Sillybean

Observations

I’ve spent part of my writing group meeting this morning reading my friends bits from this article in The Guardian, in which writers answer some basic questions about the writing life.

So why write?

Hilary Mantel: It’s always worried me, is writing a way of life or is it a way of not living, is it essentially a second-hand pursuit? I think it probably worries all writers, but then they say the onlooker sees most of the game, so that’s the virtue of it.

Via Joanna Bourne on Twitter. And now I really should write something. (But not before noting that newspaper comments in the UK are vastly better written and more amusing than our domestic ones.)

Plagiarism on WordPress Arena

I just discovered that WordPress Arena has plagiarized my article on the hidden feeds in WordPress. My table was published here in 2009, appeared in the Hidden Gems presentation I did for OpenCamp Dallas last summer, and was published in Chapter 4 of Beginning WordPress 3 last June. The WordPress Arena version was apparently copied from the book sample (which is online), where the search term example is “apress,” the name of my publisher. The Arena article doesn’t show a publication date, but judging by the comments and tweets, it’s been up for about three months.

Screenshot, archived for posterity.

Hey, Nur: you’ve really pissed me off. I haven’t gone through the rest of your archives yet, but I’m willing to bet I’m not the only one you’ve ripped off.

ETA: Yep, there’s more:

Chip Bennett found this article on creating a child theme, ripped off from April Hodge Silver’s WordPress 3 Complete. The article does end with “[Source: WordPress 3 Complete]” — but April’s name does not appear, all the examples use Nur’s name, and I’m betting neither April nor Packt gave anyone permission for this reprint.

This troubleshooting article, posted in January, is taken from page 271 of the 2006 edition of WordPress Complete, by Hasin Hayder. Come on, Nur, you could have at least used a more up to date edition!

There’s a Facebook/Wix article cribbed from Website Magazine, an article on landing pages taken from page 93 of The Ultimate Web Marketing Guide, and I could go on, but at this point I suspect there is not a single original article on all of WordPress Arena.

… OK, I couldn’t resist. More:

WPTouch article taken from WordPress Top Plugins

Video player article taken from WordPress for Dummies, page 187

Hosting article taken from Build a Website for Free, second edition, page 23 — this one’s not only copied, but has bad information! The book was not written for WordPress-specific hosting. This article talks about Google Sites, for crying out loud.

Intro to 26 great commercial themes taken from Lisa Sabin-Wilson’s intro to her chapter on free themes in WordPress for Dummies, second edition, page 357

… that’s every article from the January archives.

Video: good presentation visuals

Here’s a video from my day job, from a workshop we held for faculty who teach public speaking. I talked about creating good presentation visuals.

First lines

If you’re new here, you might not know that when I’m not working on WordPress, I’m usually writing fiction. In fact, if you’re just here for the WordPress goodies, you might want to subscribe to the WP category feed instead of the main one, because I’m pretty burned out on WP and there will be a lot less of that around here for a while.

So, switching to my writer persona… it’s time for the first lines meme (^TM Elizabeth Bear, I think), in which I give you the first lines from all my works-in-progress in the hope that, when self-discipline fails, public shaming will help me finish these suckers. The first lines meme is more useful for short stories, and all my projects are novels (for my sins). Still, I haven’t done a WIP roundup in years, so here we go…. Cut for long…

WordPress University webinar series for higher ed starts next week

Just a reminder than I’m teaching the third workshop in the WordPress University series for higheredexperts.com next week. If you haven’t registered, now would be the time! Materials and other logistical details will be sent out Monday.