Dented Reality

Author Archives: Beau Lebens

I am Beau.

Butchering a Lamb, with 4505 Meats

When I was growing up in Wagin, almost all of the meat that we ate was home butchered by my Dad. He is the kind of guy who looks at most things and says “I can do that” and then just does it. I remember raising our own goats and slaughtering/butchering them. We had pigs [...]

Manliest Day Ever

I didn’t really think about it until I successfully finished putting back together my sink, but yesterday was a very manly day: Woke up in a tent, in the rain, Ate meat (and eggs) for breakfast, Drove home in a truck, Ate meat (as a burger) for lunch, Took apart and cleaned my camp stove, [...]

Catching Up On Email, A Poem

I was walking (in the dark) to catch a train this evening, when I saw a man sitting in car, obviously tinkering away on a phone or something. For some reason it inspired me to write the following: The cold blue glow of a smartphone, or perhaps an iPad illuminates his face from below casting [...]

Big Sur with Bay Area Expeditions

Roadtrip to LA

My Mum and Peter were here to visit recently, and rather than hang out in San Francisco (they’ve been here a number of times, and done all the normal tourist things), we decided to go on a bit of a road trip. They were flying out of LAX, so we figured we’d take the Coastal [...]

Camping in Big Basin

This weekend I got together with some friends and headed down to Big Basin State Park to go camping for the weekend. We headed down on Friday, taking our time by going down Hwy 1 (beautiful coastal drive) and stopping for lunch (Burrito Friday!) in Moss Beach, then going through Pescadero and visiting Harley Farms [...]

WordCamp Savannah, 2010

I was lucky enough to spend last weekend in Savannah, Georgia for their first WordCamp. This was the first time I’d ever been to beautiful, historic Savannah. The humidity/heat was a bit much for me, but in general I had a great time. I gave a short presentation on the new comment_form() function which is [...]

Call Me N.E.R.T.

Prompted in equal parts by the book Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life, the fact that I now live in an earthquake-prone area (and knew nothing about earthquakes) and by a personal interest in “Survivalism“, I recently attended a training course to become a qualified NERT Volunteer. NERT, or Neighborhood Emergency Response Team, is [...]

WordPress Plugins for Multiple Versions

If you’re a WordPress Plugin developer, you may find yourself in the unenviable position of needing to maintain one of your plugins across multiple versions of WordPress. Until recently, I maintained the IntenseDebate plugin for versions 2.5 and up of WordPress, including versions 2.6 of WPMU and up. That’s a lot of versions (10 actually, [...]

My Experience with the Vibram Five Fingers Shoes

Earlier this year, my brother got me a pair of Vibram FiveFinger KSO‘s for my birthday. They’re pretty freaky. Here are some random notes on my adventures with these shoes.