About the Blog

family_2008_11

“Il Filosofo” is the web log of Austin Matzko. When medieval philosophers wrote of “The Philosopher,” everyone knew they meant Aristotle, so the domain name shows my desired profession (I’m studying for a PhD in philosophy), reveals my interest in Italy (I’m slowly learning Italian), and in acronym form ( “if” ) nods both to logic and to my current job, programming.

I like to think of blogs as something like a cross between a diary, a commonplace book, and a travel journal. One of the best parts of a blog is that it allows feedback. I hope that my inchoate thoughts will be sharpened with thoughtful criticism in the comments. So please, let me know what you think, but also keep in mind that many times my ideas are not fully formed and so may not reflect my final opinion on issues. Likewise neither do any ideas expressed here represent the views of my friends, family, or past, present, or future employers.

My wife Melita, my son Samuel, my daughter Margaret, and I reside in Boston, where I work full-time as a web developer. Since the beginning of 2008 I’ve been blogging about WordPress at Pressed Words. Melita and I are members of the Evangelical Baptist Church.

You can contact me by sending an email to austin (located at) pressedcode (dot) com .

4 Trackbacks/Pingbacks

  1. By The Litabug Phlog » Happy Birthday! on 30 Jun 2006 at 7:06 am

    [...] Today is my wonderful husband’s birthday! I won’t say how old he is this year, but… [...]

  2. By WP-DB-Backup eklentisi ve Türkçe çevirisi | Gelengeliyo.Com on 05 Apr 2008 at 3:40 pm

    [...] nedeniyle WordPress paketlerinden çıkarılan ve geliştirilmesi duran WP-DB-Backup eklentisini Austin Matzko tarafından yeniden geliştirilmeye başlamış. Karalamalar.net ise eklentinin dil dosyaları [...]

  3. By WP-DB-Backup eklentisi ve Türkçe çevirisi | Ali Eyüp Doğan on 10 Sep 2008 at 3:04 am

    [...] nedeniyle WordPress paketlerinden çıkarılan ve geliştirilmesi duran WP-DB-Backup eklentisini Austin Matzko tarafından yeniden geliştirilmeye [...]

  4. By Anthony J.Towne » Back up wordpress on 01 Apr 2009 at 8:04 am

    [...] Thanks to Austin Matzko [...]

15 Comments

  1. Dewey Hulsey commented on August 2, 2006 at 2:13 pm | Permalink
    Dewey Hulsey

    I was wondering if you could help me out.
    I’m trying to display an “author information” section on my sidebar that displays information about whoever published the page. I’m using static pages, and not posts. My problem is I don’t want that section to be displayed when the author is me, or id 1. Could you help?

    < ? php if (is_page() && get_author_ID($auth_ID) !=1) { ?>



    Author Information


    filosofo commented on August 2, 2006 at 3:05 pm | Permalink
    filosofo

    Try get_the_author_ID() instead of get_author_ID($auth_ID) which isn’t a WordPress function, as far as I know.

    Why are you posting this on my about page?

  2. Eddie commented on August 10, 2006 at 4:58 am | Permalink
    Eddie

    Buona fortuna per il tuo italiano ;)

  3. ANP commented on November 25, 2006 at 9:49 pm | Permalink
    ANP

    Just wanted to thank you for posting a link on the WordPress support forum regarding a simple, elegant “Comments in the Sidebar” plug-in. At your advice, I was up and running in about seven minutes. Thanks again!

  4. Jack commented on December 12, 2006 at 4:33 am | Permalink
    Jack

    Hello Austin,

    I commented on the site of Skippy about the WP-Database backup plugin, but it seems that development is in your hands now? I can’t find any post about it on your site.

