Nicolas Demers – Page 10

Some thoughts on the Calgary skyline

It’s been a month and I’ve kept postponing writing this post. Partly because I still have hundreds of pictures to upload, until I realised I could attach only the required photos to this post, and worry about uploading the rest later.

So, Calgary. I’d flown over it a number of times, connected through its airport a couple times, but I’d never really visited until this Easter weekend. The occasion was Western Cup, an annual volleyball/curling/dodgeball tournament that I heard was tons of fun but never got around to. But a couple months before, I’d been hunting for a team for Queen Vicki, Vancouver’s own queer volleyball tournament, and a friend invited me on his QV team, his Western Cup team, and his Ottawa team (there’s a gay volleyball tourney in Ottawa two weeks before, which I also went to, but that’s another story.)

I had a great time, and met tons of amazing people. But my view of the actual city wasn’t so positive. Downtown Calgary looks pretty ordinary from the air: a cluster of high-rises surrounded by urban sprawl, not too different from Vancouver.

From the ground, though, actually walking through it, it’s a different matter. Downtown Calgary is full of massive, shiny buildings, monuments to the giants of industry, oil and finance. Catch them from the right angle, and they’re attractive enough. But they also easily become dark and oppressive, since they’re far more crowded together than Vancouver and block out much more of the sunlight.

But in the midst of these ultra-shiny highrises there are older buildings, smaller and more modest, showing that Calgary does indeed have a history. Some that were previously commercial space have been converted into condos. I found them comforting, architecture on a much more human scale.

Down side: some of them, like the old City Hall, are utterly dwarfed by the surrounding highrises. Which is not unfamiliar. Christ Church Cathedral, anyone?

And some of these old buildings are just… old and sad. The eastern edge of downtown feels empty and run-down, maybe in the middle of pre-redevelopment, I don’t know. Just empty lots, gravel, and faded commercial façades. In fact, a lot of the eastern and southern edges of downtown feel very haphazard, with apartment buildings, heritage homes and commercial lots arranged seemingly at random. It had the feel of a city that had grown very fast with little actual planning—which, well, I guess is exactly what happened.

In fact, it was while walking back from Fort Calgary towards downtown that I formed my strongest impression of downtown: it felt like a herd of sleeping behemoths, shiny and faceless, as forbidding as the not so far-off the mountain ranges. It was not a pleasant impression.

What would Colonel MacLeod say if he was still alive? I’m sure he’d be happy to see the city prosper, but wouldn’t it look weird and alien to him?

Gut impressions aside, there was a very real downside to Calgary’s highrises: they blocked part of the view from the Calgary Tower. To the north I could see only straight up Centre Street; to the south and east I could see forever; to the west my view was half blocked by downtown. This being so close to the equinox the sunset was pretty much exactly due east, and it was just barely visible by one of the big shiny highrises. Any later in the year, and visitors to the Tower would be minus a sunset.

Shame, isn’t it? Just a few short decades after its construction, the Tower has been passed by the rest of the city. What good will it be as a tourist attraction, if Calgary keeps growing around it?

Leave of Absence

On Saturday I went with some other BC Humanists to the premier of Leave of Absence. Written by, and starring, Lucia Frangione, it deals with life in a small Catholic community—life and death and spirituality and sexuality; also rigid orthodoxy, misogyny, homophobia, and bullying. It is at once a meditation on Catholicism, and a passionate rant against small-minded bullies and those who stand by and do nothing while their peers suffer.

The play’s five characters are all flawed and three-dimensional, with weird contradictory facets that make them deeply human, in some ways tightly connected and in others so far apart, playing off each other in lots of interesting ways.

Father Ryan, undoubtedly the sanest of the bunch, open-minded and compassionate, a wonderful father figure to his congregation, who never really had faith in God but kind of wishes he did. His objectivity is constantly threatened by his unacknowledged love for…

Single mother Greta, a little bit turned on by her daughter Blake’s budding sexuality, in love with Father Ryan and subconsciously flirting with him, not terribly religious but valuing the church because it makes her feel safe and protected and childlike.

