mitch canter {dot} com ← the intersection of faith, design, and technology

From time to time I feel inspired to do design that really doesn’t serve a purpose other than to serve an inspirational need.  I was listening to “Wait” by Caleb (the band consisting of Steven Curtis Chapman’s two sons) and felt a strong calling to Psalm 46:10.  Be Still, and know that I am God.  So, I created this wallpaper to constantly remind myself of that fact – because, face it – we all need to just relax for some reason or another:

Clicking on the small version will open the larger version – right clicking here will let you download it – stupid lightbox likes to take over links.

I’ve been working in the “social media sphere” for nearly two and a half years now – around the time when Twitter was a year old and was still in this “ok, what does it do” phase.  Over the course, we’ve seen it go from useless to nearly necessary for some.  Facebook had been here for a while, but even it’s stepped up its game with lots of new features (the most recent of which being Places – a way to “check in” to your Facebook friends.  Location based services are still kicking (for the most part) and give us a way to show our favorite places and hangouts.

None of these were things that people really knew they needed – they created markets out of nothing for these now essential forms of communication (remember when seeing a URL on an advertisement was a big deal?  Remember when you saw the first twitter username for a business on a commercial?)

I guess the big question now is… what’s next?

I have mentioned before that my goal for 2010 was to find balance in my life.  I have a wondterful family, a great career (it’s more than just a job to me), and I try to have fun and balance work with play (not an easy thing to do).  I can honestly look back even from a few weeks ago and tell you that I’m much better off than I was. 

But, it felt like something was missing.

I realized that I was doing a lot of taking.  Taking time from friends, taking time for fun time, even taking away from solo time to spend with my family.  Those are all great, but I felt like that’s still just a lot of taking for one person to do without really giving something back.

Rewind two years ago – I volunteered to play in the band and be a youth leader at the People’s Church here in Franklin.  I loved it, but I had thought that my work schedule was too busy.  So, I stepped away (in reality it was also because I was actively seeking another church, but that was also a reason why I didn’t jump back in immediately at my new church home – Rolling Hills).

Until now.

I volunteered in the Youth VBS (upcoming 6th, 7th and 8th graders) at Rolling Hills, and I can honestly say that as exhausted as I was after it was over, that it was really one of the most fulfilling events I can remember.  I love hanging out with youth groups – they’re full of energy that I can hopefully absorb a bit, but they’re also to the point where they’re looking for guidance (I can remember middle school – it was a bit awkward for me).

So, if you go to Rolling Hills, and have teenagers in the youth group (specifically 6th/7th graders since that’s where my talents lie) then keep a look out for me.  And I can only pray that I can be a good influence, because I really feel like this is where my heart is.

Yeah… this pretty well sums it up.

Dad Life from Church on the Move on Vimeo. Awesome video, well done, and the lyrics can be found on the video page.

Our family makes a weekly pilgrimage to The Factory in Franklin every weekend for the farmer’s market.  Sure, there’s great veggies, fruit, and occasionally a good band playing, but for me it’s all about the community spirit – a lot of the farmer’s there are super excited about talking to you about the crops they grow and how you can use them.

Something that we had considered before was what’s called a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture).  Basically, it’s a shareholder program for locals who want to get back to “eating with the seasons” and supporting local farmers.  It’s an investment – you pay a fee each year to get a box every (or every other) week.  What you have in the box is what you get, and boxes differ week to week and season to season.  Delvin Farms, the link above, also sells the boxes outright at the Farmer’s Market.

I think we’re going to try it out next week.  It’s sort of an adventure to get a box of produce and then factor out meals from it, plus I want to break it down into a cost analysis – is it cheaper to buy them individually or boxed up.

If you’ve never hit up the farmer’s market, it’s every week from 8am – 1pm in the summer, and now they have a 3pm – 6:30pm Tuesday market.

(photo credit: http://thesouthinmymouth.wordpress.com/)

Editors note: I’m in no way affiliated with WordPress, Automattic, or thesis.  I’m just a standard, run-of-the-mill developer who loves WordPress and uses it on all of his client’s sites.  This is my logical and conclusive opinion based on facts and evidence I have collected.

So, if you’re in any way connected to WordPress (or Thesis, since from what I heard today Thesis can stand on its own without WordPress) Matt Mullenweg (founder/creator of WordPress and Chris Pearson (founder/creator of the Thesis theme) have been hashing it out on live audio chat with Mixergy to talk about the great debate.  Cosmetically, Matt kept the debate civil and focused on the community while Chris went on, and on, and on about his work, his importance, his contributions, etc.  But, a few key things were brought up worth mentioning.

But first, an introduction to the argument.

