Migrating

With the release of Wordpress 2.5 I have decided to migrate my blog away from Blogger. I've been slightly reluctant simply because I've been using Blogger since 2003.

My new web address is www.jonathanmorgan.org and you can catch all my feeds here.

Fire the Workaholics

"If your start-up can only succeed by being a sweatshop, your idea is simply not good enough. Go back to the drawing board and come up with something better that can be implemented by whole people, not cogs."

~A great post on the 37signals Blog.

Introducing

I'd like to introduce a site I just finished. It's a magazine website that used to be called South of Sweden, but has just been renamed The Scandinavian Insider. It's a Business and Lifestyle magazine focussed on Southern Scandinavia.

One of the biggest challenges was working with Expression Engine, a CMS that I've never used before. I've been very impressed with its ability to handle data, but there have been a few minor issues that took forever to solve.

The Fires of Red Hill

We spent today in Red Hill, a small township not far from where I'm living (in Cape Town) which has been devastated by fires over the weekend. 60 homes were completely destroyed. Our task for today was to clear away the rubble to make space for the new houses.

The task of rebuilding will be £400 per house. If you'd like to contribute, please let me know.

Feeds

At the moment I'm working on how to gather the content of this blog, my Flickr feed, Twitter, and any other places I post things on the web into one place. This would mean that you, dear reader, would be able to keep up to date by visiting just one site, or by subscribing to just one feed.

That will mean that you will be able to see my South African photos without checking Flickr.

The technology is called Tumble Logging, though you don't really need to worry about that.

I think I'll also make subscribing via email possible, so that those who don't have a clue what RSS is don't have to miss out.

Just saying, so you know why things are quiet here...

An interesting clock

Here's a clock that not only tells the time, but also shows stats on population, diseases and deaths (etc.) click here. (via Floyd)

Useful Tech/Design links

• Paul Stamatiou on How to configure your web host for Google Apps ~ paulstamatiou.com
• 37Signals on Processing credit cards ~ 37signals.com
• Smashing Magazine on Best Practices for Bullet Proof Email Delivery ~ smashingmagazine.com
• Darren Hoyt on Developing a magazine layout using Wordpress ~ darrenhoyt.com
• Molly E. Holzschlag on Grid based design ~ alistapart.com
  

Radiohead: Environmentally Conscious

"But at the moment we make money principally from touring. Which is hard for me to reconcile because I don't like all the energy consumption, the travel. It's an ecological disaster, traveling, touring...We did one of those carbon footprint things recently where they assessed the last period of touring we did and tried to work out where the biggest problems were. And it was obviously everybody traveling to the shows." read more
~ Wired via Jason

In the Press: Sydsvenskan

I ended up getting interviewed briefly by a Swedish Newspaper yesterday lunchtime. This morning, when Christopher's paper came through the door, there I was.

Here's a sketchy translation for you non-swedish speakers:

How much would you pay to download a song off the internet?
About 3 kronor (just over 30p)

Do you download music?
Yes, I recently downloaded the new Radiohead album for £2

For those of you who think I'm a skinflint for paying so little, I assure you that they received more from me this way than they would if they were signed to a big record label.

Check out downhillbattle.org for more on this.
Click here for the original article.

Inspired by Keywords

Recently someone found my blog by searching for:

i want out of the labels. i don’t want my life crammed into a single word. a story. i want to find something else, unknowable, some place to be that’s not on the map. a real adventure.

I had forgotten that I'd ever written that quote by Chuck Palahniuk here, and was inspired once more by its sentiment.

My Christmas Gift to You

This one is for my readers (I know there are a couple of you)...
Instead of sending a tacky E-Card, or some other fairly generic, and thoughtless, way of wasting your time I thought I would point you in the direction of the following MP3:

Joy ~ by Rob Bell (click here)

Kick back and enjoy. Happy Christmas!

25 Years

So I've just turned 25! A quarter of a century. So far I've:

• had breakfast with Sofia (including Gingerbread Yoghurt (or Pepparkaks fil for you Swedes))


• had Stevie Wonder's Happy Birthday played to me by Christopher as he dashed out to work.


• As well as: experiencing the Facebook Enigma (more to follow...), and


• Spoken to my Mum and Zoe on Skype.

Nice.