WordPress 3.5 dropped today. This is a special release for me because my picture made it to the Credits and I had 30-40 of my patches committed. Here’s the full list: https://core.trac.wordpress.org/search?q=wonderboymusic&noquickjump=1&changeset=on

The hightlights:

• I pushed the inclusion of SoundCloud as an oEmbed provider over the goal line, so now you can embed their audio widget just by leaving a SoundCloud URL on its own line: https://core.trac.wordpress.org/changeset/22003
• You can now use 'menu_order' as a query var in WP_Query. Sounds minor, but is helpful when you want to reuse an existing column for a custom post type: https://core.trac.wordpress.org/changeset/21748
• You can now safely pass 'term_taxonomy_id' in the 'fields' paramater to WP_Tax_Query: https://core.trac.wordpress.org/changeset/21552
• I removed AtomPub from core (sorry Dougal!) and turned it into a plugin here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/atom-publishing-protocol/ . If anyone wants commit to the plugin repo to keep working on it, ping me: https://core.trac.wordpress.org/changeset/21818
• I made a brute force attempt to remove Link Manager from core, which Nacin cautiously reduced to an option on upgrade: https://core.trac.wordpress.org/attachment/ticket/21307/link-manager.diff
• I removed the Embed options from the admin: https://core.trac.wordpress.org/changeset/21998
• A handful of tickets that clean up Multisite nonsense
• A handful of tickets that clean up Taxonomy / Cache nonsense
• Got rid of virtually all PHP4 call-by-reference instance in core: https://core.trac.wordpress.org/changeset/22118
• Jammed all of the default properties into WP_Post: https://core.trac.wordpress.org/changeset/22264

I have 55 patches on deck for 3.6 already, excited to see what makes it! If anyone out there is thinking about contributing to core and is hesitant, don’t be. 90% of success is showing up. Be There. Subscribe to Trac. Comment on tickets. Test patches. Occasionally check in on IRC. The people who are making WordPress are there. You could be one of them.

I was just a little lad with a dream 2 years ago at my first WordCamp in NYC when I grilled Nacin and Koop about using IDs instead of classes in the CSS selectors for Twenty Ten. Koop talked to me afterward and suggested I contribute to core. My first patch was at the after-party for WordCamp San Francisco 2011 at 2am at the old Automattic space at the Pier on the Embarcadero. I got 1 patch into 3.2. 1 patch into 3.3. Zero into 3.4. And here we are.