Leap, Greta’s ex from many years ago and Blake’s biological father, a boxer, very macho and sexist and out of touch with his feelings, but metrosexual enough to primp and moisturise and trim his pubes. The play opens just after his wife dies, and half the plot deals with him and the community working through their grief. Though Leap is very blunt and appears at first not very smart, he learns to appreciate his wife’s collection of books and dreams. His wife, never seen, also has layers: though she was probably suffering from depression (which Leap doesn’t take seriously), she had a rich inner life and planned to travel to Europe some day.

Teacher and worship leader Martha waxes eloquent about misfit saints, female mystics and the Feminine Divine, and maybe-possibly getting off on the sexually charged hymns. But when it comes down to it she has to play by the rules and doesn’t looks like she really believes that kind of revelation can happen in real life anymore.

15-year old Blake starts out as a bit of a rebel and outcast and gets more so as the play progresses. She starts out ironically rewriting the Apostles’ Creed, but then, inspired by Martha’s sermons she receives an actual revelation and starts (maybe) communing with the God the Mother directly. At the same time she’s plagued by false rumours of being a lesbian and increasingly severe bullying, culminating in a sexual assault that leads to her death.

And so the play ends just as it began, with a death. Ryan and Greta finally acknowledge their love for each other and he invites her to join him on the St James pilgrimage.. Leap discovers new worlds in his wife’s books and may do some traveling of his own. And Martha is left to pick up the pieces and carry on with an inexperienced new priest she doesn’t like much.

The tragedy here, I think, is that all these people’s flaws and bad situations are made worse by religiosity in general, and the Catholic Church in particular. A culture of sexual shame and homophobia leads to Blake’s bullying and death—and it’s not just asshole teenage boys either. The bishop—unseen and unheard—lays down the law first by stopping Martha from preaching about rebel mystics and a Mother God, then by nixing an anti-bullying program because it could be seen as promoting homosexuality. Which is an “intrinsic disorder” according to church doctrine, as we all know, and we can’t have a priest suggesting it’s not okay to bully or discriminate based on ~~sexual orientation~~intrinsic disorders. And if the bishop ever learns about Blake’s death, it will be in some footnote of some report, and he will not give a shit.

And what are we to make of Blake’s spiritual experience? Whether or not it was “real” is left deliberately ambiguous, and that’s fine. What’s interesting to me, though, is the contrast between stories of female mystics and the reality of having one in your class, spray-painting the girls’ washroom door with a crucifix and generally being kind of a pain. It goes to show, religion-born ideals and myths crash headlong into reality all the time, and the collision isn’t always pretty. At best, you get people like Father Ryan who are able to relax and adapt their beliefs to a changing world. At worse you get people who either deny reality or bend it to their fantasies. Sometimes you get people who live with one foot in either world.

And I have to ask: if she hadn’t been inspired by Martha, if she hadn’t lived in a culture steeped in tales of saints and mysticism and complicated Catholic tradition, would Blake even have had her revelation? And if not, how would she have turned out? Better? Worse? I guess we’ll never know.

Speaking of Ryan and his lack of revelation… I found it more sad than anything. He basically chose to believe in God, not out of conviction, but because it seemed just as valid as unbelief. This is a very silly and wrong position to take. True, he’s led a good life and has few regrets, but again I have to ask: if he hadn’t been given the false dichotomy of belief vs. anti-belief, what else could he have done with his life? Kept on studying Physics, inspired others to fall in love with the Universe? Again, who knows?

The ending, though, robbed the play of some of its power. Blake’s death was too shocking, Father Ryan’s final speech (about him and the Church being absent from Blake’s life) too preachy; both clashed hard with much of the rest of the play. Still, for the most part, it worked: Leave of Absence is a deeply moving and thought-provoking story, wonderfully acted, a multifaceted look at a strange and multifaceted religion.

