The New mattwie.be

You might notice that things look a little different around here. Since business has picked up at Soma Design, I’ve been writing on this blog less and less. Over the last year I’ve been toying with the idea of a radical redesign to 1) amuse myself and 2) to hopefully prod myself into writing more–while I’ve only published 11 posts since the beginning of 2010, I have 22 draft posts in varying states of completeness. My favourite of the bunch is tentatively titled “Battlestar Galactica, Rationality, and Human Nature”–look for it soon.

I have more to say about the redesign on my Soma Design blog, but the short version is this: it’s all about the writing and not at all about anything else, like my WordPress theme. It’s also a responsive design that should adapt itself to a plethora of devices. It’s also a bit rough around the edges still.

Finally, I’ve now made the switch over to the mattwie.be domain. The old mattwiebe.com URLs will redirect to their counterparts on the new domain.

A New DanWilt.com

Once upon a time (almost a year ago), in a land far, far away (St. Stephen, NB), my friend Dan started talking to me about designing him a new look for his WordPress blog. After many battles with the evil NotEnoughTime and the scourge of BackBurner, we at last prevailed.

If my strange little story hasn’t made you run away screaming yet, go have a peek at the new DanWilt.com. Dan is on a mission to make the world and the church better through creativity and love of God, so we sorted out a look that doesn’t seem to be a blog at all. All brought to you by the fine folks at the design empire of Soma Design.

Ooh, Gravatars

The short: want an image of yourself associated with comments you make on this blog (and many others)? Read on.

Gravatar was recently acquired by Automattic, the company that supports WordPress development and runs WordPress.com. I never bothered with it before because it was notoriously slow, but Automattic beefed things up and it’s actually usable now. So what you say?

Gravatar is a “globally recognized avatar” that lets you have a profile picture associated with your email address that can (in theory) be used on any internet site that you use your email address for. This means that when you leave a comment here, you get a little photo icon of your choice that’ll appear. The bonus is that it’ll work on any other site that supports gravatar, including every blog on WordPress.com. Even better is that anyone who blogs on WordPress.com already has their avatar there associated with gravatar.

So, if having an icon on here (and many other places!) when you comment suits your fancy, go sign up.

(And for anyone that cares, I’m using the Easy Gravatars plugin.)

WordPress Hacked!

If you use WordPress to power your website and recently upgraded to v2.1.1, immediately go upgrade to v2.1.2. Do not pass go, do not collect $200, go do it now. A hacker managed to corrupt the download (some, not all) from the WordPress.org download site and included some ways to exploit your site. Read about it on the WordPres Dev blog, but first start downloading it.

Chances are, if you’re still reading this, you’re also somewhat interested in web and/or graphic design. Well, Adam Walker Cleaveland wants you to exercise your graphic design chops for an unofficial logo redesign contest for Princeton Theological seminary. I won’t be participating myself (my wife is the creative one in this outfit), but it could be fun, and he has some prizes too.

Welcome!

You have arrived at my new blogging home. I should really be doing things like school instead of this, but that’s what unengaging lectures and laptops are for.

For those who are reading this through the Rest and Restlessness feed, please subscribe to the new feed. The old feed will continue to be updated for a while with content from mattwiebe.com, but I might turn off the switch at some point. Come in, look around, and praise the design-savvy of my lovely wife.

That’s all for now. As promised, I’ll be posting some thoughts about blogging in the near future. But for now, it’s bedtime.