Disqus - Latest Comments for ringmaster

Re: Why Staging Environments Are Critical for WordPress Sites

ringmaster — Wed, 05 Apr 2017 09:45:39 -0000

This is an incredibly naive take on staging environments. In a typically competent development shop, there would be three environments: dev, staging, and production. The complications of using a CMS for staged deployment are both well-known and poorly accounted for, since the authors' purpose for writing the CMS was to make it easy for non-developers to create and publish content. There needs to be a flow of code from dev to staging to production, and a flow of data from production to staging to dev. Tools would need to exist to facilitate this operation, and they are largely bad or don't exist. The tedium of moving customer-produced data to staging and dev environments from production is what causes most independent contractors to skip staging environments at all. As a contractor, I've been asked to repair many sites that would not display content properly due to a prior contractor failing to get this process right, and allowing the customer to produce data in production that could not be displayed properly by code deployed up through staging. It is a HARD PROBLEM. Three paragraphs merely suggesting that it should be done is almost not worth the mention. How about some links to tools or an essay on methods that are known to work marginally well?

Re: Philadelphia becomes first city to ban 3D-printed guns

ringmaster — Mon, 25 Nov 2013 16:01:19 -0000

Drat. I guess I will just switch to printing knives, then. Idiots.

Re: Star Command: Naivety And Overambition Lead To A Kickstarter Warning

ringmaster — Fri, 03 May 2013 08:51:05 -0000

I think it's amazing that this small team of developers was able to pull this game off at all, in spite of how much they screwed up the computation of funding. They're not a big name like Double Fine or Lord British, and don't have the experience with distribution or clout to draw in millions for their project, which makes their effort even more remarkable. They've even suggested that they'll continue to produce the features that are missing, provided they have the necessary funding, which seems reasonable, and certainly better than canceling the game before release like others have.

This implication of lawsuits is a heinous type of "journalism", pandering to the sensationalism-craving crowd. It is perhaps a valid issue to surface, but I think it's rotten to pick on the small guys who are trying to make good on their promises as best they can, rather than the big dev houses who misrepresent themselves and really have no good excuse.

Re: ExpanDrive v2.4 released

ringmaster — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 19:40:38 -0000

Doesn't work on Windows 8. If you're on Windows 8, don't waste your time.

Re: Ghost – Bringing blogging back to WordPress

ringmaster — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 08:43:31 -0000

Bringing some of the design sensibilities of Ghost over to a revised Habari admin interface is something we've been discussing for our next (0.10) release.

Re: Win Olympic Gold, Pay the IRS

ringmaster — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 13:34:32 -0000

The premise of the original post is that US Olympic medalists are overtaxed on their foreign earnings. I was illustrating how changing tax law to be more like their competitors' homelands would not be appropriate for my job, so why should it be for athletes that win prizes?

Moreover, I am a US citizen working for a foreign company from within the US. I can't conceive of a reason I would need to call an embassy while I'm here. Even so, you muddily illustrate my point: If I expect the government to act on my behalf, here or away, shouldn't I have to pay taxes to it? Shouldn't Olympic athletes, too? I think so.

Finally, the toxic, jingoistic attitude of your comment is really the only thing that drew me back to reply. You're opposing me, effectively saying "get out of my country", and yet we share the same opinion! I always find it difficult to queue up behind such a nationalist sentiment when its constituents typically can't parse simple rhetoric.

Re: Geek & Sundry, Now Found in Target Stores Everywhere

ringmaster — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 09:37:40 -0000

Does this mean that Target will start to carry board games that are something more than Chutes and Ladders or Parcheesi? I'd love to see some euro-style boardgames, or something from Fantasy Flight sold in Target.

Re: Win Olympic Gold, Pay the IRS

ringmaster — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 08:38:37 -0000

As a computer programmer in the US working exclusively for foreign companies, and being paid in their currency, I fully support the exclusion of taxes on foreign-sourced income.