An Evening of Awesome

I started following the Vlogbrothers back in August of last year. How did I discover them? I don’t remember, but robably through Wil Wheaton’s Twitter when he retweeted something from Hank Green, who ended up becoming my favourite Green brother. He’s cuter, more openly pro-science than John, and also an atheist where John is Christian. Though I realise that’s totally not fair, because John hardly ever brings up his beliefs on video, and really, he’s about as far from Bible-thumping dogmatism as you can get.

And then I went back and watched their videos from the beginning. All nearly 1000 videos at that point, though most of them were 3 minutes long or shorter. I got to watch their lives unfold, and I saw Nerdfighteria grow around them, the connections with all sorts of awesome people, vloggers and non-vloggers. Who would have dreamed that would happen? I watched Hank sing a goofy song about Harry Potter, which led to more songs about Harry Potter, as well as angler fish, Helen Hunt, Tetris and subatomic particles, and now he’s got actual albums out. Who would have thought? And who would have thought it all would lead to more amazing collaborations like VidCon, Crash Course, The Brain Scoop, not to mention all the nerdfighter charities to decrease world-suck.

And Carnegie Hall? The Green brothers, plus The Mountain Goats, Neil Gaiman (!!!), Kymia Dawson and other amazing people, together on stage, this is surely their crowning moment of awesome. I’d never heard Kymia Dawson’s music before; I know she was on tour with Hank once and briefly appeared in one of Hank’s videos, but I didn’t know anything else about her. Boy was I missing out! Her songs are heartfelt and honest, full of gorgeous imagery and uplifting messages.

It just goes to show: you never know what something will lead to. The seeds you plant today could bloom into awesome trees years down the line.

Luminescence at the Vancouver Aquarium

It’s been over a week, and I’m finally getting around to uploading my photos of the Vancouver Aquarium. I hadn’t been in… almost 5 years? Really? Damn. Well, it was high time I fixed that. The special exhibit was called “Luminescence,” and showcased what underwater critters look like under black light.

Turns out it wasn’t really one exhibit, but several, scattered all around, plus one very cool interactive display where you could make a swarm of jellyfish light up from a computer touch-screen.

In hindsight, I should have brought my regular camera with me. Though my new phone does better in low light conditions, it seems to be crap at focusing through glass. Also, the battery was draining way too fast. Which means I don’t have photographic evidence for the amazing discovery that scorpions totally luminesce! Really, under normal light, they’re this dark red-brown, but under black light they’re this weird soft blue colour.

The focus was on anemones, though. And holy cow are they pretty!

One of the Luminescence displays was an electric eel, which sadly didn’t light up anything unlike the one in Ottawa’s Sience and Tech Museum. It just sort of sat there at the bottom of its tank, not even zapping any prey or anything. Oh well.

The Aquarium doesn’t have just water-dwelling critters, though. The Amazon section has butterflies!

(With warnings to not let the butterflies out when we enter and leave.) And birds!

Back to the aquatic (or at least amphibian) beasts, we have frogs!

And penguins!

And if you’ve ever wondered what the underside of starfish looks like, well, wonder no more.

The Aquarium featured jellyfish both tiny and ghostly…

…and huge and sumptuous.

But you know what wins the prize for most memorable animal? The humble Dwarf Cuttlefish. I went to see it twice that day. The first time it was swimming among some rocks, too hard to see (plus, I think it’s got some kind of camouflage thing going on). The second time it was swimming right up to the glass, not trying to hide, but it kept drifting sideways, always angling up and to the left. Was that some kind of defense mechanism, trying to get higher than then big scary predator (ie: me)? Maybe. All I know is, on the only halfway good shot I managed to get, my damn phone just focused on the rocks in the background, leaving me with this weird blurry cuttlefish.

Then again, it’s kind of a pretty effect. I could tell people it’s engaging its cloaking device. Or that it’s really a Drakh cuttlefish. Anything’s possible with sci-fi!

