Textpattern 4.0.2
I love Dean Allan
There, I said it. Though I've never made the acquaintance of this man, he is a genius. He and the rest of the Textpattern team have done it again. This incrimental 4.0.2 update brings a native handling of error pages, which alone is worth the upgrade. They also made some improvements to the comment invites TXP tag and the RSS feeds, but that error handling thing has been on my wish-list for some time now.
Previously, I was using three plugins from Lee Stewart to handle my error pages. Not that it took all three, but the error handling was part of a larger stat tracking plugin for Textpattern that I wasn't really making use of since I had purchased Mint. So, now I'm able to run my site with three less plugins, and still get the functionality I want. This unexpected (for me anyway) update, coupled with the fun of browsing CSS Reboot made November 1st like an early Christmas. I've gorged myself all day with nerdery.
In Other News
Speaking of CSS Reboot and Textpattern, one of the sites that rebooted did an interview with me recently, so I figure I'll link to them while I'm on the topic. Marko is an aspiring web designer from Croatia, and has been picking the brains of many a web designer and developer lately. So if you get the chance, go check out the interview here:
mcville.net/article/19/nathan-smith-interview
My favorite of the rebooted sites has to be Ribic.org. It's subtle, simple and slightly self-depreciating, but that's all part of the humor and sense of personality that this site seems to exude. It's the portfolio and personal site of Mitja Ribic, a web designer from Slovenia. It's cool to see web standards spanning the globe, not only in countries with English as their first language.
And, continuing to ramble, I met Brendon Connelly today. He runs the site Slacker Manager. He's a bit taller than I would've thought. This was a new experience for me, as I've never met any of the 9rules guys in person before. I'm sure I'll see plenty more at SXSW though. Anyway, I'll be doing some freelance work for Brendon, and he just happened to be in Boise on business, so I managed to catch him at the airport and shoot the breeze for awhile.