by Alan Langford | 2019-06-08 | Observations on Nothing
What I particularly like is the days when I’m standing in front of all the bits required to make coffee and there’s this internal dialogue:
L: Okay, make coffee now.
R: Wut?
L: MAKE COFFEE!!
R: How?
L: Oh FFS all the bits are there, just DO IT!!
R: Something about this round thing, right?
L: Aughh!! WAKE THE F*CK UP!
R: I need coffee.
L: Yes, YES! You need to MAKE it, you do this every f*cking day!
R: Ugh, ok, right. Push grind button.
L: There we go! F*ck me.
R: Water.
L: Yes, yes, you’ve got this!
by Alan Langford | 2016-02-05 | Observations on Nothing
I started sitting at the back of the plane because the probability of survival in a crash is significantly higher. To do this, I had to overcome considerable anxiety, since as it turns out I’m waaaaay out there on the Autism spectrum. What I found was a whole bunch of people who enjoy being alive way more than the folks in the front of the plane. I’m not on the same frequency as many of them, but if you want joy de vivre, it’s back there, and the harmonics are great.
by Alan Langford | 2014-08-03 | Observations on Nothing
I’m at the point where if you want me to sign up for your free service, your website better have a main menu titled “Revenue Model”. Ain’t nuthin’ for free, so just come clean and tell me which piece of me you’re trying to get a slice of — or I’m likely to assume you aren’t going to last anyway.
by Alan Langford | 2013-01-07 | Observations on Nothing
I’ve spent a good part of the holidays trying to reconcile the over-saturation in my life. Of the large number of things I’d like to be doing, I’m coming up against the realization that I’m attempting to do too many of them. The result is a spectrum of underachievement. (more…)
by Alan Langford | 2012-09-25 | It's a Code, Code World, Observations on Nothing
Welcome to the third major iteration of It’s Fixed in the Next Release. From Blogger (yuck) to Serendipity (which truly deserves more attention than it gets) to WordPress (market share wins, even in the open source world) here we are.
Speaking of open source, what you see here is only possible because of the FOSS (Free Open Source Software) model. Not only is the core of WordPress completely open, most of the themes, plugins, and tools are as well.
Independent of the cost, FOSS made this blog because the theme is a hybrid. The base theme is the free version of “Blogolife”. I’ve made some changes to it, both in terms of some invisible code rework, and by hacking in the tag display from “AskIt”, a commercial template I purchased for a project that died. At first I thought AskIt was going to do the trick, but in the end I just didn’t like the main page layout. Blogolife had the clean traditional blog feel but the display of tags and categories wasn’t all that great (I haven’t done anything to the categories yet).
I also removed all of Blogolife’s admin links and promotions for the “PRO” version. Needless to say I wasn’t likely to be buying that anyway.
It’s interesting hacking on WordPress code, and it’s a classic comparison between simplicity and power. I think it’s possible to keep most of the WordPress API in your head, and its possible to be a true expert on it in a year or so. Meanwhile, I’ve been working with Joomla for almost six years now, and it seems I keep on discovering new tricks, not including the outside-the-core stuff like template frameworks and the like. So there’s a freedom in WordPress that makes it possible to hack bits of two themes together in a few days and get something that works. But at the same time I feel like I’m working in a small shop with hand tools. By comparison Joomla feels like a manufacturing line full of robots — configure each one to do a job then watch the whole facility in action.
Each environment has its place. It’s actually more personally satisfying to feel you’ve built something by hand. WordPress certainly rocks the blogging / simple site space, but it has its limitations. Over in the Joomla development world we wrestle with issues like how to make it so those “robots” of ours plug into each other most effectively and with a minimum of code duplication. While we’re making it easier to plug things together I think we’d also be wise to keep an eye on offering freedom to site builders who need to produce a custom solution but only know the basics of PHP development. We never want to be in the position where someone says “Joomla is a great platform but you need a team of developers to build and run a site.”
After all, market share wins, even in the open source world.
by Alan Langford | 2012-09-23 | Observations on Nothing
To say this blog has suffered from neglect is to make a rather large understatement. It turns out that converting a passing thought into a coherent post takes too many words and too much time. Or maybe finishing a post just doesn’t generate enough endorphin. Whatever the reason, It’s Fixed in the Next Release underwhelmed my expectations, and then Twitter really made a mess of it. (more…)
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