(Except taking good pictures of otters, belugas or sharks. The former were too fast and hard to see, and the others just wouldn’t focus through glass or water. Yeah, next time I’ll bring a proper camera.)

Perspectives on golden fog

Thursday January 3rd, my second day back at work. The weather was cold but clear, with low fog that burned out by mid-morning. But as I walked along Bute to Georgia, I enjoyed the unusual feel, the romance of the fog… and then, Georgia Street.

I’d already noticed that, depending on the time of day, the morning sun shines straight up Georgia like downtown was Stonehenge or something. A cool effect usually, but with the fog… it was beyond gorgeous. I took a couple pictures with my handy new Android phone (almost better than I’d take with my Canon G10, and light-years ahead of my pokey old iPhone 3GS. But I digress).

Here’s the picture I took:

Later, I cropped it and set it as my Twitter and Facebook header, like so:

You’ll notice I tried a little clumsily to remove the traffic lights at the far right. The pedestrian walk signal wasn’t too hard, but the traffic signal just wouldn’t go away. I guess there was enough fog in the air, and the light was strong and/or omnidirectional enough that there was a bit of haze around it. I didn’t even notice this when I photoshopped it, and then it really bothered me for a while. It looked out of place in that composition, the only red patch in a sea of gold and black, but I couldn’t find any way to cleanly take it out, or tone down the colour. So, oh well, I guess it stays.

And then, a few days later, I started playing around with that picture again, trying for different compositions. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, that kind of thing doesn’t come naturally to me. Here’s what I came up with. First, a bit of cropping, and different aspect ratio. Still centred on the sun.

I like this one. The proportions of the buildings are more pleasing. Not exactly sure why; maybe it’s just because the crane is gone. Or, maybe it’s because the picture is more symmetrical. I think I would have preferred it to be completely symmetrical, with the sun shining exactly up Georgia… But hey, maybe complete symmetry would be boring! I don’t know. And maybe it doesn’t matter. You work with what you’ve got, am I right?

While we’re wishing, I would also have preferred not to have those overhanging traffic lights in the shot. Oh well. Next time I’ll wait for the light to be just right, or at least move to the east crosswalk so the traffic lights aren’t a problem.

Now here’s another composition, focusing on the dark buildings.

Basically I just wanted to follow the Rule of Thirds, with the sunrise being an obvious focus point. What was not obvious was that the building in the center would end up neatly dividing the picture vertically in thirds as well. Cool.

Letting my eyes do the thinking for me, I’m much more drawn to the line of cars still in the shade. This photo is much darker, which brings out their headlights. I kind of want to see movement, the cars emerging from the sun… maybe it needs different composition to really bring it out? If so, I just need to keep practicing.

And here’s a slightly different look, even more postcard-worthy, I think. This time I’ve eliminated the problem of traffic lights by cropping them out entirely.

But the moral of the story is: every photo has a story to tell, and the best part is that it’s a different story every time. And step by step I’m learning how to bring out these stories out of the places and things I see.

My nerdiness has grown up: thoughts on the Science and Technology Museum

I’ve been in Ottawa for the last 9 days visiting with my parents. Today we were supposed to drive to Montreal, see a couple of museums and have dinner with my brother, but a major snowstorm was moving in, and we decided to call it off. (Good thing, too, because Montreal was hit really hard and we would have had a horrible time.)

As a consolation, my dad and I decided to go to the Science and Technology Museum. I don’t think I’d been there since my teens, and jumped at the chance rediscover all the cool sciency stuff that had thrilled me as a budding nerd.

I’ve been in Ottawa for the last 9 days visiting with my parents. Yesterday we were supposed to drive to Montreal, see a couple of museums and have dinner with my brother, but a major snowstorm was moving in, and we decided to call it off. (Good thing, too, because Montreal was hit really hard and we would have had a horrible time.)

