The GoldenPalace.com Monkey

The GoldenPalace.com Monkey (Wikipedia Link), was discovered in Bolivia and named by auctioning off the decision to the highest bidder. The proceeds went to the national park where the monkey was discovered.

goldenpalacemonkey

Pointed out by Eddie Avila as both the worst and best thing about Bolivia.

I would have called it George Bush.

Montreal WordPress Developer Meetup this thursday

So yeah, as the title of the last post (which has slowly become ludicrously out of date) implies, WordCamp Montreal was in fact pretty awesome. If you’re a visual kind of person check out the photos.

wordpres-montreal-community-logo-square-400Now a few months have passed since then and its time to move on. Move on to something other than WordPress events? No. Move on to smaller, more regular, less stressful WordPress events (and hopefully some posts here on my blog about other topics, we can still dream).

We’re going to use the Montreal WordPress Community group on facebook to organize evening meetups about once a month (join the group to get invited automatically). Patrick and the members of Station C have generously offered to let us use their coworking space for our get-togethers. This is great cause its sexy and well stocked with tools, but sad cause its not that big. Hopefully we can keep a healthy level of attendance without exploding.

The first meeting will be this thursday, when we’ll have a presentation and discussion about programming tools and how they can speed you up followed by a discussion of GPL and what it means for paid themes, plugins etc. I also told people to bring drinks and food, so it should be a cool party as well. You can read more about it and RSVP on the facebook event listing.

My vote for GV Advocacy

Zemanta, a Firefox extension that automatically suggests related tags, links, photos and articles for your blog posts and e-mails, is running a competition to encourage blogging for worthwhile causes. The five blogs that get the most votes will each win $3,000.

Global Voices Advocacy - Defending free speech online I vote for Global Voices Advocacy, the anti-censorship (and anti-blogger-imprisonment and pro-internet-awesomeness) wing of Global Voices. GV Advocacy is something made of pure good, a blog about bloggers getting shafted in countries where freedom of speech isn’t a cliche, its a dream that people can only hope for. Sami, our editorial lead for the project, is himself the victim of censorship in Tunisia, and his dedication to the project and the cause is astounding.

Obviously I’m biased as far as this contest goes, my paycheck comes from Global Voices and this money would be going into that pool, but I work for GV because I believe in it, so this post is my biased but sincere vote for my employers to get the funding and recognition they deserve (if only my coding/design was as good as the content our authors and editors produce…)

This blog post is part of Zemanta’s “Blogging For a Cause” campaign to raise awareness and funds for worthy causes that bloggers care about.

I’ll be speaking at WordCamp Toronto

i'll be speaking at wordcamp toronto I nagged them early enough and got a slot to speak at WordCamp Toronto in May. I’ve had amazing times at the last two WordCamps I attended (San Francisco and New York, I missed the Toronto one last year) talking to people about my favorite web software and shooting the shit about all the little things the rest of the world doesn’t understand.

If you haven’t been and are a blogger/developper in the area you should check it out. If you’re in Montreal there will also be WordCamp Montreal in June but that’s pretty far off and we haven’t come up with many of the details yet. Not sure if I’ll be speaking in Montreal as well but it’s pretty likely ;)

Robin Schwartz’s Primate Photography

Stumbled on this beautiful set of photos of different monkeys living in domestic situations with humans in the late 80’s. According to the artist’s statement she went out of her way to get to know each of the primates personally before taking the photographs, giving them an intensely personal feel.

Robin Schwartz's Primate Photography example

See them all here. (via Fannie Laurence)

Global Voices Does Miami

GV Logo on the beach in Miami

Photo taken by Amira

I’m about to leave Sunny Miami Florida to return to frigid Montreal and am feeling particularly blessed to get to work and sometimes hang out with such wonderful people.

The WeMedia conference invited us and kindly sponsored some of our costs, but the real treasure has been sharing a house, food, drinks and stories with my coworkers. I’ve gushed about it in the past but its worth repeating: I couldn’t possibly do better in life than to have these people around me. That I get paid to spend time with them is a little miracle.

Shout outs to Eddie, Lova, Georgia, Solana, Jillian, Lokman, Rebekah, Ivan, Amira and Leonard. I fuckin’ love you guys.