Finger on the Web Vol. 5

So yeah I missed last week’s issue. What of it? Nothing interesting happened. Okay so nothing interesting happened in my life but there was lots of interesting stuff on the internet.

Virginia Tech

Both the online and offline communities were rocked by the tragedy at Virginia Tech. If you’ve been living under a rock for the past week then the short, short version is that on Monday, April 16 a young man opened fire on his classmates killing 32 people (Here’s the long, long version).

I searched the internet and pulled up a few golden nuggets about the incident.

Virginia Tech 2007

NTCoolFool

Ache by Ms. Karen

Planet Moron

Technorati is your best friend if you want to read more about it.

Virginia Tech Search Results

Writing Prompts: Save the World

While pondering the tragedy that occurred on April 16, 2007 I’ve decided that this week’s writing prompt theme will be 13 Plots to Destroy the World. Now when it comes to defining “The World”, it is not always as global as you think. In fact, in writing, the world is defined by the protagonist (or hero) of your story. The world can include entire galaxies or it can only encompass the protagonist’s circle of influence. This would be Luke Skywalker battling against the Galactic Empire to save the Star Wars Galaxy vs. Willow Ufgood taking a journey to return a lost child to the humans to prevent destruction to his village.

So your goal is to take these prompts and devise a way for your protagonist to save their world from these threats.

Thirteen Memes

Participating in memes is a great way to meet people as well as allow your readers to get to know better. As most memes keep a master list of all the participants, it is also a great way to find new blogs to read as well as drum up more traffic to your own blog.

Below is a list of thirteen memes I found on the internet that I thought would be interesting to participate in. This is a mix of random questions, list memes and even a goal oriented meme that will take years to complete (seriously).

Writing Prompts: Twists and Contradictions

To kick things off this week’s theme will be Twists and Contradictions.

Finger on the Web, Vol. 4

Welcome to the fourth edition of FOTW, your weekly digest of what’s going on on the internet.

More thoughts on sponsored themes

Earlier this week, I wrote about the growing practice of WordPress designers offering advertising space on the free themes they distribute. Matt Mullenweg stopped by for a short minute to offer his opinion on it and when I visited his blog, I found that he had written a post further detailing his view on the subject. Even though I don’t agree, I, at least, have a better understanding of where he’s coming from.

They are calling all in the community to vote on whether or not to allow sponsored themes on the official WP websites such as the theme viewer and the Codex. I’m a little disturbed by this. On the one hand this is Matt’s baby and he can fully dictate what is and is not acceptable in regards to what people can do with it. On the other hand, it feels a little bit like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. As I said before, anyone can create a WordPress theme, even spammers, and unless WP starts vetting all of the links on the templates there banning sponsored templates is probably not going to prevent them from showing up.