Joel Spolsky: What have you done for me lately?

Recently [Jurgen Appelo](http://nooperation.typepad.com/about.html)
listed the [Top 100 Blogs for Development Managers](http://www.noop.nl/2008/09/top-100-blogs-for-development-managers-q3-2008.html) .

Now the list looks okay except for the first entry – [Joel on Software](http://www.joelonsoftware.com). Now I’ve been subscribing to
the site for a few years along with at least 100,000 other people (
about 10,000 times more than read this blog) but I really question it
being number one anymore.

Sure there are great articles and Joel is a smart guy who creates things
like [Stackoverflow.com](http://stackoverflow.com) but I doing really
think his blog deserves the Number 1 ranking anymore.

The main reason is that Joel doesn’t really write any articles. Looking
at his [archive page](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/Archive.html) we can
see the recent history:

Year	Number of articles

2000	42
2001	23
2002	14
2003	12
2004	9
2005	22
2006	20
2007	12
2008	4 so far

Yes, just 4 articles this year so far and the [last one](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/05/01.html) was in May, over
6 months ago.

Now Joel is doing the odd smaller post, he podcasts and writes articles in Inc
but the point of reading the blog is the content there, not somewhere else.

So really, you can’t rate a blog that hasn’t had a real post for 6 months as being
the top blog in the world for software development managers. Even [Paul Graham](http://www.paulgraham.com/) posts more often.
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Miniconf at LCA 2009

We got word a couple of days ago that the [Sysadmin Miniconf](http://sysadmin.miniconf.org) had been accepted
for [Linux.conf.au 2009](http://linux.conf.au/) and [the media have been informed](http://www.techworld.com.au/article/260982/linux_conf_au_lineup_ready_go)
so I can can say so publicly.

It looks like the following Miniconfs have been accepted:

* Open Source databases
* Kernel
* Sysadmin
* Virtualisation
* Linuxchix
* Myth TV
* Gaming
* Mobile
* Multimedia
* Free As In Freedom
* The business of open source software

I guess the main differences from previous years are the MySQL and PostgreSQL
miniconfs have been merged. There is no Debian, Education or Gnome miniconfs
and I guess Mobile has replaced Embedded. It’s interesting to see the loss of the regulars, I guess
in some cases it is because they have their own regular conferences.

The last two miniconfs ( “Free As In Freedom” and “The business of open source software” )
are also new, I guess they will be fleshed out.

We’ll be updated the Sysadmin Miniconf [website](http://sysadmin.miniconf.org) over the next few days
and the call for papers should be out next week sometime.

I also posted an [email to the NZNOG list](http://list.waikato.ac.nz/pipermail/nznog/2008-September/014444.html)
asking about interest in a Sysadmin thing at NZNOG 09 ( in Auckland the week after LCA 09 ).
have a quick look and pop me an email if you are interested.
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I like WordPress

I spent a couple of ours doing a mock up of a possible new website ( sorry not online) for the
[Auckland Chess Centre](http://www.aucklandchesscentre.co.nz/webcontent/default.aspx) (link is to the old site) using [wordpress](http://wordpress.org/).

I must say I was fairly impressed the [5 minute install](http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress) really does
only take about 5 minutes and everything else is pretty easy. The only hard
bit was finding a good theme since most of those out there are blog based rather than
designed for fixed websites but I ended up picking the [deLight](http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/delight) theme which [looks okay](http://webdemar.com/demo/?wptheme=deLight).

Overall I’m pretty impressed with WordPress and it took just a couple of hours of playing around
to get the site to 95% of what I want. Depending on the feedback I might be able to go
live in a few days.

Throughly recommended for small sites.
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