It was kind of disappointing, to be honest. Most of the old hands-on exhibits designed to teach little kids about science were gone. I remember one place where you could measure your hand-eye reaction time, another where you could create an electric arc between two poles, by cranking a handle over and over. And there was another big huge pendulum thing, filled with sand, swinging over a large circular space, and as it swung it traced its arcs on the floor below, back and forth, left and right. (There may have been more than one pendulum, too, though I wouldn’t swear to that). I think that last one was replaced by an interactive exhibit and quiz on Canada’s energy policies. Where the pendulum/pendula used to be, is now a big planet Earth. Where you could fill up swinging buckets with sand, are now four or five monitors where you can answer simple questions about renewable energy sources, your energy consumption, whether or not politicians, corporations or individual people should make the decisions about Canada’s energy future, and so on.

Still around, though: the Archimedes screw. Also still around: the gravity well simulator, where you could roll a little metal ball and watch it circle around the central hole as though it were actually orbiting it. They’ve got a similar device at Science World in Vancouver. But this one, in Ottawa, doesn’t use balls anymore (it used to, right? I think it did), instead using coins. And yes, coins do work pretty much as balls do—except loonies, their corners slow them way down—but that’s just weird. Did they run out of little balls at some point? Were toddlers swallowing the balls or something?

I didn’t actually use money, but I saw a family try it. I hope they were able to collect their money afterwards.

Other familiar stuff: the big locomotives. In my mind’s eye I kept seeing them as absolutely gigantic, five storeys high at least, instead of the 12–15 feet high they really are. We got to climb in the engine rooms and figure out what all the levers and gauges were for, and imagine what life must have been like for these men, zooming along at almost 100 miles an hour, only a couple tiny windows allowing you to see ahead, constantly having to monitor the health of this metal monster you’re riding, and shovelling coal in its maw…

Oh, and the Crazy Kitchen is still there. Always popular with the kiddies, even though back then I was too sensitive to motion sickness to really enjoy it. But that’s not so much of a problem these days, and, well… just like the locomotives, the kitchen is way smaller than I remember. I went through it in just a few seconds, and it never occurred to me to stay and enjoy the spatial distortion.

But here’s the thing: what if the museum had remained completely unchanged from the days of yore? And what if I found out the old games and exhibits weren’t quite as awesome as I remember? The Archimedes screw kept me amused for all of 10 seconds and a couple photos. The big locomotives were better, since I could read up on their history and enjoy them on more levels than as a kid.

Likewise, the new exhibits: on the Canadian space program, the cool science that came out of it; on cars, from the very oldest to the newest and coolest electric ones; on Canada’s energy use and resources, kind of didactic but overall very good; on communications, networks and connections, featuring old-timey phones, radios, computers and TVs (plus, interesting history and Canadian milestones); other interesting science instruments. All of that was very, very awesome and educational, and—nerdy and precocious as I was—I don’t think I could have appreciated what they had to offer when I was younger.

I realise now I was doing the museum a disservice by seeing it only through my nostalgia goggles, and not giving the new stuff a chance. Things change, and that’s okay. I’ve changed, and that’s more than okay. Nowadays I get to enjoy googling Anik satellites and lovely arithmometres (so deliciously Steampunk!), tagging Flickr photos and of course blogging about it. My nerdiness has grown up, that’s all.

On the way out I donated $5, all the cash I had on me. Though the museum doesn’t have the magic I remember, it has a different magic, and is still just as kick-ass as it ever was. Although, my biggest disappointment? The gift shop didn’t have the cool phrenology head that was on display alongside other 19th-century paraphernalia. Now that would have been a hell of a souvenir!

Movie review: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

A not-very-long book stretched into three full-length movies? Part of me was dubious, but I trusted Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and all the others to respect the source material and deliver another great trilogy.

