Ejecutive

Well you wanted them, so they’re back. Commenting is now open on the majority of posts on Ejecutive¹ and old comments are visible again!

For the meantime this is just going to be an experiment to see if enough discussions start. The commenting system is clearly bolted onto my theme instead of being seamlessly integrated, so if I do decide to keep comments open after the trial period then I’ll be refining them more.

Every comment is going through moderation at the moment, not because I’m going to cherry pick comments or because I don’t trust you lot, but it’s because of a bug with UTW and WordPress 2.1 that deletes the tags off a post if a comment is made. Until this bug is solved every comment will have to go through moderation to make sure I don’t loose all my precious tags.

So get commenting and discussing, and I’ll be sure to write about more controversial topics to provoke some of you lurkers.

Change is a good thing, it symbolises progression and improvement (or at least the attempt of), which is why I was looking forward to WordPress 2.1 with eager anticipation.

WordPress 2.0 was released into the wild over a year ago. Taking a year for a minor point upgrade for a piece of software is a long time in anyone’s book, especially as it’s open source, being actively worked on and has a huge community backing it. But I hear you cry: “look at all the bug fixes and features they’ve managed to implement in that year”. Of all the new features, only four really interest me, and the two that I would use regularly are badly implemented.

• Auto save. Long needed and long awaited. The number of times I’ve had whole complete posts lost because I’m in the middle of writing something, and accidentally click a link or press a key (usually backspace when not having the cursor focused on the text box, so the browser goes back) is beyond belief. But why do we have to write a title before it starts auto saving? If anything I title my posts after I write them, and that’s how it’s always worked. You can save posts manually without titles so why doesn’t the auto save feature do this?
• Tabbed editor. TinyMCE isn’t great, so sometimes I have to edit the HTML it produces myself, and this tab is a big time saver. But, what were they smoking when they decided to use form buttons as the tabs? What is going on here?
• Lossless XML import and export. Saves me doing a database dump every time I move hosts, which to be honest almost never happens, but it’s nice to know it’s now easier.
• Privacy options. Useful for the one private blog I write for, although this can be done fairly easily manually in your theme anyway.

Of the supposed 550 bug fixes, I don’t see one that really interests me directly. But I can say that the new “improved” TinyMCE editor is giving me nothing but trouble. AdBlock Plus, now blocks the majority of buttons on the toolbar of the editor, when it never did this before. Easy to fix but annoying none-the-less.

Inserting a link is now broken, I like the new AJAXed popup, which loads a bit quicker than the new window before¹ but seems completely broken. There seems to be no insert button on mine, and pressing return on the keyboard does nothing. Clicking the close button on the top right does nothing either, so when I get this dialog up, I can’t get rid of it, which means I loose any changes in the editor as the dialog is modal²

There is an enforced category called Blogroll. I consider this a bug as I have no use for it, and there is no way to disable it. The old Links system was pretty bad, but at least it was optional, I don’t like the way they assume that everyone needs to have a blogroll.

This release has made me completely disillusioned with WordPress. One whole year of progress has given me next to nothing in terms of useful features. Blogging should be a hobby I enjoy, and to a certain extent I do, but I can’t help think that a better blogging platform would allow me to enjoy it even more. Maybe what I need is my own custom blogging application that I’ve been thinking about writing for months, but never have the time to properly sketch out my ideas.

There is something exciting around the corner, something new and fresh, written with passion and flair. It’s called habari, and I’m going to be following it very closely.

For what it’s worth, here’s my predictions of what will be announced today at the MacWorld Expo 2007. Note that my last prediction turned out to be wrong.

• iPod Mobile (or iPhone). Considering the number of rumours going around blogs and even respected mainstream press, there is a high likelihood of an iPod Nano style device with a phone built into it. This is the main one of personal interest to me, as I’m due for a phone upgrade in March and this would be my top choice, it if exists of course.
• 12″ MacBook Pro. There’s a gap waiting to be filled, and filled it shall be.
• New interface for OS X 10.5 (Leopard) and release date. We’ll get something similar to the new iTunes 7 interface (either that or a new version of iTunes will be released with the new interface style), and a release date before that of Vista.
• iLife ’07. This has been an annual recurring theme and I don’t see why they’d stop it now. Expect iPhoto performance enhancements. Should be available for purchase immediately or when Leopard ships.
• iWork ’07. Will include a new spreadsheet product, perhaps called iChart. Also available immediately or when Leopard ships.
• Dual quad processor Mac Pro, perhaps Mac Pro Octo. Now that Intel have quad processor Xeons, I don’t see why Apple wouldn’t want to sell the Mac Pro in an 8-way configuration. Especially seeing as its already been proven to work without any modifications to a Mac Pro Quad.
• New displays with iSights built-in. With the separate iSight camera being discontinued for months and no successor in sight¹ new iSights will appear in all of Apples new Cinema Displays. Hopefully a price drop that brings them closer to what Dell charges for the same panel too.
• Adobe CS3 demonstration. I expect to see demos of the recently released Photoshop CS 3 Beta, and perhaps other Adobe CS3 applications. Might also announce a release date for CS3.
• Mention of iTV. I don’t think Apple have the iTV ready for sale, but they’ll provide an update and maybe demonstration of a prototype.

I just had a small physical down at the gym; came back with 150/86 blood pressure, which is fine but a bit high on the first figure, that’ll hopefully go down the more I exercise. My resting heart rate came at 70 which is fine, my cholesterol is too low to measure¹ and my blood glucose level is at 3.2%, which apparently is considered pretty low. All-in-all not nearly as bad as I thought it would be, although my blood pressure has gone up since I last measure it a couple months back² it’s still not too much of a worry.

I got shown around the gym by a cute little blond³ and I was surprised to find the exercise bikes and treadmills all have built in TVs. I was also given a little key fob that records every work out, including the calories burnt!

I’m now looking forward to giving it all a try on Monday.