    I’m using WordPress 2.0.1 right now with the included plugin and was downloading some backups when I noted some strange thing:

    When I look at a backup send to me daily by Cron, the size is about 400kb, unpacked about 1500kb, which also include tables use by the gallery program Plogger.
    When I make a backup using phpmyadmin I also get a (uncompressed) file of about 1500kb (they differ in how the backup file looks, but I guess that’s ok although the encoding is set to utf8 which I don’t use).
    But, when I use the backup screen within WordPress and let the plugin create a backup for me which I then download, the packed size will also be about 400kb, but unpacked just around 500kb, so there is al lot which is missing.
    So I have three sql files which I can open in say Wordpad, but the last file stops somewhere within a ‘post’ so the backup seems to be broken.

    I guess the Cron backup is ok and it also uses the iso-8859-1 encoding I use on my site, but the manually backup version seems to miss all kinds of stuff although it really seems to backup all the tables.

    Am I making a mess of this comment ;) :) ?

  5. Simon commented on March 25, 2007 at 10:15 pm | Permalink
    Simon

    I just wanted to drop you a line and say thanks for your work with WordPress plugins, and also that it is really encouraging to see outspoken Christians contributing nicely to the geek-like community of WordPress. :)

    Thanks again,

    A fellow Christian

  6. Neil commented on April 10, 2007 at 10:42 am | Permalink
    Neil

    Hi,
    Thanks for the wordpress info. Good to see a theologically conservative church in Boston, with an aspiring techy/philosopher in its ranks. More churches need that!

    a fellow christian, aspiring philosopher
    and fan of my job http://www.wycliffe.org

  7. Steve commented on April 21, 2007 at 11:37 am | Permalink
    Steve

    This is what I love about the web community… you never now who you’ll run into.

    Shouts out from a fellow Christ-follower, web designer, WordPress connoisseur, and expository aficianado.

    I stopped by looking to backup WP 2.1 (was surprised to find it NOT bundled since they bundled it with 2.0) and discovered loads of other plugin goodness and such.

    Stop by sometime – either SteveMooradian.com or Negative99.com.

  8. Jeff commented on April 24, 2007 at 6:27 am | Permalink
    Jeff

    props to your efforts

  9. Masaus commented on December 1, 2007 at 1:06 am | Permalink
    Masaus

    I just wanted to thank you for this great plugin, WordPress Database Backup.

    I actually lost all of my blog articles last year because I was using free blog service in Japan. So I decided to switch WordPress to keep my data. Now I accidentally found this plugin, so I will never loose the data.

    Thank you again for the great plugin.

  10. jack h commented on December 15, 2007 at 3:29 pm | Permalink
    jack h

    God bless you and your family! Thx for all the hard work with the templates.

  11. Titel commented on March 30, 2008 at 4:46 am | Permalink
    Titel

    Thanks for your continuous work on the WP plugin! It’s a great way to simplify database backups.

    Don’t forget to add a shipping address to your Amazon Wishlist, so people can actually reward your work somehow :)

  12. Door Handles Girl commented on December 10, 2008 at 9:57 am | Permalink
    Door Handles Girl

    Hi Austin, great work on the plug-in. It was a lifesaver for Steve that wrote our blog. Moving to a new server caused us to lose a bunch of configurations etc, but thanks to you hard work the blog was backed up. Your two gorgeous little ones look about the same age as my nippers (2 & 6) – you look very happy and so you should be.. less sleep but it’s well worth it. Thanks again from freezing Norwich (UK)… Jo – picking and packing kitchen handles today – ooh it’s so rock’n'roll!

  13. Alejandro Urrutia Daglio commented on January 19, 2009 at 7:57 am | Permalink
    Alejandro Urrutia Daglio

    Hi ilFilosofo!
    Nice plugins you got, about WP database backup I got the updated spanish translation, so, please contact me to send you these files.
    Regards, Alejandro.

  14. Pawelotti commented on April 17, 2009 at 2:41 pm | Permalink
    Pawelotti

    Thanks for the backup plugin…I was searching the web for a handy backup tool for Wordpress…I clicked on :”lfilosofo” as I also study Philosophy and I love Italian opera as well as the language. So, hi there! :)

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