Diary of a Network Geek

Soon, you’ll need a passport to enter Facebook.

No, not really.  Well, probably not, but I’m sure Zuckerberg wouldn’t mind issuing passports and currency!
Regardless, in this case, I’m talking about an art project with a social consciousness that I read about on Gizmodo; Facebook ID Cards.
Those of you who know me, know how obsessed I can become over realistic, but fake, marginalia, like stamps, currency, government documents, and, of course, identification cards just like these.  Things like passports and driver’s licenses are the ephemera of our lives that we often use to define who we are and identify us to strangers, especially those in authority.  We tend to take them for granted, but someone designed them and they serve some purpose, whether it’s to tell a police officer that we are certified to drive or Facebook’s security goons that we’re allowed to access our friendlist.
So, no, it hasn’t happened, yet, but I suspect it will one day.

And, did you notice that they astutely included a QR Code in their design?  Remember that article I linked to earlier in the week?  Might want to read that again…

It’s no secret that I love WordPress.

I mean, seriously, I really, really love WordPress as a blogging platform and as an easy-to-understand Content Management System.  But, did you know that I’m one of the three most important people in WordPress? No, for real! And, I have a certificate from Matt Mullenweg himself to prove it!

Okay, so, yeah, I know, I’m not really one of the most important people in WordPress, outside of being one of millions of users who do, in fact, make WordPress a force to be reckoned with. But, we only manage that as a group, as a community. No, that certificate is a joke. Literally. It’s a joke from Matt Mullenweg, founding developer of WordPress, regarding an incident some weeks back involving a theme developer who didn’t want to use the GPL, which is the software license that WordPress uses and all theme developers are required to use. I know people will disagree, but, based on my understanding of the GPL, any derivative works of a product that uses the GPL must also use the GPL.  So, really, for most of their code, theme developers are required to use the GPL.  Honestly, I’ve never worried about it.  I mean, mostly, it’s a bunch of legal speak that means very little to the average end-user.
One of the things that this theme developer claimed, erroneously, was that he was one of the “three most important people in WordPress” because he felt that so many people used his theme.  I think he may have been surprised at how many of those folks jumped ship when they found out there was something wrong with that theme and its license.

In any case, what does matter to us about all this is that Matt took that attention and made a marketing opportunity out of it.  For starters, he started buying people premium themes that didn’t violate the GPL as a kind of protest and a way to draw attention to how serious he is about supporting the GPL.  And lots of people took him up on the offer.  But, apparently, someone griped about not wanting a premium theme or something and so, instead, Matt made a second offer to those of us who didn’t want, or couldn’t decide on, a premium theme.  He offered us free t-shirts.

Well, I’m always up for a free t-shirt, especially one that advertises something I believe in and use, so I was on this offer like white on rice.  Now, I can only imagine how many people also took advantage of this, too, but I went to his website, and filled out the form and sent off my e-mail like a kid sending in his box-tops for his toy surprise.  And, then I forgot about it.  I try to do that, frankly, when I enter contests and such.  Like casting my bread upon the water, I do what I need to do to enter and then forget it.  That way, if something does arrive, I’m pleasantly surprised.  That’s just what I was this past Friday when I found the package from Matt in my mailbox; pleasantly surprised!

As you can see from the picture, the t-shirt came with a few other things.
First of all, there were all kinds of stickers, which I love.  It reminds me of the old days when you got swag at the conventions and covered your laptop in stickers.  But, there was also an iPhone skin and pencils and, of course, the certificate, which made me laugh out loud.
I’ve already worn the t-shirt, which, as you can see, says “Code is poetry” on the front.  What you can’t tell from the photograph is that the t-shirt reads “WordPress.org” and has the official WordPress logo on the back.  Frankly, that’s the part I love.

Now, all I need to do is actually read all those books I’ve gotten on WordPress theme design and get working on it…
Anyway, thanks for all the stuff, Matt!

For me, at least.

So, I’ve been helping a friend with her blog, right?  Helping stamp out spam, blah, blah, blah.  Anyway, she uses Movable Type for her blog, which I used to use.  I mean, it wasn’t like there were a lot of options out there when I first started this blog, what, six years ago?  MT was it, so that’s what I used.  But, a couple years back they started jacking around with the license agreement and what you could legally run with their blog software before you were in violation of the agreement.  When they first released it, before they got big, the promise was that MT would always be free, at least for the personal, home user.  Then, things changed due to pressure from investors and the market.  So I changed systems to WordPress, which I love for a lot of reasons.  For one thing, I find it easier to write additonal components for WP.  It’s also easier to use, in my opinion.

But, all that aside, when I was in her blog, clearing out the massive comment spam, I saw an announcement from Six Apart regarding the MT license.  It’s free.  Again.  I laughed out loud when I read that.  Sort of closing the barn door after the customer has escaped, don’t you think?

There’s more than 100 entries here now.

It just struck me, as I was signing in to the blog software, that I have more than 100 entries in this blog now. That’s pretty amazing, to me, anyway. Of course, I’m not sure how many people really read this blog, besides me, my wife, my daughter and my mother-in-law. And, I’m not quite convinced about my mother-in-law, either. But, as always, I conduct myself as if I’m always being watched. After all, since I appled to federal service once, I could, in fact, be under surveilance. Well, in theory anyway. Hey! Work with me on this one!

Anyway, it’s pretty cool, to me, that I’ve had that much to say. And, it’s cool that blog software has come so far since I started doing all this.
To start your own blog, check out MovableType.org.