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WordPress 3.0 has been downloaded more than 11 million times in the last month and a half. That is pretty impressive when you stop and think about ti. But the developers obviously don’t. They’re busy working on the next release and squashing bugs in the current release.

That is where the maintenance release 3.0.1 comes in. This release fixes around 50 minor issues, making this one of the most stable releases to date.

You can read up on the 3.0.1 release on their blog.

If you aren’t one of the 11 million people that has upgraded to WordPress 3.0 (the extra .1 is optional) you don’t know what you are missing.

Pop Art Pug Painting

Cool shirts are even cooler when you get a cool 15% off. And that is what you’ll get when you use this coupon to complete your order.

What is the coupon code? Easy… BTSRULEBRAND

Now all you have to do is take a few minutes and browse through our shop to find the perfect shirt. And that is the difficult part. The choosing part I mean.

This offer only goes until midnight August 8 so don’t waste any time.

Here are the top ten reason why intelligent people fail.

1. 

   Why Intelligent People Fail

   Lack of motivation. A talent is irrelevant if a person is not motivated to use it. Motivation may be external (for example, social approval) or internal (satisfaction from a job well-done, for instance). External sources tend to be transient, while internal sources tend to produce more consistent performance.

2. Lack of impulse control. Habitual impulsiveness gets in the way of optimal performance. Some people do not bring their full intellectual resources to bear on a problem but go with the first solution that pops into their heads.
3. Lack of perserverance and perseveration. Some people give up too easily, while others are unable to stop even when the quest will clearly be fruitless.
4. Using the wrong abilities. People may not be using the right abilities for the tasks in which they are engaged.
5. Inability to translate thought into action. Some people seem buried in thought. They have good ideas but rarely seem able to do anything about them.
6. Lack of product orientation. Some people seem more concerned about the process than the result of activity.
7. Inability to complete tasks. For some people nothing ever draws to a close. Perhaps it’s fear of what they would do next or fear of becoming hopelessly enmeshed in detail.
8. Failure to initiate. Still others are unwilling or unable to initiate a project. It may be indecision or fear of commitment.
9. Fear of failure. People may not reach peak performance because they avoid the really important challenges in life.
10. Procrastination. Some people are unable to act without pressure. They may also look for little things to do in order to put off the big ones.

If you are ready for the rest of the list you can read them on Accelerating Future.

Yellow Red Dread

If you have been watching the 2010 World Cup, what do you think so far? There have been some good games, some bad ones and then there are the referees… Which have mostly been bad.

A couple of them immediately come to mind. One of there is the referee that managed to put himself in center stage of the Germany – Serbian game. And another was the blind/bribed ref that cost the US the win against Slovenia.

As I type this I see that the US won their game against Algeria so at least they’re further.

Hopefully the trend of terrible referees doesn’t continue with tonight’s game between Germany and Ghana… Though he is known by the nickname, “The Sheriff”. We’ll see.

Bing Hitting the Bullseye?

Gaining market share over Google. And there is one more thing about bing… But this strikes me as a bit odd.

I have been using bing more and more recently, and there is one thing that feels off. Let me explain. When you search for images on bing you can change the settings, for example you can choose the size, layout, style, color, etc.

And like with most modern search engines you can filter the results. This saves you from having to see any unwanted image results. You can choose any one of the following filters:

• Strict – Filter sexually explicit content using a strict filter.
• Moderate – Filter sexually explicit content using a moderate filter.
• Off – Do not filter search results.

Do you see what I mean? Maybe not… While you can filter out the sexually explicit content, you can’t do anything for violent images. Does this show a complacency to violence in our culture? Or has bing taken the effort to filter these out for you a head of time without the need for you to change any filters? If this is the case I have seen fairly disturbing images slipping into normal search queries. This in and of itself isn’t a deal breaker, I still use bing, however, I have to ask why they wouldn’t allow you to filter these as well.

Ubuntu 10.04 - Lucid Lynx

I had actually planned on posting about this two weeks ago when we upgraded to Lucid Lynx (Ubuntu 10.04) (take the tour here). Well, as you can see, that didn’t happen. A week or two late isn’t bad since it gave me a chance to look over the new release a little more.