On the other hand, there's probably a reason income tax law is this way.

Re: Last Chance Upgrades

ringmaster — Tue, 15 May 2012 22:24:52 -0000

Can you list the upgrade options? With so many stretch goals and such, I'm not sure even what is available and what more it costs. -- Bah! the comments didn't load, so I didn't read them. But I see that other people have asked the same question. Good, I'm not alone!

Re: Marketing 101 for Developers

ringmaster — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 08:57:25 -0000

Regarding point #4: I read an article online recently (sorry, I searched for it but came up empty) talking about performance magic; how the tricks that are most satisfying for the audience are often typified by the effort put into their construction. Imagine you saw a trick, and you - as any of us would - tried to figure out how it was done, and the only way you could imagine it possible is if the magician had located 32 mummified pygmies, sawed them in half, and allowed them to marinate in red wine for 2-3 days before the show even started. The effort your imagining makes the trick more incredible, because the magician couldn't have gone through all that... could he?

I think this idea may also affect your impact/time/cost analysis. Maybe this is what you're saying, but "impact" shouldn't be added to "time" and "cost". Impact opposes time and cost. Usually (but certainly not always, and always best evaluated against your audience as you astutely point out) time and cost increase direct proportion with impact. What you need is a formula that correlates the worth of the impact against the time and cost to produce a "value" output, because sometimes the effort is worth the impact.

Also: "Testing is a concept that’s all too familiar to developers." Haha. You left out a "competent" in there, which would significantly narrow your audience.

Good write-up.

Re: Missing the Point of WordPress Entirely

ringmaster — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 10:17:50 -0000

I'm not so sure. It seems obvious to everyone that replies here that WordPress isn't meant to do everything; I think it was obvious to him, too. He has said outright he doesn't expect WordPress to do everything. And he never suggested that others shouldn't use WordPress. I suppose one could misunderstand this when reading his post, but it was written on a (apparently, originally low-traffic) personal blog, where a quick email of clarification works better than burning the man at the stake for being a heretic.

The reaction here, as it has been elsewhere, is a vitriolic response to someone who visibly left a community that doesn't tolerate defectors. That's all it is. It's a common reaction in many social groups when you openly state your reasons for leaving to try to pull you back, and then childishly call you names upon failing to change your mind. Nothing different is happening here, except a much higher profile site than should ever have exposed this "news" did so.

Re: Missing the Point of WordPress Entirely

ringmaster — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 18:24:02 -0000

I read nothing that seemed like a "low blow" except here by the author of this post. In Gallagher's response on WP Tavern, he succinctly explained what he was talking about in his list of complaints, and frequently says that he loves WordPress and the people that make it happen, as he does on his blog post. Directly quoting from his response to Andrew Nacin: "As always, I’m very appreciative of the time you give up to read and reply to the communities thoughts." These don't seem like the words of someone insulting contributors.

If there is evidence otherwise of him being uncivil, it's not provided here. Even so, it's entirely possible that the community backed him into defending himself by lashing out. Once again, WordPress enthusiasts (as with many groups) tend to be rabid in their support and lash out against naysayers, calling them stupid and raking them over the coals, like the author of this post has done to Gallagher. Additional links showing differently might have changed my mind, although reading more posts on his blog, apparently people threatened his family for his opinions? That's not good.

And besides all of that, regardless of whether he made a bad choice of CMS, regardless of whether his complaints are off-the-wall, condoning the type of response shown here is not an example of positive community involvement. Fellow Habari contributors and I have discussed this post, and point to it as an example of why we're glad our community is nothing like WordPress'. This is exactly why I expect that a Habari response to such an event would be very, very different from what I've seen here. If RWW ever covered such an incident, by lambasting someone publicly decrying Habari, I and the rest of the community would still come out saying that this response was inappropriate.

Re: Missing the Point of WordPress Entirely

ringmaster — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 18:22:59 -0000

Disqus was misbehaving and double-posted. Sorry.

