Convergency

I had to get my head around this for WP standard work recently, and thought I would combine it with some WP-MU experimentation.

Current release (at time of writing) WP-MU 2.6.5

Page on WP Codex on setting up WP with Subversion (not MU specific, but you can usually add ‘-mu’ on the end of WP

So if your host, like mine, supports SVN , navigate to your chosen directory and create a subdirectory if you want one:

mkdir blog
cd blog
svn co http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress-mu/tags/2.6.5/ .

EDIT: Don’t install WP-MU in a subdirectory!

The space AND dot is VERY important (I did forget it a few times while trying this out)

Create new database on Dreamhost (or whatever host you use):

Make a note of the details and proceed with a standard install procedure or edit your wp-config.php if you would rather.

Updating WP-MU to run off a later tag

svn sw http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress-mu/tags/2.7/ .

or off ‘trunk’ (not recommended for production environments)

svn sw http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress-mu/trunk/ .

This will replace all files that were associated with the tagged files from the repository (in our example, from 2.6.5) to the newer version, in this case 2.7 (at the time of writing WP 2.7 is out but not WP-MU 2.7).

Easy peasy!

I have been using a great little Wordpress plug-in called ‘Quotes Collection‘ on this blog – it’s great for grabbing those quotes you see popping up over the web and adding them to your blog. It is my favourite aspect of my own blog actually – I like being inspired, challenged or reminded of important concepts and values by great thinkers.

You can get a sample of them by clicking on ‘Next Quote’ over there on the left- it doesn’t need to reload the page due to some javascript trickery (and you should see a non-javascript degraded version if you you don’t have js turned on).

Anyway – I want your quotes! What is your favourite quote? What makes a good quote?

If you have a favourite quote that covers anything in the category/tag cloud – please post them here and I will add them to my quotes collection… and others can grab them too.

My favourite web browser – Mozilla’s Firefox, has recently begun to cause consternation – only on my work PC. On the laptop it is fine. There are a gazillion blog/forum posts complaining about the new functionality of said URL bar, but so far I haven’t found anyone else describing the same issue as myself and several of my work colleagues.

This is what it looks like:

My broken Firefox 3

So – it looks like the autocomplete is ‘working’ (as in it brings up the icons for the pages) but it is not displaying the text – which makes it pretty useless. Even more odd is the fact that my Live Bookmarks (RSS) are no longer displaying either.

I tried everything (safe mode, delete localstore.rdf, new profile etc as per the Firefox Standard Diagnostic) ending in a complete and utter fresh install. A few of these seemed to fix it but on restart – the problem returned…

Another one of those annoyances I thought I would share just in case anyone else out there has the same/similar issue.

I will keep you updated as to whether a fix is found.

UPDATE: Today’s 3.0.2 update didn’t fix it either… well – it did until system restart (just like all the other installs I performed). Another thing I noticed today is that it doesn’t reload tabs when it does a browser restart, also ‘recently closed tabs’ is greyed out.

I am thinking that my initial conviction that it is caused by Group Policy at work is still the most likely… although our IT guy says he has the same problem at home (but there is a connection there )

UPDATE: Today’s 3.0.3 update didn’t fix anything, although I notice that if I right click the url bar (where the star is) and select ‘customize…’ then click ‘Done’ – all my live bookmark feeds in the toolbar re-appear (until the next restart). Hmmmm…

Have we stopped evolving? Only time will tell of course… but I don’t think so – I think we have started our own evolutionary track – call it ‘technology’. It remains to be seen whether we will continue to evolve physically, but I suspect we will just re-engineer ourselves and possibly everything around us based on the current mindset of the majority. It might get a bit out of hand though.

It is fair to say we are at a fairly crucial stage in our relationship with the natural world, having given up being shaped by our environment and deciding to make it do our bidding…

I am not really wanting to get into Oryx and Crake territory – although I suspect that if things go horribly wrong for us in the future – it will be because someone in the present wants to maximise their gain by exploiting present day resources at the expense of successive generations. This will probably be due to shareholders wanting to increase their value in a company so that they can sell it off and enjoy the profits before they shuffle off this mortal coil. Very few corporations are concerned with ‘doing the right thing’ – it is contrary to their nature, and usually if they seem to do so, it is because they see it as a PR opportunity – a chance to ‘sell more stuff‘ by convincing you that they are doing it for your benefit.

I find the non-commercial nature of open source technology refreshing. It’s about people coming together to solve a problem because it needs solving, and often the participants want nothing in return except to see the software evolve. The value is in the solution and the reward is in contributing.

So, back to the title of this post, I think that the dystopia can be avoided by taking the open-source movement’s approach and applying it to almost everything. Let’s start with the foundation for life – our planet. It is our planet, yes. But it is also their planet – like this kid:

So – let’s imagine we are on his side, and we are capable of thinking beyond our own life span – how would we actually make a difference? I can assure you that it won’t be big business that saves his world, we won’t get there by buying more stuff – no matter how much is spent on persuading us otherwise. It probably won’t be government to the rescue either, politicians are more concerned with staying in office or getting into it. All this ‘Punch and Judy’ party politics is just a big distraction. So – what exactly am I proposing? Well, for now I propose that we get together and work it out. After all – there are some great open source software tools out there that will help the process, by connecting together the greatest minds and problems solvers, and let’s remember, as we surf around, that much of what we are doing is only made possible because of the fundamental human drive to sort out problems and that things only start to happen, and evolve when you get involved and contribute.

In the words of the great Buckminster Fuller:

“Take the initiative. Go to work, and above all co-operate and don’t hold back on one another or try to gain at the expense of another. Any success in such lopsidedness will be increasingly short-lived. These are the synergetic rules that evolution is employing and trying to make clear to us. They are not man-made laws. They are the infinitely accommodative laws of the intellectual integrity governing universe.”