The first thing that I noticed about Lucid is that it loads and shuts down lightning fast. This has to be the fastest operating system that I have ever used, and it just got faster. Now I can start the machine up and get some apps up and running in under a minute. Compare that to the Windows machine that I also use for certain tasks, and it hasn’t even logged in yet. Talk about a pleasant computing experience.

Ubuntu Lucid Lynx on Start

While we have been running under various Linux operating systems, for the better part of a decade Ubuntu has to be our favorite. And the nice thing about it is that it’s for just about anyone. It doesn’t matter where your computer skills are at, you can be up and running under Ubuntu in a matter of minutes. As their website says:

“At the core of the Ubuntu philosophy is the belief that computing is for everyone and access should be free and complete whatever your economic or physical circumstances. Ubuntu is one of the most accessible desktop operating systems around.”

And they hold true to that philosophy.

Ubuntu is now easier than ever before for people to get into and use.

The new accessibility is also one of the downsides of the new fsck. If you’ve run Ubuntu before, you will probably be familiar with the scanning process. It periodically runs after a set number of starts (generally 30 unless you’ve changed it). Prior to Lucid Lynx, the scanning process was broken into different stages. Each with its own set number of steps. While this might not have been as simple as a 0-100% system (which is now implemented), it was a lot more useful.

The new disk scanning process is very simple. You don’t know what it is doing, just how many more percent there is until it is done. Which doesn’t really tell you anything about the actual scanning process.

We have Ubuntu 10.04 installed on several machines. One of them is a notebook. Things go fine until the scan reaches 70%, and then things start to crawl by. Since things always (at least in our case) begin to progress slowly at the same spot on all machines, it makes me think that the percentage is merely there to communicate with users that “something” is currently happening. Rather than the previous scan that actually told you what was happening.

The other thing that I have noticed with the scanning process, this is something that never happened before, was that it locks up. Several days ago when it was scanning the hard drive it locked up at 99%.

UPDATE: Not long after I posted about the noticeable slowdown in fsck the problem seems to be fixed. Recently I rant the check again, and there was a noticeable increase in speed. Not just within the current release but also compared to all other versions of fsck that I have used. This is a very nice surprise, and just goes to show you that Ubuntu gets things done, and it gets them done fast.

One of the nicest additions to the OS is the Ubuntu One Music Store. If you’ve ever tried to get iTunes to run under Linux, you would know that unless you use a virtualized Windows install, it doesn’t work very well. But then again, who needs iTunes?

The Ubuntu One Music Store offers more in the lines of quality and usability than iTunes. First, the audio files are higher quality than those you’ll find under Apple’s store. We have bought quite a few songs through the new service that have ranged from 256-320 kbps, whereas the same songs on iTunes are only a maximum of 256 kbps. This makes a noticeable difference when you listen to your music on your iPod, etc., especially compared to the lower quality iTunes files. All music bought through the Ubuntu music store is DRM-free and does not limit the number of times you can burn it to CD.

Songs are priced at $.99 to $1.49, and it isn’t dependent on the quality.

Another reason buying music from Ubuntu’s own store is the fact that 50% of Canonical’s proceeds go to the SOSLynx charity. SOSLynx is dedicated to the conservation the most endangered feline species in the world, the Iberian Lynx.

Ubuntu Linux Gaming

The only thing that I would hope they include in a future release is the option to pay through Click&Buy, since adding another payment method makes buying music more convenient. While we didn’t install any of the test builds of Ubuntu 10.04, I do know that they actually had this feature integrated at one point. So let’s just hope they get it worked out and put it into a coming release of the store. They are sure to see an increased number of sales when they do.

UPDATE: You can now buy music through Click&Buy as well as several other options, which I can confirm works great!

This post wasn’t intended to be a complete review of all of Ubuntu’s new features. We’ll leave that up to you. But it was meant to cover some of the things that have hopped out during daily use.

If you haven’t tried Ubuntu or have yet to upgrade, now would be a good time to start!

Ubuntu 10.04 Video

Guinness Storehouse St Patrick's Day sign

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day everyone. Hopefully your celebration was a safe and happy one!

Here is an example of ice containing methane which has been lit on fire.

Combustible Ice

I have known about ice containing methane for quite a while because as it melts, it poses a severe threat to the environment. The more that is released, the warmer it gets, the warmer it gets, the more combustible ice melts… And, well, you can see how things can quickly begin to spiral out of control.

