I would usually write little posts about all these things, but in the lazy person that I am I’m consolidating into one “random bits” post. Makes me feel caught up.

WordCamp 2007
I only managed to catch 3 sessions- a bit of the User Interface one, which some reported was the best talk, Matt’s “state of the word,” and the developer discussion. I had really just wanted to attend the developer discussion, so I was happy. In general, I got a lot out of attending the entire thing last year, but if I’m honest, it’s a lazy way to get information. If I kept up more on the support forum or actually contributed to the project, I’d be in the know. Best part was finding out that the things that annoyed me, also annoyed a host of other users & developers. Love it, but it needs some help.

Last year I went with Lauren and it turned me into an uber-WordPress geek. I did a lot of hacking of it, and I really need to contribute to it. My ideas are my poetry project- the haiku poetry database to the right. There are just a lot of little bugs that I see everywhere that I could fix.

Habitat For Humanity
Went to East Bay Habitat for Humanity yesterday and had a blast. These young kids from Americorps do a great job of being “boss man” and instructing us on techniques as well as leading us on these projects. We installed about 10 vinyl windows that are extremely heavy. Also pasted up flashing on top of the windows, painted trim with primer, did a lot of manual nailing because the pneumatic nail gun kind of terrified me & my buddy Julie. Complete physical exhaustion all last night. Driving through North Beach seeing the revelers at 7pm, and all I wanted to do was get in a bath and go to bed. Habitat’s great because you can actually work on a house- something that I miss once in a while since I live in such fabricated modern apartment loveliness (all fixes are done by the condo group). It also helps just feel like you’re “doing something” about issues of economic stratification in the Bay Area.

Flickr: Oh, So Now I’m a Pro!
I became a Pro at some point. I’m glad. I was offered it by a friend for free a few years ago, and stupidly turned it down. Then, I got those awful “we are hiding your old photos” emails from Flickr last year. Well, now July 2007, I’m a “pro” grand-fathered in because I’m a premiere Yahoo/AT&T subscriber (that’s where I get my DSL). Interesting, the flows of the Silicon Valley and acquisitions, etc. and the viewpoint as a consumer. Glad I never handed money over to them for a Pro account. I heard some squabbling during the JPEG magazine demise about these grandfathered accounts- some reward for being an earlier subscriber on Flickr when they were bought by Yahoo, you would get “forever” service or something. Not that I cared- I use flickr as a blog-hosting-photo place for my blog here, and until wordpress cleans up its act on image uploads, I’ll do keep using flickr that way.

Writing Update
I’m winding up Killerizr. If you haven’t guessed the murderer yet… I have some hints. My sister Amy (maker of cute wallets) gave me some pointers on murder mystery complexity. The next online series is going to be True Crime- the court case I witnessed as a juror. I didn’t go to deliberations, but Kate did, so I will totally lift her impressions.

Why I Haven’t Been Blogging
On Banane.com or on sf-metblogs. Well, I have a new mistress, and she is quite demanding and requires a special pied a terre in… ok metaphor going on long enough. The posts on WorkBlog “Adventures in Email Marketing” (haha) require tons of research and time and are impossibly difficult to write. As well as boring, of course. So I spent 4 days- two nights and two days including nights- doing a study on how HTML emails render in popular webmail clients: Yahoo Beta, AIM, Hotmail, Gmail and Outlook (in progress on outlook). Sometimes those posts are easy to write, sometimes hard. This was a rushed, understaffed update on some very well-staffed, well-executed studies by other blogs in the same area. Thing about webmail is that Yahoo, Google, etc. can change what they support every day, and the trend is to downscale HTML and CSS support instead of improve. Mostly, because SPAM exploits every little innovation!