Re: Missing the Point of WordPress Entirely

ringmaster — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 19:25:54 -0000

Having read his rebuttal in the comments on WP Tavern (linked in the article), I think that many of the complaints deemed "unreasonable" are in fact potentially reasonable things to expect a robust and mature system to do. That the WordPress media tends to suggest that anything is possible with WordPress rather than imply that a task shouldn't be attempted in WP lends towards people thinking they should use it for every task. They should not.

The quoted text says that I'm tired of pundits like the author of this post being able to write off complaints and besmirch the community simply because nobody's going to care about this one guy among thousands. My statement makes no demands that WordPress be all things to all users. That the author takes the time to rake Gallagher through the muck repeatedly in both the article and comments after reading a single personal blog post, rather than use the incident to educate and enhance the community, is detrimental to the community image, and in my opinion, bad journalism.

Re: Missing the Point of WordPress Entirely

ringmaster — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 23:55:11 -0000

Is the focus of this post on mocking the guy for finally realizing that WordPress isn't the right tool for his business? Or is the point that WordPress isn't the Alpha and Omega of web publishing, in spite of being "chock full of awesome for a wide range of [unenumerated, undedescribed] projects"? I assume it's the latter, since that jives better with my impression of this website's reputation.

It's so rare that tech publications question the intended use for a web publishing tool and jump straight to WordPress that it's really not surprising that anyone lured by the ease of WordPress use and customization would make the same mistake. Yet, it would behoove the CMS-covering media to expose the weaknesses of their favored tool now and then, and focus on revealing what WordPress does well rather than constantly characterizing it as a do-all, lest this type of mistake happen even more often than it does.

To be absolutely clear, this article characterizes someone's valid complaint - essentially, WordPress doesn't meet his needs - which was posted in in a public, yet personal forum. The article might have taken the opportunity to illuminate the things that WordPress is good at versus the things it's not. Or might have taken the idea of gathering requirements farther and explained some of the methods and difficulties of that process. Or could have explored alternative CMS options that might have suited one or two of his needs better. Generally, this could be turned into something positive for both him and WordPress. Instead, this article takes the option of insulting Gallagher for his opinion, characterizing him as "out of whack", and presenting a position of animosity and condescension which is the bane of healthy open source communities.

I'm personally exhausted by the class of WordPress pundit that is allowed to exude this attitude, simply because WordPress is big enough to slough off outliers that don't agree with them. I believe this is also one of the many complaints Gallagher makes about the community surrounding the software, and even prior to reading this article of prime evidence, this impression has been made on me by others many times.

Re: Missing the Point of WordPress Entirely

ringmaster — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 15:37:37 -0000

I stopped making core WordPress contributions exactly for some of the reasons Kevin stated. Regardless of our perception of his needs, WordPress clearly doesn't do what he wants.

What's surprising (not really, anymore) to me is that the community would turn on him when he realizes that their beloved tool doesn't do everything. Of course WordPress doesn't do everything.

It's saddening to me that the first thing people do is attempt to ostracize him because he won't be convinced to add yet another plugin, or make another hack, or fork another codebase. Others should take this opportunity to look closely at how much they're forcing WordPress into their projects when software designed as a true content management system may be a better fit. It would thrill me if online and print magazines would stop encouraging the practice of coercing WordPress to do these things that it was not designed to do, and instead cover how to accomplish those goals in an appropriate tool.

Re: Truth or Truth?

ringmaster — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 09:08:04 -0000

From this? http://courseinmiracles.com...

Re: Kogeto Dot Panorama iPhone Add-On Spotted: TechCrunch Disrupt New York

ringmaster — Mon, 23 May 2011 17:39:31 -0000

Looks like the same features as the GoPano Micro: http://www.kickstarter.com/...

Re: Kogeto Dot Panorama iPhone Add-On Spotted: TechCrunch Disrupt New York

ringmaster — Mon, 23 May 2011 17:39:00 -0000

Looks like the same features as the GoPano Micro: http://www.kickstarter.com/...