I was right. An Unexpected Journey added a lot of material to the story (from the beginning up until Thorin’s company is saved from the orcs by the Eagles and deposited in Beorn’s land) but it never feels like padding—well, except the present-day scene between Bilbo and Frodo, which I think was necessary to tie in to the earlier movies, but probably should have been moved to the third installment. Then again, maybe not; I don’t know exactly how the story will play out.

So in addition to the book’s basic story, we’re treated to: Azog the Goblin, just a footnote in the books, now an ongoing villain probably for the remainder of the trilogy; Elrond, Galadriel and Saruman returning for an meeting of the White Council, discussing the Necromancer and what to do about him; Sylvester McCoy making a surprisingly awesome appearance as the druid-wizard Radagast the Brown, going around on a sled pulled by giant rabbits and briefly facing off against a Nazgul; a flashback of Smaug attacking the Lonely Mountain, following an absolutely dazzling look at a Dwarf city in its full glory; and various little bits of world-building taken from appendices or later books.

All great stuff, and that’s not even counting familiar elements brought to life: our old friend Gollum, alternating between creepy-sweet and murderous-creepy; the heart-stoppingly poignant rendition of “Far Over the Misty Mountains Cold,” which I saw in the trailers but still got me; edge-of-your-seat action; the lovely shots of Hobbiton.

Yes. A beautiful movie, and a wonderful start to another masterpiece. Can’t wait for next year!

Argument 2 passed to db_delete() must be an array, string given

Sometimes it’s the stupid little things that trip you up. Just recently, I encountered an odd problem with db_delete() which I couldn’t figure out at the time; and, in fact, kept barking up the wrong tree until I found a proper example to work from. Even then I didn’t realise what I’d been doing wrong until yesterday.

Very simply, I was calling db_delete() with an IN condition, like so:

$mytable_res = db_select('my_table','mt')
  ->distinct()
  ->fields('mt',array('key'))
  ->execute();

$key_arr = array();
foreach($mytable_res as $row) {
  $key_arr[] = $row->key;
}

db_delete('my_other_table','mot')
    ->condition('iid', $key_arr, 'IN')
    ->execute();

The first thing you’ll notice is that I should have been using db_query->fetchCol() to get the array, instead of tediously building it via PHP. I didn’t twig on that until later, because running that db_delete gave me an error: Argument 2 passed to db_delete() must be an array, string given

What did that mean? Googling didn’t really help. It was either something so obvious it didn’t bear mentioning, or something so obscure no one was talking about it. After a bit of thought I found an example to work from in the Drupal code base; specifically, in function aggregator_aggregator_remove modules/aggregator/aggregator.processor.inc:

$iids = db_query('SELECT iid FROM {aggregator_item} WHERE fid = :fid', array(':fid' => $feed->fid))->fetchCol();
if ($iids) {
  db_delete('aggregator_category_item')
    ->condition('iid', $iids, 'IN')
    ->execute();
}

I adapted that to my own tables and fields (using fetchCol(), too), and it worked fine, but I still didn’t understand why my first attempt didn’t work. Finally, after some trial and error, I found the answer: db_delete doesn’t take a table alias. I was so used to using them in select functions that I automatically added one this time, and then kept on having a blind spot about it.

So, yeah. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to blog about this, but hey, we all make stupid mistakes, right? Might as well own it, learn, and move on.

Flying from Toronto

On Tuesday I flew out east to spend Xmas with the family. Sadly, for most of the trip I did not have a window seat allowing me to take awesome aerial photos—and they probably wouldn’t have been that awesome anyway, since from what I could tell most of Canada was under cloud cover. However, I got a window seat on my connecting flight from Toronto, and though the weather was still mostly overcast (and snowing in Ottawa) I managed to snap some good pics of the roads around YYZ.

WordCamp 2012

Wow, it’s been almost two weeks since Vancouver WordCamp 2012, the awesome one-day conference on all things WordPress. As last year, the event was divided into Design and Development tracks. And again as last year, I went back and forth between the two. Let’s face it, the line between design and development can pretty thin.

