Ryan Joy (atxryan)

Paul Menard, Jeff Bernier, Michelle Greer, and Jen Simmons and I made the trek last night to Frisco, Texas for WordCamp Dallas 2008.

Today was day one and it’s been very informative thus far. Highlights include:

• Matt Mullenweg announced the official release of WordPress 2.5 during his talk this morning! You can download it and it’s Dashboard/Admin goodness at http://wordpress.org.
• John Pozadzides listed 45 very good and thorough ways to power up your blog. Most of his points were targeted at bloggers who write for an audience, but I believe that many of his points can be applied to a smaller, personal site like mine as well.
• Jonathan Bailey covered Copyright, Creative Commons, content theft and the detection/prevention/obstruction thereof, and everything in between. I don’t consider many of the issues he discussed to be applicable to myself, but they are definitely important to my clients. Of course, if I’m ever hit with a DMCA notice then Bailey’s talk would be very beneficial indeed.
• Listening to Lorelle share her power blogging tips (and take WordPress to task for anything that bothered her in the least bit) was great. She’s a firecracker. :-)

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that many court fines must now run concurrently instead of consecutively, much the same way many prison terms must be served at the same time instead of being stacked one after the other. This means that in many cases only the most expensive fine would be applied and lesser fines would be considered paid in full.

Read more at Statesman.com: Criminals get a break on fines

Expect this issue to be rolled back in the legislation during the 2009 session. The political pressure from on high to down low will be enormous as this affects every precint’s budget.