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Mike Little: WordPress co-founder

In the history of WordPress –the tool that powers 45% of the web, including 10s of 1000s of film sites– Mike Little is Steve Wozniak to Matt Mullenweg’s Steve Jobs.

Matt polished the interface, the marketing and curly quotes – while Mike added the blogroll, rebuilt the code, and added the one-click easy-upgrade that’s been central to the success.

But unlike Woz, Mike never had shares in Matt’s $7bn business – or even a job there. He didn’t know you could make a living from WordPress until he turned up at a WordCamp. He hasn’t been knighted or hall-of-famed, and isn’t known outside of old WordPress developer circles.

Is this because he’s a cheerful and easy-going northerner from Stockport? Because he didn’t have a degree? Because he’s black? I don’t know. All I know for sure, is this is someone anyone in tech, or who uses WordPress, should know about. Not just because of his contributions: but because he’s the kind of hero we need more of.

Year 25, Issue 5

Becoming Little.

Pencil sketch side profile of a woman with shades, tall poised, the telletubies floating in the background, tattoes, bangles, cropped hair, arched back. She holds her shades
New Carnal Cinema…
Tammy-Lynne Anderson-Planderson-O’Connor, Notflix’s Senior Deputy Vice-president of Internal and External Acquisition (Los Angeles)

In the 25 years that I’ve been interviewing the great, the good and the frankly terrible of cinema, a lot has changed. If you had told me then that one day I would be able to watch an almost unlimited selection of movies, TV dramas and a thousand and one programmes based around differing variations of people baking cakes of one kind or another, all on my mobile phone, then I’m afraid I would have thought you were having some sort of mental or emotional breakdown.

One company that is largely responsible for the streaming revolution is the entertainment behemoth Notflix. It has almost single-handedly revolutionised the way that we consume media content. But is the result movie heaven? Or is it actually development hell?

I went to LA to meet Senior Deputy Vice-president of Internal and External Acquisition (Los Angeles), Tammy-Lynne Anderson-Planderson-O’Connor…

Boosted from @dr-andrew@carnalcine.ma

Carnal Cinema returns!

The original Netribution was a rather serious mix of film funding listing, film festival deadlines, contacts, sunrise/sunset times and a weekly magazine interviewing a spectrum of indie film with news from across the country.

Adding some relief was Dr Andrew Cousin’s (aka Andrew Lowes) Carnal Cinema column – a satirical lens on the world of film. French Cartoonist Eric Dubois was so taken with them he first illustrated them, then put them together in the first of two books. We’ve printed 200 copies and after the print costs are recouped are splitting the income three ways between Eric. Andrew and Blood Cancer UK (in honour of Andrew’s dad – the late, great Leslie Lowes, aka James MAcGregor).

Available now @ www.CarnalCine.ma
A photograph of the Carnal Cinema book on a wooden table. It's hard-backed with cartoons across the top, Carnal Cinema against Orange beneath that, and some tiny text beneath that. A dark grey ribbon emerges from the bottom.
Pencil sketch of Paddy Morgan, curled over a cocktail in a whisky tumbler, further drinks and an ashtray besides him – large collars sticking out over his jacket.
Carnal Cinema
Paddy Morgan, last of the hell-raisers

Oliver Reed, Richard Harris and Peter O’Toole were a breed of actor apart. Prodigiously talented on screen and with extremely tempestuous personal lives off screen. Booze, women and plenty of bust ups featured regularly. It was for that reason they acquired the nickname “the hell-raisers”. But there was one of their number who is less well celebrated, Paddy Morgan. Paddy might not have been a household name today, but his performances in movies such as “Where Stunt Doubles Dare”, “Touch of the Gorgon” and “Swords, Sandals and Slaves” made him much in demand in the sixties and seventies.

Paddy died in 2006 when his third liver finally decided it could cope no longer and literally exploded inside Paddy’s abdomen. Fortunately, Dr Andrew Cousins had just completed an interview with Paddy weeks before his untimely death. Never published until now, Dr Cousins meets the last of the hell-raisers…

Boosted from @dr-andrew@carnalcine.ma