Calm and Simple Code With Purpose

Jeremy Felt from 10up.com gave the audience some pointers on calm, effective and mindful coding. Rushed code means bugs, and you may think you’ll go back and fix them later but there’s always another deadline! Better to do it right the first time. Invest the time to perfect your craft. Dig into the Codex*, read the code, understand how things work and why they work the way they do.

As well, developers need to know what tools are available, when to use them, and when not to. Libraries like jQuery are already there, no need to add it in your plugins! Use caching when you must.**

Finally, we need to be mindful of our audience: developers in our team, or even ourselves six months down the line. Document your code, make it readable, whether you’re solo or part of a team. And if you’re working solo, get involved in community projects!***

*And don’t complain if it’s crap. You’re totally free to improve things!

**Memo to myself: read up on the WordPress Transient API, because I have absolutely no experience in it.

***I totally need to do that.

Documentation

John James Jacoby of Automattic came to talk about PHPDoc, a PHP documentation standard similar to JavaDoc. Documentation standards like that are about not wasting time and brainpower. It’s about (his words) not being an asshole, and not taking time away from other people or even your future self. Because you’ll be able to quickly get to what a particular bit of code is doing and why.*

JJJ also repeated Jeremy’s advice to get on the Codex and improve it if you’ve got something to say. It’s a great place to learn, because wordpress.org has lots of caretakers.

*The why is important. It’s easy to describe what is happening but why is the more interesting question.

S2Members—a membership plugin for WP

Rayhan Abdulmughnee of the Small Business Centre spoke about a S2Members. It was fairly narrow in its focus, which was a bit of a disappointment. Then again, I knew what I was getting into. The main reason I attended this presentation instead of one on a command-line-interface for WordPress, was that I was possibly about to start a WP project heavily dealing with user roles, and I thought this might give me some good ideas. I’m not sure if it did. That project ended up not happening, which was also a bit disappointing; I’ve never dealt with WordPress user management except in the most basic sense. Drupal, sure, I know it forward and back, but I would have liked a chance to dig into it on the WordPress side. Someday soon, I’m sure.

JQuery mistakes and how to avoid them

Back to the development track after lunch, to learn all about jQuery from Automattic’s Andy Peatling. This was an very intense presentation, dishing out all sorts of jQuery tips and tricks which I won’t list here (and honestly, some of which went over my head).

Caching in WordPress: Invalidation schemes

Oh, but the fun doesn’t stop there! Zack Tollman was up to tell us all about caching in WP, and schemes to refresh that cache when it gets obsolete. Cache versioning, transients, and again a lot of this was totally new to me.

How to make your WordPress site mobile-friendly

David Zille started out by giving some general tips on what a mobile theme needs: fast loading, visibility of the important elements, ease of navigation, and accessibility. Then he laid out various schemes to make your site mobile friendly:

a third-party service
a responsive theme
a separate mobile theme

Responsive themes (which I already have some experience in) use CSS and JavaScript behind the scenes, but the downside is that you’re serving your entire content to a phone. Plus, they can be difficult to maintain and build from scratch.

Separate mobile themes (which may come with plugins) avoid most of these pitfalls, but probably have issues of their own. It all comes down to your budget, skill sets, etc…

Food for thought, definitely.

The WordPress community

Vancouver’s own Christine Rondeau wrapped up the day to tell us about the WordPress community. And it’s real: it’s in the meetups and in the forums and the blogs and on IRC, and in events like this one. You participate to learn, to get referrals, make friends and say thanks. You know, Christine’s talk was another kick in the pants for me to get more involved. More than just going to meetups (which I do), I need to actually contribute something. There’s a theme I’ve been hacking away at on and off (based on my current blog theme, actually) I need to polish it up and submit it.

Oh, and I won a Code Poet t-shirt!

There was an afterparty, but I already had plans to ogle hot athletes in underwear at Celebrities, so I had to give that a miss.