The Lighthouse Keeper’s cat

Ouch! Long time no posts… BUT there is a very good reason I joined three other Wellington artists for a group exhibition at Thistle Hall Gallery, Upper Cuba, 17 – 22 November 2009!

I am absolutely excited and busy getting my new illustrations on wooden boards!

You are warmly invited to attend the opening on Tuesday 17th November 5:30 pm. Drinks and nibbles provided.

Opening hours
Tuesday to Sunday
10.00 am – 7:00 pm

“Come,
Venture into a tale of fantasy;
Where mysteries unfold,
Illusions take hold,
Explore hidden meanings, trapped beauty,
In the depths of Escape…”

Otherworldly illustration, illusionary photography, fairytale fashion and whimsical jewellery meet in a dynamic exhibition. Escapism, fantasy and an inclination towards teleportation coexist in Woven tales of Ink, Silver and Silk – an exciting
showcase of new work by four Wellington-based artists: Minu, Mairi, Sarah Dalley, Sophie Lewis-Smith.

In short: If you are planning anything social networking… sit tight, wait for WordPress to merge WordPress MU to the core. Once this has happened, BuddyPress and bbPress will be in 1.xxx and we might see some interesting stuff coming up.

Chris Lipscombe (link to follow) told us “How to get it right in order to make it big” with his Business Fundamentals.

Harley Alexander told us a few things about themes. Things you do not really need to know, but are awesome for the advanced theme builder ^_^… wow.

Now Bernard Hickey was a highlight for me today. Real journalists, using the blogger sphere tools to make money while staying independent. I am sure I was not the only one who thought he made a joke when he said he makes money from Bank Advertisement… Which BTW makes way more sense once you move from the blog to the website ^_^…

One (at least I) can learn heaps of stuff about online publishing from a blogger with a solid “real” journalistic background. I loved his phrase on “curating your content”.

“Turbocharge your WordPress” from Jeff Waugh was another eye opener. He seems to know his stuff and if he answers to the remark “…some people say WordPress does not scale to industry size” with something like “… These people are Idiots! They aren’t looking at who is using WordPress, their loss…”. Now a dedicated server with somebody like Jeff tweaking the bits and pieces might help.

Fazit: … maybe the next time I will not ask quite as many questions, and I definitely will wiki the speakers first. It might not be very clever to ask somebody who allegedly got an offer for $200 Mil (Source Wikipedia) for his company, how he makes money ^_^…

I think WordPress got enough love for 2 days… so back to ranting again ^_^…

To be honest  WordCamp New Zealand Day One was a surprise … a positive one ^_^. The best thing you can take home from any (un)conference is this feeling of being charged with energy, ready to go and make the world a better place… and this time it actually worked…

It was not only the quality of the speakers, it was the mixture. Jason Kemp, Dan Milward and Anthony Cole managed to get a wide range of presentations together, starting with Steven Price trying to keep bloggers out of legal trouble and Dan’s talk about eCommerce plugin. Old fashioned me is skeptical about the theme generator thingy, I admire what Ryan Hellyer achieved… it is just that I myself believe that software only gets you so far. To get your fingers dirty with a bit of code is not a bad thing…

Philip Fierlinger, Work Head of Design at Xero, is always great to listen to. There was heaps to learn from his experience with corporate blogging at Xero.

Now… personally I was really surprised by Matt Mullenweg – co-founder of WordPress and director of Automattic. “… one of PC World’s Top 50 People on the Web, Inc.com’s 30 under 30, and Business Week’s 25 Most Influential People on the Web.” (source http://ma.tt/)… whatever that might mean … his answers were smart, engaging and having this flair of professional honesty… you know, the one were you never know what actually is true and what is purely professional. I myself chose to believe the words. I think the world is not completely lost if there are people out there like Mike to keep open source what it should be and not just choosing it as a marketing stand to sell their products or services. Even so – I assume – he is a multi-millionaire, (Matt Mullenweg on Wikipedia) guess what? fair enough…

Gareth Townsend presentation on the new WordPress iPhone App did make me think… yup that is how it actually should work, so once they get this release out, we can look forward to some real cool stuff in the future. And Doug Casement is a legend anyway.

I am looking forward to tomorrow.

My Fazit so far ….

… I will keep on complaining about WordPress… as well as keep using it for all my web projects ^_^ and telling everybody else they should use it, but I will be very careful when I use “kids coding” again. I think the kids grow up fast…

… and I really would like to find an angle to contribute …

P.S. why is Tiny MCA doing this to me… ARGH if I click on remove formatting, I would like you to remove “§$%&/() formatting ….. ^_^…. see?

Found on Studio Home Creative: Greeting cards by MessageMark are made in New Zealand, are printed on 100% recycled card and support cure4cf, are available at the  MessageMark online shop or at swonderful in Wellington, New Zealand. What else could you wish for?

Swonderful is located at:
95 Victoria Street
Wellington 6011

Browse through Studio Home Creative.
“Your very own little portal into what and who is new / old / exciting / creative / provocotive / talented and worth a mention downunder.”

And keep up-to-date on everything around MessageMark on messagemark.blogspot.com.

Take care world outside!

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Post Script: After years of struggling I finally gave up on the ideas of thumbnails on posts… WordPress you have it your way ^_^…

Which reminds me of something else: in a meeting with a client I was told that the system should not overrule editorial decisions… hmm… Even though I agree in principal: Most editorial decisions which are NOT supported by online best practice would not have made it into print* . They made it onto websites just because they can… Just because you can dose not mean you should…^_^…

* based on 10 years experience in the online biz. It still is is subjective though.

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Post Post Script: I think I even go with out the <more> tag for a while…

The issue no 5 World Sweet World is out … and I am in it! I am totally happy and honored and … OMG I am in a magazine… ^_^. Read the rest of this entry »

Some things are not easy in New Zealand, and one thing is to get – affordable – printmaking art supplies.
NB: This post is work in progress and not a complete list. If you know more stores or have more ideas where to get supplies please comment or email ^_^.
Read the rest of this entry »

Solander is a art gallery located in Wellington, New Zealand with a focus on is a works on paper. Solander opened in October 2006, and is run by Kyla Cresswell. The new location is 218 Willis St, Wellington. The opening exhibition Stuart Duffin, Kelvin Mann, Marian Maguire starts on 23 January 2009, 6.30pm to 8:00pm.

You can win a $200 gift voucher at the opening! More details on Solander’s website.