ve loved since I was in grade school. I’ve played in bands at church before, but recently I haven’t been playing.

Here’s the thing: I have been given a talent from God to play music. It’s something that I am passionate about, and I love playing music. But lately I haven’t been using my gifts.

Now, for a time, taking a break is fine. But to not use the gifts God has given you is bad. You lose something about yourself when you don’t use your gifts.

This past month, I started using my gifts again by getting involved in a new band at my church. And it feels great! I don’t know why I waited so long to get back into playing.

So here’s the point. You all have talents and gifts from God that you can use. Are you using them? You can’t keep your gifts and talents to yourself and stay whole. You have gifts and talents for a reason.

Move towards using them. Move forward with your task. Take the next step.

[ Image by carnavalet ]

by Josh on August 17th, 2009 No Comments

Twitter Groups in Tweetie (or Anywhere)

For those of you trying to create groups in Twitter on the Tweetie Mac app, I found a solution.

It’s almost a little too simple, and isn’t the cleanest thing around, but it gets the job done.

So the solution? Use the search. Here’s how. Continue Reading…

by Josh on August 1st, 2009 2 Comments

3 Productivity Tips for Your Mac

In the last few weeks, I have been trying to improve my cluttered Mac environment. My dock had gotten quite full, and to make room I’d have to make the dock so small I wouldn’t be able to read any of it. And, I’ve been doing a lot of developing WordPress lately so I’d been trying to use OS X’s Spaces to help. So, after chatting with my brother about our organization skills, I came up with a few tricks I thought I’d share.

Uber Spaces

spaces Mac OS X’s Spaces is a great organizational tool. Apps can be confined to a single space so that your view isn’t cluttered with 10 open programs each with 3-5 windows each. Cool idea.

Well, take that to the logical ultimate. 16 spaces each with its own app focus.

Each space has a “theme” that governs what should appear in the space. For example, I have individual spaces for my browsers, my social media apps, my chat apps, and my music apps. I have the spaces set up for only those apps, as well. So, when I click on Seesmic in my dock, it jumps to the social media space, keeping my browser separate. It keeps everything in a logical place. Continue Reading…

by Josh on July 10th, 2009 2 Comments

Open or Closed, Part II: License and Free(dom)

sourcecode

I found another portion of the open or closed question. What about open and closed software licenses?

Here’s a quick rundown of the license categories (check here for more details):

GNU GPL type licenses. Very open.
Liberal Licenses (i.e. Creative Commons type, Mozilla Public License). Mostly open.
Closed source (i.e. proprietary license). Closed.

The more open your license, the more innovation you generally have. WordPress is licensed as GPL. Anyone can see and edit the WordPress code, and thus, a very diverse, dynamic, and versatile platform has emerged.

The problem with the GPL type licenses, that I see, is the return. I can’t really reap the rewards for my work when anyone else can make a tweak and give it away. Also, if you were to combine a GPL licensed work and any non-GPL work, according to the license you’d need to release the whole larger work as GPL. Effectively, you’d have to release your closed source code to abide by the license. It doesn’t sound very “free” to me.

The liberal licenses form the middle, allowing open source innovations but with the option to combine works or the option to redistribute with different licenses. They tend to play nice with GPL (as in the work can be licensed under GPL without breaking the other license), and might allow greater return.

In recent times, closed source hasn’t had the best run. Just take a look at the state of the music business to see what happens when you overuse the “closed” idea. But yet, closed source still generates the revenue.

I’m not an expert with these licenses, nor am I a lawyer. But this I do know: forcing people to use a particular license is not freedom. That part of the GPL rubs me the wrong way. I do understand the desire to not be ripped off, as in the case of a closed source project essentially stealing open source code. That isn’t right either.

So, where do you stand? I don’t know at the moment for myself. As a content creator, I want return on my investment (or at least control of it). As a content user, I want to be able to use and improve what is there. Is there an answer? Let me know what you think.

[ Image by acme ]

by Josh on July 8th, 2009 9 Comments

Is Twitter the New RSS?

I have been thinking about this lately. Is Twitter replacing RSS? I mean, I seem to find my articles via Twitter, not my Google Reader.

Ok, here’s my line of thinking. Twitter is the real-time communication tool of the moment. The idea of RSS is that you don’t have to run to each site every 20 minutes to see if there’s something new. Well, Twitter and FriendFeed and the rest all make that insanely easy. You follow your favorite news sources, magazines, and blogs, and their new articles get sent to you in real time.

But there’s one problem. If you follow more than 75 people on Twitter, then you don’t get every tweet you follow. If you follow over 500, you pretty much only get like 5 minutes of history. So what happens when you’re at work and you can’t check Twitter? Well, you miss that great post.

