No names..

37signals won’t let me post an image

Here’s my beautiful thing:

Microsoft are renowed for getting ‘usability’ right with their products.

Windows Live Writer is no exception.

Three things I like:

• 1. Installation is easy.
  • Download, install - then point at this blog url - and it detected I was running WordPress without any problems.
  • No fiddling with the correct url for the XML-RPC side of things. No need to remember that I’m running WordPress. (Remember - this is easy for non-technical people)
• 2. It looks good.
  • Hey - I can use Textpad, Wordpad, Pico, Joe, VI or just pipe from the shell if I need to. But often it’s a lot easier just to have something that works and works well.
  • It looks a lot like Word - or any other Microsoft Office app.
• 3. In place preview - with your theme.
  • Oooh - this is a sexy feature. Look at the screen shots.

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I don’t usually link to Microsoft - this time is an exception.

There is a fascinating interview on Microsoft Technet Port 25.

Here’s the link - http://port25.technet.com/archive/2006/08/11/Let_2700_s-talk-Mono_3A00_–Sam-interviews-Miguel-de-Icaza.aspx

Flaky hard drive in my firewall server.

Time to replace it methinks. It keeps crashing out with bad surface - and bringing down the firewall and squid box.

Trouble for me if there is no web browsing or email!

I was reminded of this via 37signals.

“How does a project get to be a year behind schedule? One day at a time.”
Fred Brooks, software engineer and computer scientist

Good success with Audible recently.

I’m currently listening to “Seizing the Enigma” by David Kahn; I just finished “Defying Hitler” by Sebastien Haftner and also “Dare to Be a Daniel” by Tony Benn.

I’m really into historical non-fiction; I also really prefer the unabridged 10 hours of listening to the shorter abridged versions.

So I’m in San Francisco at the WordPress Community geek-fest that is WordCamp.

It’s kinda interesting - the usual [x]camp format; the usual 80/20 mix of hackers and non-hackers; the lack of power outlets…

There are a lot of people here who are using WordPress and want more - there is certainly a wave of demand that could see the whole community become a lot stronger.

Spent time in a session this morning on ‘Helping out WordPress’ - the number 1 request is ‘help with support’. I’ll get with a few people and see what can really be done.

After working with Ximian for three years - I’m really wary of reliance on the community; I know it’s active; but without clout nothing moves.

Oh - and I gave out a stack of openSUSE 10.1 DVDs - as well as the link to the running WordPress on openSUSE article that I threw together. I was branded a dreadful person from corporate land for that. The folks at WordCamp who got the openSUSE DVDs were happy though.

As promised here is the ‘HOW-TO’ for running WordPress on openSUSE.

This is a simple three step process:

- install and configure openSUSE
- configure apache and mysql
- install WordPress