If..Else Log

Well, it's been common knowledge for a while now but the launch of Wordpress 2.0 aka Duke has now been officially announced on the main WP development blog.

As someone who's a longtime WP user, a diligent upgrader, subscribed to the various WP dev mailing lists, played around with the latest SVN codeset, and helps out from from time to time on the WP support forum, you'd probably be expecting that I would have been first in line to upgrade. If that was the case, then you'd be wrong. So, why am I not upgrading?

Asking the wrong question

Owen's asked a fair question; why aren't more people upgrading? Judging by the response that he's received thus far, a lot of the concerns are in regards to the upgrade process and concerns about plugin incompatibility. There are concerns about the stability of the rushed release and the lack of official announcements hasn't helped.

All of these are quite correct and go someway towards answering Owen's query. However, in my case, personally speaking, things are a lot simpler. It's not so much why aren't I upgrading but why should I upgrade?

What's in it for me?

First off, to stem off the immediate counter-responses, I'm fully aware what's new and improved in WP 2.0. This is not about that; in fact, if I was setting up a new blog, I'd easily choose WP2.0. Wait a minute, I did¹. No thought required.

The problem is that when it comes to upgrading a blog, there is some thought required. I have to mentally weigh up the benefits of upgrading against the cost of upgrading. Is this worth the effort, the time and the hassle? Even if there were no plugin incompatibilities, even if the new release didn't have any new bugs or issues, I would still have to decide whether or not I would sufficiently benefit from this release.

What's there?

OK, let's have a look, shall we?

The rich text WYSIWYG editor

I can see how this would be useful for many and tinymce is a fine choice. And whilst some would consider such to be bulk, it doesn't really bother me. It's not perfect and it's not for me, but it's optional so I turn it off. Since I don't care in the least about it being there however, that means that, by definition, it's also not a compelling reason for me to upgrade.

Admin Redesign and sprinkings of AJAX

Ahh, so it's no longer plain and minimal. Some of the work done with the Shuttle project has made it's way into the WP core. However, with the advent of Tiger Admin plugin, it's a case of too little, too late. Whilst Steve's plugin is generally cosmetic and the admin overhaul is much more than that, there's not really enough there to act as a deal breaker for me.

Ping Delay Removed, Improved Post Preview, New Built-In Plugins

Nice? Yes. Killer features? Well, not quite.

The ping delay was annoying but I've dealt with it and moved on. Besides, that little delay gives me a few seconds thinking/tab switching time. The post preview is quite handy, but once again, I've learnt to live without it quite comfortably. The bundled plugins? DB-backup is very useful but I've had it installed for a while now. Akismet? Spam is managable at present with Bad Behaviour and other measures. Should situations change, I'm smart enough to try it out.

Persistent Cache

Oh how I wish this site was popular enough that this mattered.

Image/File Uploading

Me use, me like, …but not enough.

New Import System, User Roles and Capabilities, User Metadata, Presentation Page Changes

Another case of the wrong audience scenario. No need to import, no need to support multiple users. That said, I'm fully behind these improvements and will prove handy for new sites but the question was why upgrade, so the answer unfortunately is once again, meh.

Moved Javascript/Images, Theme Admin Pages, More Abstracted Data Layer, Database Versioning

All good choices and once again, all totally irrelevant when it comes to convincing me to upgrade. The last two will be handy for subsequent upgrades and future work, but it's all about the present. Nothing here for today.

Convince me

Now that I've said my piece, my question for Owen, Matt et al is: why should I upgrade? Convince me, because I've been playing and using WP 2.0 for a while now and I just don't see enough reasons there as yet. Looking forward to 2.1 and beyond²? Yes but for now, I'm quite happy with Strayhorn.

1. When setting up my photoblog, a lot of the features came in handy. For example, I didn't need to physically markup what was the photo, where it was taken etc… This was all taken care of in the theme I designed so all I had to do was click the upload button, write my posts and voila. No divs or html code in sight. [back]
2. If nothing else, it looks like we may get some improvements to the Dashboard. [back]

BBC News compile their top 100 nuggets of wisdom from their weekly 10 Things We Didn't Know This Time Last Week:

3. While it's an offence to drop litter on the pavement, it's not an offence to throw it over someone's garden wall.

6. WD-40 dissolves cocaine - it has been used by a pub landlord to prevent drug-taking in his pub's toilets.

12. Until the 1940s rhubarb was considered a vegetable. It became a fruit when US customs officials, baffled by the foreign food, decided it should be classified according to the way it was eaten.

14. It's possible for a human to blow up balloons via the ear. A 55-year-old factory worker from China reportedly discovered 20 years ago that air leaked from his ears, and he can now inflate balloons and blow out candles.

19. The = sign was invented by 16th Century Welsh mathematician Robert Recorde, who was fed up with writing "is equal to" in his equations. He chose the two lines because "noe 2 thynges can be moare equalle".

23. 23. In America it's possible to subpoena a dog.

52. You're 10 times more likely to be bitten by a human than a rat

67. Giant squid eat each other - especially during sex.

73. One in six children think that broccoli is a baby tree.

98. Nettles growing on land where bodies are buried will reach a foot higher than those growing elsewhere.

Kid opens the box for the iPod video which his mum has saved up and bought him only to find… a mystery meat? Out of interest, is mystery meat an actual product or do they mean that the meat is of an unknown origin? The poorly written article from KHON2 news leaves things ambiguous.

Blake Ross gives his predictions for the new year:

• Yahoo, accelerating its bid to dominate the social space, will announce that it is buying the actual societies of 32 cash-strapped governments. Citizens will be allowed to link their existing names to their Yahoo accounts.
• In retaliation for Gore’s bold foray onto the Internet, George W. Bush will be the latest to come under fire for editing his own Wikipedia biography. Although Wikipedia will have implemented the most sophisticated algorithms to deter this kind of behavior, Bush will be caught because he will change all instances of "George" to "I"
• Due to a glitch in Windows Vista, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will mix up his notes at PDC '06 and declare: "Developers, developers, developers….We’re going to f*%ing bury those guys!" Nineteen will leave on stretchers with furniture-related injuries.
• Citing a tip in a confidential e-mail dossier entitled "Fwd: Lol guyz check this out!1″, Rupert Murdoch will acquire acclaimed Internet inventor Al Gore.

How to tell the difference between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0

So what do SF combatents do between bouts? Why, salsa of course!

Chun Li: Er, Ryu, will you be my partner?
Ryu: Sure. If I'm going to beat Ken, then I'll need some practice…
Chun Li: Well, actually, I was thinking more along the lines of Salsa than sparring…

Lovely dancing, lovely video. Brilliant stuff!

Just wanted to wish you all a Merry Christmas! Eat well and be happy!

With nothing more than a mesh fence and some plastic cups, "You are beautiful" writes a few messages… [via]

Well, here's a Christmas game for those of you who are fed up with kids looking for/trying to guess their presents. Use the traps at your disposal to keep the brats from grabbing their gifts early.

There are a couple of fun top 10 lists at fosfor gadgets.

Firstly, the top 10 case mods.

And then we have the top 10 weirdest USB drives ever.

Yummy.