Shashin 3.1.5 is now available at wordpress.prg. Also, I have updated the Shashin documentation to cover using it with Fancybox (the photo viewer now included with Shashin).

Shashin 3.1.5 is a maintenance release with the following improvements:

• Improved installation and activation process (manual re-activation is no longer needed when upgrading, and the dependency on Toppa Plugin Libraries is handled more smoothly)
• Ability to disable Shashin’s Fancybox if you already have your own Fancybox plugin installed
• Improvements to album synchronizing, for handling slow connections and servers with misconfigured SSL settings (which is surprisingly common)

People arriving for the start of WordCamp Nashville, at Watkins College View at Picasa People arriving for the start of WordCamp Nashville, at Watkins College21-Apr-2012 09:55, Canon Canon PowerShot SD780 IS, 3.2, 5.9mm, 0.033 sec, ISO 320	My dependency injection talk at WordCamp Nashville (photo by Patricia Melton) View at Picasa My dependency injection talk at WordCamp Nashville (photo by Patricia Melton)21-Apr-2012 00:56, Canon Canon EOS 40D, 4.0, 70.0mm, 0.017 sec, ISO 1600	@rfair presenting "Less, JS, and WP" View at Picasa @rfair presenting "Less, JS, and WP"21-Apr-2012 16:07, Canon Canon PowerShot SD780 IS, 3.2, 5.9mm, 0.04 sec, ISO 400
The Otto and Nacin show - @otto42 @nacin View at Picasa The Otto and Nacin show - @otto42 @nacin21-Apr-2012 12:09, Canon Canon PowerShot SD780 IS, 3.2, 5.9mm, 0.033 sec, ISO 250	@ryngrn presenting "Child Theme Frameworks" View at Picasa @ryngrn presenting "Child Theme Frameworks"21-Apr-2012 11:06, Canon Canon PowerShot SD780 IS, 3.2, 5.9mm, 0.033 sec, ISO 400	@studionashvegas presenting "The Blank Screen: Overcoming Fear of Pressing from Scratch" View at Picasa @studionashvegas presenting "The Blank Screen: Overcoming Fear of Pressing from Scratch"21-Apr-2012 10:11, Canon Canon PowerShot SD780 IS, 3.2, 5.9mm, 0.025 sec, ISO 400

I’ve traveled coast-to-coast across the US 4 times, but until this past weekend I had never been in the South (except for a brief visit to UVA many years ago). I was in Nashville for only 48 hours, and I enjoyed every minute of it. The first thing I noticed was how kind and polite everyone is. The driver of my shuttle bus from the airport pointed out all the sights as we drove into town, and he seemed genuinely interested in what everyone on the bus was planning to do that weekend. I spent the day on Friday with my friend Caryn, who I hadn’t seen since we finished grad school 16 years ago. She showed me around town, and it was great to catch up.

This was Nashville’s first WordCamp. The organizers did a great job pulling it together, and they clearly had a lot of local talent to draw upon for their speakers. Coming from Philly, I think I was the only Yankee among the speakers – I felt honored to be included (Nacin, coming from DC, is a borderline case ).

I was in the developers’ track all day. The first two sessions were design focused, and here’s an excellent summary of both presentations. They were followed by the Otto and Nacin show. They are both deeply involved in the development of WordPress, and they gave a preview of features in WordPress 3.4. Their talk was the most popular of the day in the developers’ track.

I was up next after lunch, and my talk went well. It was an advanced topic (dependency injection) so I drew a smaller crowd. But I got some good questions towards the end, and some good tweets:

View at Picasa @rfair's tweet about my session29-Apr-2012 19:40

Here is a non-technical summary of my talk.

Russell Fair wrapped up the day, and he did a great job of sharing his experiences using LESS with WordPress.

I didn’t get to see Joel Norris’ WordPress bootcamp presentation, but from what everyone was saying, I believe he gets the prize for having the most popular session. He stayed in character as a drill sergeant for almost the entire session. And he was in costume – here’s a photo.

The speakers dinner and the after party were both a lot of fun. I learned a lot chatting with Otto and Nacin, made some new friends, and my friend Caryn was able to come too, so it was a great evening.

If you want to read more, WP Candy has a great review, and they also have links to many of the presenters’ slides. There’s also a great photo pool on Flickr. Here are my slides:

The lego Dr. Who set Kai created View at Picasa The lego Dr. Who set Kai created24-Apr-2012 18:46, Canon Canon PowerShot SD780 IS, 3.2, 5.9mm, 0.1 sec, ISO 800

Over the past few months Kai has burned through all the episodes of the new Dr. Who on Netflix. I was never a big Dr. Who fan, but one thing I enjoyed about the old series was that he would always think his way out of problems. In the new series they’ve given him a more swashbuckling personality – perhaps that’s a necessity for modern TV marketing, even in stuffy old Britain. When I was not much older than Kai, on Friday nights I would watch a Dr. Who episode back-to-back with Blake’s 7 (which I still think had some of the best writing and characters ever for a TV sci-fi show). A few weeks ago Kai designed his own Lego Tardis, as Lego apparently hasn’t gotten around to licensing Dr. Who yet and making a bazillion dollars selling their own Tardis sets.

He made 2 of them, one for himself and one for our friend Catherine, who has already confessed to her inner person being an 11 year old boy. He put a lot of effort into preparing hers. He put it in a box for her, included a parts list, and made a stop-motion movie showing how to build it (in case she ever never to re-build it). Here’s the movie in case you have a small pile of blue Legos and would like to build one.

How to build a Lego set of Dr. Who's Tardis