Re: You Should Date An Illiterate Girl

ringmaster — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 13:15:28 -0000

Viskimberly is clearly a reader.

Re: Fear and Loathing in Phoenix – My 48 Hour Binge Experience at NewsFoo

ringmaster — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 08:21:10 -0000

This sentiment could be said for most industries affected by the blight of information technology. I'm coming to the conclusion that the old guard isn't going to pull it off, no matter how smart they are. Finding examples of companies that did more than weather the change, but actually improved with it, is nigh futile. I think there's an undiscovered (but soon to evolve) recipe for newcomers to take over in any industry space where the establishment hasn't embraced the change brought by technology.

Re: A Letter to Entrepreneurs

ringmaster — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 10:16:12 -0000

Multiple comments rock!

Re: I’ve been watching sports

ringmaster — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 07:54:10 -0000

Conversely, you don't see people wearing t-shirts for the great things people in Philly are doing that aren't sports. It helps to have billion-dollar business driving the influx of licensed (and grossly unlicensed, from what I saw in the stadium parking lot) sports merchandise.

Would that we spent so much and valued so much the arts and science.

Concerning street cred, I doubt the realization that you enjoy the rush of feeling with the crowd and having a common thread with people outside your usual crowd is anything to be worrying about. I believe that the adage - friends who would dismiss you for your differing beliefs weren't your friends to begin with - also applies here.

Re: http://twofishcreative.com/michael/blog/2009/06/05/emusic-how-to-piss-people-off

ringmaster — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 14:24:00 -0000

I have an amiestreet.com membership. It's not the same as eMusic, but it gets you into new, cheap, independent, yet worthwhile artists, which I think is a great way to spend money, rather than wasting it on licensing fees to Sony. It'll also import your iTunes and Last.fm profiles to get an instant idea of the kind of music you like.

Re: New Habari release adds access control - echo "hey, it works" > /dev/null

ringmaster — Thu, 07 May 2009 21:16:53 -0000

I'm anxious to see practical applications of ACL in the wild beyond simple privacy.

One thing I think we'll need to do before that happens is extend ACL to cover what we currently do with post statuses. Then you could implement a permission-based workflow system pretty elegantly, entirely with core settings, but controlled by a pluggable interface.

Disqus - Latest Comments for ringmaster

Re: Why Staging Environments Are Critical for WordPress Sites

Re: Philadelphia becomes first city to ban 3D-printed guns

Re: Star Command: Naivety And Overambition Lead To A Kickstarter Warning

Re: ExpanDrive v2.4 released

Re: Ghost – Bringing blogging back to WordPress

Re: Win Olympic Gold, Pay the IRS

Re: Geek & Sundry, Now Found in Target Stores Everywhere

Re: Win Olympic Gold, Pay the IRS

Re: Last Chance Upgrades

Re: Marketing 101 for Developers

Re: Missing the Point of WordPress Entirely

Re: Missing the Point of WordPress Entirely

Re: Missing the Point of WordPress Entirely

Re: Missing the Point of WordPress Entirely

Re: Missing the Point of WordPress Entirely

Re: Missing the Point of WordPress Entirely

Re: Truth or Truth?

Re: Kogeto Dot Panorama iPhone Add-On Spotted: TechCrunch Disrupt New York

Re: Kogeto Dot Panorama iPhone Add-On Spotted: TechCrunch Disrupt New York

Re: You Should Date An Illiterate Girl

Re: Fear and Loathing in Phoenix – My 48 Hour Binge Experience at NewsFoo

Re: A Letter to Entrepreneurs

Re: I’ve been watching sports

Re: http://twofishcreative.com/michael/blog/2009/06/05/emusic-how-to-piss-people-off

Re: New Habari release adds access control - echo &quot;hey, it works&quot; &gt; /dev/null

Re: New Habari release adds access control - echo "hey, it works" > /dev/null