I recently picked up an iPad Pro (9.7″), along with the Apple Pencil and a Logitech keyboard/case. I’m trying the package out as an alternate work configuration, and so far am quite enjoying it. It’s also good to force me to test more of our software from a mobile perspective.

The screen on the iPad Pro is gorgeous, so it’s pretty similar to using a MacBook Pro. Being completely touch-based makes it feel much more interactive and “engaging”, which is weird. I also find myself using the Apple Pencil quite often, just because it’s so precise, and is surprisingly pleasant to use for interacting with even very finger-touch optimized UIs. I’ve been doing some diagraming and “visual” type work lately as well, so it’s refreshing to be able to do that digitally and feel like it’s not a huge compromise over just doing it with paper/pencil/post-its.

A week after our first 14er, we decided that we wanted to not only hit another one, but do a combo, and go for 2 in one day. Grays and Torreys are in the Front Range, and pretty accessible as long as you’ve got a high-clearance (preferably 4WD) vehicle, which luckily, we now do!

We headed up there super early again, this time just Erika and I. It turned out that we really needed the truck, because the road was super rutted out, with big deep holes in it, and a small creek crossing at one point. If you couldn’t make it up that road, it’d add a few miles to your trip. We picked up a few folks on the way up who had already parked their 2WD and were walking the rest of the way. Once at the trailhead, we had a quick bathroom break and then got moving as quickly as we could.

Last weekend, Erika and I (along with friends, Kelly and Emi) climbed our first 14er! We picked Bierstadt since it’s in the Front Range (easy to get to from Denver), is supposed to be relatively easy, and trail reports/weather indicated it should be pretty clear. We weren’t alone; there were a ton of people up there with us.

Erika and I had to get up at 3:45 so that we could get out of here in time to get to the trail for a 5:45 start. We got there, but hadn’t banked on no cell reception (duh), and so we didn’t find Kelly and Emi, and get on the trail until more like 6am (in the complete dark, so yay for headlamps). On the way up, we were treated to a crazy multi-color sunrise, blasted against the surrounding peaks and clouds.

At the Fjällräven Classic, I was a little smitten with the Kajka 75 backpack which I saw a bunch of people carrying around. As it turned out, we got a discount as participants in the Classic, so a few days later I found myself the proud new owner of a Kajka, and in need of a backpacking trip to “break it in”. Since I was still on sabbatical, it was just a matter of picking a location, packing up my gear and heading out.

In amongst all of my own trips during my sabbatical, I was flipping through Outside Magazine (a really great periodical, BTW) and saw an ad for something called the “Fjällräven Classic“. As the page linked indicates, it was to be a 20 mile backpacking trip, spaced over 3 days (2 “half” days and a full day, and apparently ended up being more like 22 miles), chaperoned by the lovely folks at Fjällräven. I thought that sounded interesting, and almost flipped the page, when I realized that it was in Colorado, and during my sabbatical. Fate? I don’t believe in that, but it was a pretty neat coincidence which I wasn’t about to let slide.

This is post 8 of 8 in the series “SCOUT Epic”

1. Southern Colorado and Utah (SCOUT) Epic Roadtrip/Adventure
2. SCOUT Epic, Day One (August 5)
3. SCOUT Epic, Day Two (August 6)
4. SCOUT Epic, Day Three (August 7)
5. SCOUT Epic, Day Four (August 8)
6. SCOUT Epic, Day Five (August 9)
7. SCOUT Epic, Day Six (August 10)
8. SCOUT Epic, Days Seven & Eight (August 11 & 12)

A week-long roadtrip through Colorado and Utah, combining backpacking, fishing, hiking and mountain biking. Exploring National Parks, landmarks, and interesting areas of Colorado during my sabbatical.

This is post 7 of 7 in the series “SCOUT Epic”

1. Southern Colorado and Utah (SCOUT) Epic Roadtrip/Adventure
2. SCOUT Epic, Day One (August 5)
3. SCOUT Epic, Day Two (August 6)
4. SCOUT Epic, Day Three (August 7)
5. SCOUT Epic, Day Four (August 8)
6. SCOUT Epic, Day Five (August 9)
7. SCOUT Epic, Day Six (August 10)

A week-long roadtrip through Colorado and Utah, combining backpacking, fishing, hiking and mountain biking. Exploring National Parks, landmarks, and interesting areas of Colorado during my sabbatical.

This is post 6 of 7 in the series “SCOUT Epic”

1. Southern Colorado and Utah (SCOUT) Epic Roadtrip/Adventure
2. SCOUT Epic, Day One (August 5)
3. SCOUT Epic, Day Two (August 6)
4. SCOUT Epic, Day Three (August 7)
5. SCOUT Epic, Day Four (August 8)
6. SCOUT Epic, Day Five (August 9)
7. SCOUT Epic, Day Six (August 10)

A week-long roadtrip through Colorado and Utah, combining backpacking, fishing, hiking and mountain biking. Exploring National Parks, landmarks, and interesting areas of Colorado during my sabbatical.