Well steps are currently being taken to study the use of this energy source and at the same time reduce the threat it has on the environment. And this is a step in the right direction. Recent studies have shown that more than 8 million tons of previously unknown methane has been leaking into the atmosphere each year.

In September of last year China discovered a previously unknown reserve of combustible ice on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. The find is equal to 35 billion tonnes of oil. To get an idea of how much this is, it is enough to power China for the next 90 years.

Before the source of fuel can be effectively utilized though, researchers believe that it will have to undergo a phase change.

That means that the ice will have to be melted, separating the methane from the water. The methane that would be won from one single cubic meter of ice is equal to 164 cubic meters of natural gas. With fewer impurities it will burn cleaner, and this is a good thing, since it will produce fewer pollutants than gas won from other sources.

Of course, it should be made clear that natural gas is not a clean source of energy, and when it is burned, it does create pollution. However, it is is cleaner than oil.

This is a dilemma, since the methane will be released into the atmosphere as the ice melts, regardless if it is used or not. Is this a viable solution for the search for cleaner energy? Probably not, since there are multiple methods to produce workable renewable energy.

Further research will have to be invested into this “new” source of energy before it can be clear if it is usable or not.

While I have been meaning to post about bioplastic for a while, it seems like I haven’t had a moment of free time to do it.

Here is the video from their first post about homemade bioplastic.

While there is a lot of different aspects to think about when bioplastics are used, that isn’t the main focus of this article. If you want to learn more about the current state of this technology, you can read an extensive article on Wikipedia.

The part that really interested me about the post was that you can make it at home without much effort. And the recipe isn’t complicated:

“Combine 7 parts water, 1 part vinegar, 1/2 part glycerine, 1 1/2 parts starch for the basic recipe. You heat this in a pan for several minutes and presto you have bioplastic. More glycerine makes for a harder plastic. More starch makes for a denser and less viscous plastic. An 8 parts water, 1 vinegar, 1 gycerine, 1.5 starch variant worked best for filling molds and was much easier to work with. A recipe with 4 tablespoons water, 1 starch and 1 teaspoon of both gylcerine and vinegar made for a bit tougher but also less uniform result.”

I haven’t had time to try it yet, but the original poster, Joris Peels, experimented with the recipe over a weekend and posted extensively about the results.

Here is a teddy bear that he produced using the method.

Home Made Bioplastic

You can read his entire post entitled: Cooking & molding bioplastics at home: recipes, results & tips

If you take the time to try making your own plastic from this recipe, don’t forget to share some pictures!

Open Source Software

I read recently that a powerful US copyright lobby is likening OS (Open Source software) to piracy or worse. Alright, we need to put this into perspective, so you can realize just how absurd this comparison is. Piracy is when somebody’s copyrighted content, whether it is music, movies, video games, books etc. is taken and distributed. We won’t go into any big detail, you know what I am talking about.

Open source software on the other hand is where a programmer, or a team of programmers, create an application. This can be in the form of a browser, such as Firefox, an operating system, such as Linux (any flavor), or a graphics application (Gimp, Blender, MyPaint, Inkscape…) etc. and make it open to the community. Have these people stolen anything? No. Have they distributed somebody else’s content? No!

What they have done is made their intellectual property available to people like you and me. These people give many others the opportunity to do something they wouldn’t otherwise be able to do. And chances are they have contributed more than you might think.

If you run a website, or even visit websites, you have come into contact with open source software in various forms. You don’t realize it, but the majority of the web is run through the open source database MySQL. Not to mention WordPress, Apache, RedHat, CentOS etc. etc. etc.

Meanwhile, it’s not uncommon for commercial applications to “borrow” code and inspiration. Even Mac OS X is based on the BSD operating system.

Off the top of my head I know of two countries that actively support open source software, one of them is Germany. The second one is Indonesia, which last year sent out a report to all their government departments encouraging them to migrate to open source.

You can read an interesting post from the Technology Blog on the Guardian.co.uk, the title of the article is: When using open source makes you an enemy of the state

Is this the end of open source software? That isn’t very likely, it will take more than one greedy corporation lobbying to outlaw what people are allowed to do with their IP.