Techn(ical|ology)

Most posts will probably end up in this category one way or another, because I tend to write a lot about technology and tech-related topics. I work online and really enjoy gadgets and gizmos, so a lot of what I get involved in revolves around those subjects. Anything from regular expressions to iPods to The Magic Bullet is fair game.

Inline Collapsed Content with jQuery

One of the things I find ListML really handy for is planning a presentation/talk. I write up a hierarchical list of all the things I want to cover using ListML, then I can work from that list to build out my slides/demos/etc. For the recent WordCamp NYC, I needed to present 2 structured talks, so I went to work in ListML and knocked up 2 lists of things to cover. Once I was done with the talks, I realized that there was some good content in these lists that a) served as a bit of a transcript to the talks themselves, and b) in some cases wasn’t actually covered (for time reasons, or just because I forgot them).

I wanted to be able to post these lists to my site along with the presentations, but didn’t really want to post a whole separate page for each one just to put up a simple HTML list.

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New Project: ListML

If you’re anything like me, you write a lot of lists. I use lists for pretty much everything — note taking, planning my day, managing projects, shopping, organization, etc etc etc. I have lists of lists. It’s a bit out of control. Over the years, I’ve coalesced on a simple, basic format, where I write things using indented (tabbed) lists of plain text (in TextMate). I kept finding myself converting some of these lists to HTML, so I’ve written something up that will take a plain text list and reformat it as HTML, given a simple set of formatting rules.

That project is available for download now, under the name ListML. Check it out, I use it all the time, so will probably continue developing it. At the moment it’s just a simple script that you drop into a directory, then drop other TXT files in there to view them as HTML. We’ll see where it ends up. If you’ve got any suggestions or find any bugs, feel free to post them as a comment here and I’ll fix things up. I already have some ideas on new features:

  • Ability to load external files (from URL)
  • List files in the current directory if none specified
  • Cut out the parsing engine properly to make it more portable
  • Make the HTML view (optionally) into a lightweight editor as well
  • Quick UI for grabbing the HTML snippet of just the list (sans CSS/extras)

WordCamp NYC Round Up

This past weekend, WordCamp NYC was held at Baruch College in New York. It was (I believe) the second biggest WordCamp to date, if not the biggest (by number of attendees), right up there with WordCamp San Francisco. WCNYC was an incredibly busy event, with so much great WordPress stuff going on at any one time that it was hard to decide what to attend. I was lucky enough to be able to present/be involved in not just one, but 4 presentations throughout the weekend, and I wanted to get some slides and details up here for reference.

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GSoC Mentor Summit, 2009

This weekend I attended the Mentor Summit that winds up the Google Summer of Code. It’s an event where up to 2 mentors from each organization involved are invited to hang out at the GooglePlex for a weekend, mingle with folks from other open source projects and see what happens. We discussed all sorts of things related to the Summer of Code program, in addition to a variety of other, generally open-source topics. It was operated as an unconference, so we made up the majority of the schedule as we went, and modified it as required.

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WordCamp New York

WordCampNYC – Nov 14-15I’m not 100% sure on the topic(s) I’ll be presenting yet, but I’m confirmed to attend and speak at WordCamp New York City in November. This is going to be a big one; they are expecting a lot of attendees and will have a variety of tracks and sessions going on so that there really is something for everyone.

I’ll keep you posted on what I’ll be talking about and when I’ll be on, but I’ll be there all weekend, so if you see me, grab me and say Hi!

WordCamp Philippines

Well, it’s a wrap. WordCamp Philippines was, in this humble attendee and speaker’s opinion, a great success. A big congratulations to Blogie, Chattee, Jim and the other organizers/volunteers on a very well-executed event! Mostly for my own records (*cough* lack of memory *cough*), here’s a run-down on my time in Manila.

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Meet The Family, Take Two

This weekend, I’m in Makati City, Manila for WordCamp Philippines. It’s the first time I’ve been over here and it’s been quite a trip (I wish I was staying for a lot longer!).

I’m planning on posting a more detailed entry covering my trip here, but in the meantime I wanted to get my slides up here so that I could point people to them immediately. It’s embedded below so please check it out, it’s an extended version of the presentation from last weekend at WordCamp LA.

View the slides here

Meet The Family

Here’s the version of the slide deck that I used to present earlier today at WordCamp LA. My speech was called Meet the Family and it was an introduction to some other WordPress projects that you might not know about. I think it seemed to go down quite well, and people seemed to like it. If you were there (or once you’ve checked out the slides), I’d love to hear if you have any suggestions for improvements. I’m presenting this again at WordCamp Philippines next weekend but with some improvements, so I’m looking forward to it.
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WordCamp Philippines in 2 weeks

The weekend following WordCamp Los Angeles, I will also be speaking at WordCamp Philippines! This event is a one-day one, being held in Manila on September 19. I’ve never been to Manila so I’m really looking forward to it (although I’m definitely not looking forward to the long flight and jetlag).

I’ll be giving my talk called “Meet the Family”, which is an introduction to some of the other WordPress-related projects going on which you may not have heard about. I will have just given it (for the first time) the weekend before at WordCamp LA, so hopefully I’ll be able to improve it based on feedback from that event!