Amazing Grace

Today, in the year 2007, the so-called civilized world still runs rampant with slavery. It is estimated that as many as 27 million people are in slavery today.

200 years ago, one man could no longer ignore the demands of his conscience and rose up to lead the fight for the outlaw of the slave trade in Great Britian. His name was William Wilberforce. This February marks the 200th anniversary of the day Wilberforce won his fight, and my employer Asbury College, along with companies like Walden Media and Bristol Bay Productions have joined forces to continue this fight.

The Major Motion picture Amazing Grace will be released on February 23, 2007 around the world, I would ask you to go see it, and think of what you can do to help end slavery in our world.

You can see the trailer for Amazing Grace at the Asbury website, and you can find out how you can help in the fight at The Amazing Change.

Holy Lent Draws Near

And it seems like it came out of nowhere.

I have not been one to look forward to Great and Holy Lent; it is a time of hard work and abstinence. Not that these two things are bad, on the contrary they are the very essence of what is good and right.

Don''t get me wrong, I understand and appreciate the "reason for the season" as it were, and when Holy Lent is over I feel the pangs of regret that I must wait another full year to experience the services.

But as time passes the memories of the beauty and profound truth I experience fade; I begin to forget who I am, and what I am here for. Thankfully, each year I welcome Holy Lent with a little more fervor, and a little more love... and most importantly with a more complete memory.

A memory that is filled with the sights, sounds and smells of repentance, redemption and miracles. A memory that exists to remind me that I was meant to shine brighter than the stars; that my heart is an abyss deeper than any ocean and is filled with rooms and caves that have never been illumined by love and true understanding.

But in this season of contemplation and repentance I am given the light to fill these rooms, a light that dispels every dark fear and lie that threatens to destroy me utterly. In the radiance of this light I am made whole, beautiful and complete.

Great Lent comes, and once again I am saved.

Gravatars for Habari

And next, I am releasing a quick and dirty plugin that enables Gravatars on your Habari blog.

This is not the most elegant Gravatar plugin, but it works. I am sure Skippy will release one that will have all manner of REST-y goodness soon, but until then here you go.

Let me know if you have any problems.

Akismet for Habari

Just a quick little ditty to let you know that there is a class/plugin combo ready for Habari that brings Akismet protection to our little corner of the world.

This make use of Alex''s excellent Akimset Library. Thanks Alex!

Let me know if you have any problems. Instructions on how to use the plugin are included in the archive.

So, why the move?

I am sure that is what a number of people are asking themselves... especially with the other people who have made the leap in the days since I spilled the beans here on Sillyness.

That is actually a very complicated answer for me to give, but I will try my best to give it. But before I begin with all of that, I thought I would take the time to set something straight.

I am not now, nor have I ever been ''The Core Developer'', or ''The Lead Developer'', or ''The Grand High Poobah of Development'' for Habari. I am one of the core developers, and a founding developer but nothing more.

Habari is run by a core group of talented coders and designers who all have the same status and say. We rule our Kingdom of Code as equals in council, not as a King and his subjects. And with that, lets get to the heart of this matter.

In the beginning was b2

That''s right young ''uns I started out this blogging thing running b2. When WordPress hit I was overjoyed. Things were bright and shiny, and believe it or not, I learned how to "code the PHP" by hacking WP into submission.

As time went on, and my skills as a jedi grew, I began to frequent the WordPress IRC channel, and answer questions. This is how I came in contact with people like Photomatt, Molly and a host of others.

About the time I became well known in the WP community, I began speaking at ApacheCon, the conference of the Apache Software Foundation. After being around some of the smartest people in the world, I began to be irritated with the way WP was being run.

This has very little to do with the merit of how WP is run, and more to do with how much I personally resonated with the Apache Way. Rich speaks about this much more eloquently that I can, so just read his stuff and come back, I''l be here... promise.

Suffice it to say, I felt as though I needed to make a change. Thankfully I found 3 people, each my better in a thousand ways, to join forces to birth what you now know as Habari.

What this means for me personally

Make no mistake, this is not a light decision that I have made. In a very real way, all that I have now is thanks to the community that surrounds WordPress... developer and user. My current job, the chance to write a book... the blessing of a wonderful home and the security and love that I am able to give my wife and son all find, at least in part, their beginnings in WordPress.

I am more thankful, blessed and lucky than one person deserves to be, and it is because of all the people I have been able to know through WordPress. You have my undying gratitude and support always. But as I said, it was time for a change. And so we come to the end of this overwrought missive, I think.

Summing it all up

I have left WordPress because I wanted to create something new and amazing, with amazing people; the scary thing is that the number of amazing people I get to work with literally doubles everyday.

My personal thanks to the core development team of WordPress for making a wonderful product that I had the privilege of helping to make better in various, small ways; and for helping to make a passable programmer out of me.

I hope that we (Habari and WordPress) can work together in the months and years ahead, to make all of our work that much better; because in the end we are here to serve our users, not our egos.

Changes around Sillyness

If you are one of my more astute readers, you might have noticed that there have been some changes around these parts since Tuesday the 2nd of January.

Sillyness is now powered by Habari, a next generation blogging tool being developed by some familiar faces... that aren't ready to have fame and fortune knock on their door just yet, so I won't link to them.

Needless to say I am one of the core developers, and I am in love with this product. We decided to eschew legacy concerns and blaze forward with more cutting edge technology (read: PHP 5, entirely object oriented, full ATOM Publishing Protocol support and dead easy AJAX integration just for starters.)

We are still a couple of weeks away from a developers release, but I was too excited to wait any longer. I also believe that if I use the software everyday I will identify more places to improve it... and possibly stumble upon new ideas.

Needless to say, expect some warts here and there as I iron out the rest of the move.

I am sure there will be people wondering why I have left WordPress behind as my blogging platform of choice, and trust me I plan on covering it in detail in a later post, but for now I need to get back to work.