Dented Reality

Author Archives: Beau Lebens

I am Beau.

Krav Maga Level 4 Test

This past Saturday, I had a test that was long overdue — a test that I originally should have taken almost 2 years ago. I tested to go from Level 4 (Green Belt) to Level 5 (Blue Belt) in Krav Maga at my gym here in San Francisco. I have missed this test twice now [...]

Announcing: SidewalkScribbl.es

I’ve launched a new website that you might like to check out: SidewalkScribbl.es It feels like every time I walk around in San Francisco (and other places), I see all this cool artwork, quotes, stencils etc on the sidewalk that I’m sure a lot of people are missing or not appreciating. SidewalkScribbl.es will be a [...]

New Server @ DreamHost

Apparently I’ve been moved to a new server at DreamHost. Let’s see if that solves any of the performance problems that I’ve been having. I still have an account at MediaTemple that I’m paying for, and haven’t gotten around to moving things over to just yet

Urban Escape & Evasion with onPoint Tactical

A few weeks ago I attended a 3-day course titled “Scout Urban Escape & Evasion“, delivered by onPoint Tactical. The idea of it was to learn how to get around in a hostile  urban environment, assuming you were being pursued. That pursuit might be active or not, and might be post- or pre- apprehension of some sort [...]

Tom Brown Jr’s Tracker School

NOTE: This post has been sitting in draft for a long time, and I’m finally publishing it. I actually attended Tracker School in May 2010. About 9 years ago, I picked up the movie The Hunted from an ex-rental discount bin. I hadn’t heard of it, and didn’t know what to expect, but it had [...]

Presenting at WordCamp OC

I’ll be at WordCamp Orange County, presenting a session on plugin development, specifically looking at some of the more advanced things we did in Jetpack. It will be fun — you should go.

Jetpack

For the past few months, my team at Automattic (Team Social FTW!) has been working on a super-secret project. Today, almost perfectly synchronized with the NASA space shuttle landing (total fluke, but awesome regardless) we launched Jetpack! Jetpack is a new plugin that delivers a bunch of popular features from WordPress.com (the hosted site, which [...]

Body Hacking

Random update, possibly TMI, but we’re all friends here, right? I’m on a bit of a “body modification” kick since reading The Four Hour Body and also Born to Run, and am making some changes and testing the waters in a few different things.

Hunting for Headphones: ZAGG Smartbuds

Since I’m mostly using them on an iPhone and a MacBook Pro, I have 2 extra requirements on my earphones (in addition to sound quality etc). Full remote (Play/Pause, fast forward etc) Inline microphone for hands free use on the phone (and for Voice Control) Recently, my Klipsch earbuds suffered the wrath of the TSA [...]

Waking up with Wakemate

The age of the quantified self is coming, whether you like it not. I’ve recently started experimenting with a few aspects of this idea, with sleep being one of the first that I was interested to look at, since I’ve had a quite a lot of trouble with getting good sleep over the years. My [...]