Here is a plugin I wrote for one of the volunteer sites I run. I don’t claim that it is anything special, except that when I searched for something like this, I couldn’t find one. So maybe I am the first!

What does it do? It creates a signup page! For example:

From the readme.txt:

1. Download the plugin.
2. Unpack the zip archive to your `/wp-content/plugins/` folder
3. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
4. Create a new page for the signup form. Give it a title for what you are signing up for (ie, “Pot Luck”).
5. Add this shortcode to the signup page: `[signup_page list_title="List" field_title="Signup"]` (*item_title* and *field_title* are optional. The default values are “List” and “Signup”.)
6. Create one or more child pages of the signup page. (ie, create pages called “Salad”, “Chips”, “Hot Dogs”, and “Apple Pie”. Make them children of “Pot Luck”.)

On the signup page, each of the child pages will be listed, alongside a field to *sign up* for that page.

Click here to download the zip archive.

• http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/thomas-kinkade-art-loved-fans-dismissed-art-world-elite-article-1.1058281
• http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/us-artist-thomas-kinkade-dies-at-age-54/article2394888/
• http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/russell-smith/in-memoriam-thomas-kinkade-and-how-is-he-different-from-damien-hirst/article2398862/

I have mixed feeling about Kinkade and his work. I was first introduced to his art 20 years ago. My uncle gave me a tear-off calendar featuring his work. This was back before the internet, when it was hard to learn about people. The blurb on the calendar called him “the painter of light.” He claimed to be a Christian. Implied in that statement is this:

• his art is inspired by faith
• his motives are forthright

I really liked the art, and kept the pages as I tore them off. I kept them for years.

When Kinkade Galleries began to appear, I was rooting for the guy. I thought the galleries would mostly sell prints, so they only needed a small inventory of actual paintings. I assumed that he was an industrious Protestant who beavered away, knocking off copies of his paintings to fill those galleries. I was wrong.

What I eventually learned is that Kinkade used his purported Christianity to gain people’s trust, selling them Kinkade Gallery franchises (which mostly lost money), and paintings that were knocked off by minimum-wage art students.

So, for the last decade, I’ve written Kinkade off as yet-another-fallen-hero. I still like his art. I just can’t get behind the man, or line his pocket with any money. For me (but obviously not for his family), his death is not untimely at all. His story ended. Two or three more decades would not make it better.

Rest in peace, Thomas Kinkade. I will continue to secretly enjoy your art.

App Engine made a radical change to the way they charge, resulting in much higher costs for typical sites. The reaction from programmers is predictable: anger. Anger at the new prices. Anger that they devoted so much time and energy to this platform. Anger that they must now spend so much time and energy porting to a LAMP stack, where they could have been all along.

Reaction from supporters, almost all of whom work for Google, is more interesting. They are are recasting App Engine as an enterprise solution. If you need unlimited scalability on demand, App Engine is for you! Indeed, if I were working on a site for the Super Bowl, royal wedding, or tax day, I might give App Engine a look. Otherwise… not so much.

At this point, App Engine solves a problem that most sites don’t have: the ability to keep your site up in the face of sudden, unanticipated traffic. If your traffic increases gradually, or predictably, then there are cheaper ways to handle the load.

Supporters also argue that Google is “putting more wood behind fewer arrows” these days. In other words, management is no longer in the mood to subsidize anything. If a project doesn’t pay its’ own way, it gets cut. The price change enables App Engine to pay its’ own way, presumably.

But maybe not. App Engine surely has fixed costs. If Google fails to attract enough customers at this new pricing level, they will still lose money. Even if they eke out a profit, they might still get cut if they are not a huge revenue generator. For developers (er, enterprises), it will be extremely risky to bet on App Engine until several years of undisputed revenue success are in the books.

What do you call it when current customers are leaving and new customers are not replacing them? A death spiral.

I guess I can’t blame the folks behind App Engine for trying to save their baby. But what I think will happen is this: After all the typical web developers have fled, leaving behind a handful of enterprise customers, Google will shutdown App Engine with little fanfare. Because no one will care anymore.

So, after finishing Dungeons and Dreamers, I found this review by Tod Curtis, written back when the book was first published:

I found Dungeons and Dreamers to be fairly choppy and unfocused.

…

The first 1/3 of this book is an interesting tale about the famous ‘Lord British’, which I enjoyed, but the remaining 2/3 is a bit of a mess. A brief rehash of the Doom phenomenon (which is done much better in the Masters of Doom book), a very boring (and lengthy) section on the correlation of video games and violence (Columbine is mentioned WAY too many times) and some snippets of the LAN party and MMOG phenomenon fills out the book. The writing is choppy, feels like it hasn’t been thoroughly proofread, and makes the intellectual side of me cringe. It is not uncommon for a concept to be described in one paragraph and described in the same words two or three paragraphs later. A full book on Richard Garriott probably would have been a better idea, as his life is very interesting and many of us would associate our gaming lives with him more than any other figure. This book seems to be geared towards complete non-gamers, which is a shame, because I would imagine most people who would buy this book understand the gaming world and the important events in its history.

Yep, that about says it.

I have a modest collection of books about the history of personal computing.  Richard Garriot’s story is a worthy addition. The rest of the book is a breathless, unfocused, uneven history of video games. Can you tell it was written collaboratively by two young tech journalists? I can.

That said, it was an easy, quick read. It’s fun to wander down memory lane. And there is worthwhile historical material in here.

I think the authors were trying to make a point about the socializing aspects of gaming, but they never quite stated their case. It so happens that I paused to read this while I am halfway through Reality is Broken, which makes that case forcefully. Stay tuned for my cherry-picked Amazon review of that book!