SmartRemarks

So as anyone who pays attention to the technical side of the blogging world (although I have no idea what small, obsessive sliver of the population that may be) is probably aware, WordPress 2.7 is scheduled for release in a few days—December 10th, to be specific. In fact, it’s already been rolled out as of today (Thursday) for bloggers hosting at WordPress.com, and for the externally hosted (like me) there’s the only-slightly-preliminary “WordPress 2.7 Release Candidate 1.”

I’m not usually an early adopter of new software; if I have something I like that works, I stick with it… but this is a major upgrade, and they’ve been teasing its improvements for a while now. (At least as long as I’ve been blogging, in fact, which after all only dates back to September.) I don’t feel like waiting.

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Tags: blogging, computers, WordPress

Once in a while it’s nice to get away from the computer for a couple of days. That’s what my lady love and I did this past weekend, predominantly so as to enjoy the final weekend of the Chicago Humanities Festival.

One of the things I enjoy most about big city life is the cultural amenities, and the CHF is a distinctive one. For two weeks every autumn, the CHF (a nonprofit organization) invites scores of prominent writers, scholars, thinkers and doers to town to offer public lectures and discussions. The highlight last week was David McCullough, as I wrote at the time.

This Saturday, among other things, we heard a group of urban planning experts discuss the prospects for high-speed rail in the U.S. (considerably better than they were a few years ago, given the now-obviously-dire future of fossil fuels), and enjoyed listening to Judge Frank Easterbrook, Harvard Law Prof. Laurence Tribe (a former instructor of Barack Obama), and U of Chicago Law Prof. Geoffrey Stone (a former colleague of Obama) discuss the current state of Constitutional Interpretation.

On Sunday, we heard physicist Ronald Mallett discuss the possibility of time travel; saw a panel of scientists including (via hologram!) Ray Kurzweil discuss the past, present, and future of human evolution, including the accelerating sophistication and likely effects of information technology; and saw Naomi Klein discuss her recent book, Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, in the context of the current economic crisis and the potential for change under Obama.

History, law, science, politics, economics, and more… all wrapped up in a friendly format with Q&As and book signings, all at $5 a head per session. The large and diverse audiences that the event draws every year are heartening evidence that our society has not yet totally surrendered to anti-intellectualism. Taken all together, it’s a tonic, a reminder of the vast world of ideas out there in which we all swim, a reprieve from the day-to-day world and its mundane concerns. And it’s a good reminder that there’s more to life than just what you can find on the internet. What I saw this weekend will certainly influence my future reading and thinking, as it always does… and this time it’ll influence what I write on this blog, as well.

Tags: Constitution, Humanities Festival, Kurzweil

In case I haven’t mentioned it before, I love Apple products. I’ve been using Macs for over 20 years, I write this blog on one, and I’m consistently excited at the way the company weds practical usability to technical innovation and gorgeous design.

So it was with some pleasure that I saw yesterday’s story on Fortune (CNN? Money? Whatever, some part of that media conglomerate) that Apple finally explained in painstaking detail just exactly why and how Wall Street has been undervaluing the company. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Apple, computers, economy, iPhone, Mac

A change of pace from all the doom-and-gloom…

As a newcomer to blogging, I’ve been learning a lot on the fly. I chose WordPress as my platform because it’s open-source software, with a reputation for having a large and enthusiastic user community and (thus) being very easy to modify via free third-party plugins.

It’s certainly lived up to that reputation, and I’ve found myself using quite a lot of those plugins to customize and streamline my blogging experience. In particular, I use the following (including the one that automatically generated this handy hotlinked list!), and cheerfully recommend them to others:
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Tags: blogging, WordPress

Just a quick note here. I had noticed (to my disappointment) that people were visiting but I wasn’t getting any comments… then someone e-mailed me that even though he registered as a “subscriber” and logged in, nothing happened when he clicked the link to leave a comment. No entry box, no error page, zip.

An hour or so of frustrated troubleshooting, skimming WordPress forums, revealed to me that quite a few bloggers have apparently had similar glitches under WP 2.6.x.  After trying various tips and adjusting settings by trial and-error… I’m happy to say I got this fixed. (For some reason, the security measure of requiring users to register before posting—rather than just entering a name and e-mail on the fly—was preventing anyone from posting.)

Comment away, folks! (Please!)

Tags: blogging

I love computers. Really, I do. The Internet is a wonderful thing. E-mail keeps me in touch with people I would otherwise have lost track of long ago. I can’t imagine researching anything anymore, or even following the news, without access to Google.

And yet… sometimes one can’t help but wonder if these lovely life-enhancing benefits really need to come at the cost of so much annoyance and confusion. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: computers, customer service, e-mail, hosting, internet, software