Thesis is built to run upon the WordPress platform – however, the main issue that Matt and the folks over at Automattic take with it is that it’s not issues on a GPL license, which states that any themes, plugins, etc can be “forked” or redistributed and changed (as long as the original authors get credit).  Chris doesn’t want that to happen. And hence, we have an argument.  As for what the GPL is, I turn to TGATR:

What Is The GPL?

The GPL, or the GNU General Public Licence is the licence that WordPress is under. The licence is simple, you’re free to do what ever you want with it, make money with it, go nuts. However derivative works need to be under GPL.

That being said, here are my thoughts on the debate today:

1) Chris has some entitlement issues.

Chris Pearson founded Thesis a few years ago and bucked the GPL license.  I listened to most of the interview and while Matt was defending the community and the platform Chris was constantly debating his revenue stream.  All I heard for most of the argument was what “I did”, who “I am”, etc.  And, in a bold statement, he claims to be one of the top three WordPress personalities.  I wholeheartedly disagree.  He has around 27k users – WordPress has 20m – that’s a stark minority.

2) Chris clearly has some contradictions in his argument.

Chris made mention of a few things I found strange.  He tells people that “Thesis stands alone” but that he “pushes people to WordPress”.  Here’s the thing about Thesis – it doesn’t stand alone – it needs WordPress to be able to function.  He also mentioned that it’s “not about the money”, right before he mentioned that his profits would take a hit if we went to GPL.

3) Matt’s not afraid to get his hands “legally” dirty

This is by far the biggest part of the whole discussion – when asked if a legal lawsuit is the only way to really settle this, both parties conceded that it was.  Matt doesn’t want to, and I’m sure Chris doesn’t want Matt to, but if that’s what it takes then I think that’s what it will come down to.

So… now that the dust has settled from the debate… what do you think?

UPDATE: here’s the video from the interview:

Watch live video from mixergy on Justin.tv

UPDATE 2: A good look at just what has been “copied” from WordPress is available here: http://wp.me/pg2iw-1R

Six years ago, I started on the greatest adventure of my life.  Holly is the light of my life, and my muse.  It hasn’t been easy, but nothing worth fighting for is. Looking back I would take all of the hardship, and some of the best moments of my life, all over again!

Happy Anniversary, Holly Here’s to many more years of happiness.

This guy’s freakin’ amazing.  Right down to the sound effects.

YouTube – Super Mario on Violin.

If you’re curious as to what this pertains to, a few days ago Prince made a comment stating that the Internet is “over”.  Lefsetz says it best:

Remember when artists were cool?  Hipper than the rest of us in the room?  We looked to musicians to tell us which way the wind blew, or that the vandals took the handles.  Today, we’re laughing at Prince.

Forget that Prince is plain wrong.  (What’s next, is he going to rail against telephones and automobiles?  Or tell us to stop using cell phones?)  It’s the fact that he’s so out of touch that has us laughing at him, something no one banking on cool to succeed should ever want.

Reposted from: Lefsetz Letter » Blog Archive » Prince’s Nonsense.

If you follow the WP-Hackers mailing list you’ve noticed that there’s a super-hot thread being debated right now.  There’s a function that has been included in WordPress that will automatically change any instance of lowercase wordpress to camelcase WordPress.  The initial argument was that people would be annoyed at their content management software is autocorrecting their content, whether it’s good intentioned or not.

What started out as a simple argument has spiraled out of control, with members from both sides of the aisle (and even Automattic employees) resorting to one-lined smug comments and petty remarks.

The full debate is here: http://lists.automattic.com/pipermail/wp-hackers/2010-July/thread.html#32841 – if you’ve got a few minutes it starts nearly halfway down – look for the first part of this blog post title.

First of all, if you’re new to WordPress, don’t let the political side of it ruin your experience.  WordPress is (by far) the best content management system out there [even if a few of the community members have very outspoken ideas on it]).  The main issue has moved away from a simple spelling error, and moved to a question of whether content can be manipulated (spelling, or otherwise) by a content management system without the owner’s consent.  Does WordPress have the right to say “this is our brand, we can MAKE you spell it this way” or should it fall behind the rank-and-file of other brands who are perfectly fine with any case of their brand – so long as the brand is being used.

Should WordPress, in their official admins, themes, plugins, etc have the proper spelling?  Absolutely.  But is it overstepping boundaries to do something like that to other people’s content without asking?

There’s been talk about plugins to remove the functionality, to put the functionality itself into a plugin and bundle it with WordPress (a la Akismet), but I think the best solution is to simply ask the community.

A simple question: Do you care if WordPress autocorrects any instances of itself to its proper spelling?

It’s sort of disconcerting that there’s been only only one or two mentions of finding out the community’s thoughts on the matter (one of them being mine mentioning specifically what I’m talking about here).  But I think the community needs to have its input.

What do you guys think?  Should it be allowed to autocorrect WordPress into its correct spelling?  Or does that violate the software – client privileges to step out that far?