Ok, so Twitter won’t be replacing RSS feeds and Google Reader quite yet. But it could happen.

Do you find yourself neglecting GooReader for Twitter? Do you think Twitter can replace feeds?

by Josh on July 4th, 2009 4 Comments

Notice for WordPress Theme and Plugin Developers

themespluginsdb Just wanted to pass some info along to all of you budding theme developers. Your themes need to be licensed under GPL.

Well, okay, part of them. According to this article from WordPress the php and html in your themes are GPL because WordPress itself is under the GPL. However, the css files and any images in your theme do not technically need to be licensed under the GPL. Talk about a monkey wrench!

What that means is technically you could pull off a case where you can hold all the rights to your css and image files to control the php and html. Now, I’m not a lawyer by any stretch of the imagination (and the only area I know something about is music copyright law), but that seems to be really tricky.

As an aside, this is really only a problem for premium themes and plugins. Because the php and html are derivative works of WordPress, you must follow the GPL. That does not mean that you cannot charge for your time, effort, and distribution of the themes or plugins. But you have to allow for the provisions of the GPL; namely, your code must be available, and anyone else can modify and/or distribute the code without permission.

Ah, the new world of copyright and license. For me, I’ve spent a good amount of time coding, tweaking, and testing my WordPress Creations. And while I do agree that open is better, I would like the option to get something back for my effort.

Do you all have any thoughts? Any arguments for or against?

Edit: Well, it seems the crux of the argument is what constitues a derivative work of WordPress. This article details the problem. Thanks to Andrei from Softblog for the link.

by Josh on June 28th, 2009 2 Comments

New WordPress Page: Got Themes?

Lately, I’ve been coding some WordPress themes and code. So, I thought I’d showcase my efforts here on my site. Check out my new WordPress page to see what I’ve been up to.

There will be some items to download for your own use. Not all of them will be free, but some will. I’ve spent a lot of time on these, and I hope you might find them useful. If you like what you see and want something custom done or a tweak to something up there, let me know on the page.

Anything you guys would like to see for WordPress? I’m always looking for ideas.

by Josh on June 23rd, 2009 3 Comments

Open or Closed: Experiencing (Social) Technology

Open. Or Closed.

This has become a big question for web technology. Opening up your source or API to the public can reap huge dividends. Just look at Twitter and all the news and apps and traffic it has. (It also has great content, but let’s have that as a given.) Closing your source or API can have quality control benefits and keeps your tech where you want it. Think Apple and their secrecy. Great innovations. Pros and cons on both sides.

For me, I’m more on the open side. Here’s my take.

Using my Twitter example, its growth has shot up in recent months. Personally, I think it is because of its openness. You could use any number of apps to use Twitter. You can control your experience. If you like the web version, use that. If you like an app, use that. Switch as you feel led.

Now, I’m not sure being totally open all of the time is the way to go. Apple obviously is doing okay, and they keep a tight lid on their advancements. The iPhone, the iPod, iTunes, and (oh yeah) their great computers. They do open their code up so people can create programs to use on their hardware (the App Store, Objective-C, Cocoa, etc).

So, what do you think? Open or Closed? Or Both? Or some better way?

by Josh on June 17th, 2009 2 Comments

WordPress Development Cheat Sheets

wpcheatsheet

Found this via John Saddington today. It’s good enough that I wanted to post this for any of my readers who design WordPress themes.

This article contains some WordPress cheat sheets for all of your theme development and design needs. I’ve already downloaded most of them, and will be referencing them often.

So, click through and enjoy, and let us know if you found them useful.

by Josh on June 16th, 2009 7 Comments

Imperfections: Why We Have Teams

teams

Think of a baseball team. 9 guys all playing together. They all have one goal: win the game, be the best team.

How do they get there? They practice, they work together. They usually have very good players. But they’re not perfect. They have imperfections.

No team is made up of perfect players. That means they all have strengths and weaknesses. The shortstop plays there because he’s a good shortstop, not catcher. The catcher isn’t a good pitcher. The pitcher can’t hit very well.

We have teams because we need each other. We can’t all play every position. Nor should we. God made us all different, so together we make a better whole. We should learn to use our diversity. It gives us a vast resource to lean upon. The slugger can teach the pitcher how to hit better.

When you have a team, you can rely on your teammates to help cover your weaknesses. And you can help cover their weaknesses. As a team, you can accomplish more.

In your team, where do you fit in? What are your strengths and weaknesses? What are theirs? Once you learn these, your team can work better together and achieve more.

Some things to think about.