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Posts Tagged ‘review’

  1. WordPress 2.7 – Just Makes Sense

    November 3, 2008 by Geoff

    The New WordPress 2.7 beta 1 dashboard

    The New WordPress 2.7 beta 1 dashboard

    I’ve been a big fan of the WordPress platform since the moment I started blogging on wordpress.com (I had one of the early invites and managed to snag “geoff.wordpress.com” – it now seems a shame that I’m not really using it), and I would love one day to put the tedium of Oracle Database Administration behind me and just spend my days modifying WordPress as a CMS for small to medium enterprises. So in short, I’m a big wordpress fan.

    So once I saw that the latest beta was out (version 2.7), I went ahead and installed pretty much straight away. There are a whole bunch of niggling little issues that this version is fixing beautifully. For starters, the entire UI has received a complete overhaul – which seems a little premature seeing as it was less than a year ago that they revamped for 2.6, but I really doubt that anyone could be complaining. After 2.6 came out, the wordpress team copped some flak with regard to the usability aspect, so they got experts in. And now, everything has just started making sense.

    One of the biggest frustrations I had previously, was that in order to schedule a post to publish in the future, you would set the date that the post should appear, and then press publish. But when you press publish, you always had that fear that the publish button was going to override your scheduled date, and that you should be pressing “save” instead. But now, the geniuses have made everything make sense: the words on the button change when you alter the publish date. So as soon as the date gets set, the button text changes from saying “Publish” to saying “Schedule”. It’s a tiny little thing, but the mindset means that you could feel confident in trying to teach less advanced users to use the really cool features, because the User Interface just works.

    The screen real estate in the back end is much more efficient, and reduces the likelihood that you’ll actually need to scroll down the page – a common niggle with the previous setup. The dashboard has been changed again, and I think they’ve finally nailed a setup that really encompasses the things you want to know when you first log in. They’ve made pretty much all of the backend pages available through drop-down menus, which makes life a bunch easier when you’re trying to find that obscure option you’ve changed once before.

    Basically, while I wouldn’t want to be the person saying you should upgrade to a beta version, you should definitely be looking forward to the next release of WordPress. 2.7 is a great step forward in the evolution of the world’s best blogging system.

    Category World | Tags: ,,,,, | 4 Comments

  2. Narrative Theology in action – Donald Miller’s “Searching For God Knows What”

    November 8, 2006 by Geoff

    I’ve finished (not so long ago) “Searching For God Knows What” – the latest book from Donald Miller, the “Blue Like Jazz” guy. It’s a good read, and it’s certainly very easy to read. He takes a while to get warmed up, there’s not much of the first few chapters that I can really remember, but once he gets going, there are some great analogies in there. Highly recommend having a read.

    And it certainly reads as a fairly solid example of “narrative theology” in action. (For a little background – have a look at my previous post on narrative theology) Miller’s ideas aren’t conveyed through propositional truths, instead he expands on his thoughts through stories, both of his own and those of others, to communicate meaning. He’s not interested in providing a list of statements of truth, but instead only offers his ideas as concepts that have been distilled from each narrative.

    My initial reaction was one of excitement and, to a certain extent, relief. Relief that these ideas can work, at least on some level. I came away from reading “Searching For God Knows What” with a better understanding of what makes me tick, what makes others tick, and relating to God in general. The system works. The narrative structure of Miller’s theologising made it much easier to relate to what was being said, and there was definitely a feeling that this is how ideas like these should happen.

    But…. (and there’s always a but)

    I was also left with just an underlying feeling that it didn’t quite go deep enough. As much as I enjoyed reading it, and certainly “got stuff out of it”, there was a feeling that it almost became an exercise in “pop psychology”. I might have some post modernity in me, but it just felt like there wasn’t quite enough solid underneath it. To a degree, it felt like there is only a certain depth to which stories can travel, after that, you’re left with either going there on your own thoughts, or waiting for propositional truth.

    And maybe that’s the poit of doing your theology in a narrative model – that it forces you to push to the depths yourself, rather than having someone do all the work for you. I’m not sure, but there was a slight feeling of dissatisfaction on finishing this book. I’d love to hear people’s thoughts on this – particularly if they have read the book themselves. Sorry that the post is a little dis-jointed and non-sensical.

    Category World | Tags: ,,,,,,,, | Comments Off