This is post 5 of 7 in the series “SCOUT Epic”

1. Southern Colorado and Utah (SCOUT) Epic Roadtrip/Adventure
2. SCOUT Epic, Day One (August 5)
3. SCOUT Epic, Day Two (August 6)
4. SCOUT Epic, Day Three (August 7)
5. SCOUT Epic, Day Four (August 8)
6. SCOUT Epic, Day Five (August 9)
7. SCOUT Epic, Day Six (August 10)

A week-long roadtrip through Colorado and Utah, combining backpacking, fishing, hiking and mountain biking. Exploring National Parks, landmarks, and interesting areas of Colorado during my sabbatical.

This is post 4 of 8 in the series “SCOUT Epic”

1. Southern Colorado and Utah (SCOUT) Epic Roadtrip/Adventure
2. SCOUT Epic, Day One (August 5)
3. SCOUT Epic, Day Two (August 6)
4. SCOUT Epic, Day Three (August 7)
5. SCOUT Epic, Day Four (August 8)
6. SCOUT Epic, Day Five (August 9)
7. SCOUT Epic, Day Six (August 10)
8. SCOUT Epic, Days Seven & Eight (August 11 & 12)

A week-long roadtrip through Colorado and Utah, combining backpacking, fishing, hiking and mountain biking. Exploring National Parks, landmarks, and interesting areas of Colorado during my sabbatical.

This is post 3 of 8 in the series “SCOUT Epic”

1. Southern Colorado and Utah (SCOUT) Epic Roadtrip/Adventure
2. SCOUT Epic, Day One (August 5)
3. SCOUT Epic, Day Two (August 6)
4. SCOUT Epic, Day Three (August 7)
5. SCOUT Epic, Day Four (August 8)
6. SCOUT Epic, Day Five (August 9)
7. SCOUT Epic, Day Six (August 10)
8. SCOUT Epic, Days Seven & Eight (August 11 & 12)

A week-long roadtrip through Colorado and Utah, combining backpacking, fishing, hiking and mountain biking. Exploring National Parks, landmarks, and interesting areas of Colorado during my sabbatical.

This is post 2 of 4 in the series “SCOUT Epic”

1. Southern Colorado and Utah (SCOUT) Epic Roadtrip/Adventure
2. SCOUT Epic, Day One (August 5)
3. SCOUT Epic, Day Two (August 6)
4. SCOUT Epic, Day Three (August 7)

A week-long roadtrip through Colorado and Utah, combining backpacking, fishing, hiking and mountain biking. Exploring National Parks, landmarks, and interesting areas of Colorado during my sabbatical.

On the first day of the trip, I wanted to head south through Deckers to go fishing, and then get down to Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve. The fishing in Deckers turned out not to be too great (and it was drizzling), but it was beautiful nonetheless. The water was also a lot colder than I expected, so I really should have brought my waders/boots so that I could have gotten out there properly.

This is post 1 of 4 in the series “SCOUT Epic”

1. Southern Colorado and Utah (SCOUT) Epic Roadtrip/Adventure
2. SCOUT Epic, Day One (August 5)
3. SCOUT Epic, Day Two (August 6)
4. SCOUT Epic, Day Three (August 7)

A week-long roadtrip through Colorado and Utah, combining backpacking, fishing, hiking and mountain biking. Exploring National Parks, landmarks, and interesting areas of Colorado during my sabbatical.

When we moved to Denver, one of the primary reasons was to be able to get outdoors and enjoy nature a lot more. Between moving to a new city, then buying and working on a new house, I didn’t actually feel like we’d done much of that, so this summer I planned to fix that. With a three month from sabbatical, I had a lot of time on my hands, so I planned to take a road trip, and combine it with a bunch of hiking, backpacking, fishing and mountain biking. I spent a week on the road, heading south from Denver, then across the bottom half of Colorado, into Utah, back up to I70 and across to Denver again. It was amazing.

When we bought our house in Denver, we intentionally got one that didn’t really need any work done on the house itself. That didn’t entirely work out (yay emergency bathroom remodeling!), but most of our attentions have been focused on our yard, and particularly our back yard. We wanted a “livable” space, that we could spend a bunch of time in and really enjoy. It’s fun to look back at where we started, and where we are now.

When we moved into our new house, the yard was a mess. That’s definitely still the case in some areas, but we’ve made a lot of progress with cleaning things up, and turning it into a real “livable” yard. One of the pieces of that journey was getting a real fence installed down the side/back of the property. Here’s what we had when we first bought the house:

During our last team meetup, we had a “guac-off”, where 2 of us made our own recipes of guacamole, and then everyone “blind taste tested” (aka devoured them, without knowing who made which one), and we voted. Mine won! In the end it was the texture (more chunky) that won it for me. Someone asked for the recipe, and this is the best I could give them:

• Avocados (1-3 depending on size and how much you’re making, scoop out with a spoon, roughly dice, mash into bowl with a fork. Leave at least one half out, un-mashed, and add it in later to keep some more chunky texture)
• Tomato (~1 whole, remove all the seeds/juicy bits, and dice the outside flesh)
• Cilantro (handful, chopped up roughly)
• Yellow Onion (~1/4, finely diced)
• Lime Juice (usually 1 or less full limes’ worth; too much makes everything watery)
• Jalapeño (~1, as much flesh as you want, and then include seeds to taste, that’s where the heat is)
• Garlic (optional, I don’t remember if I had this during the meetup. Just a tiny bit (half a clove) either way, it really “comes to life” in guac)
• Salt and Pepper (uses quite a bit of both, especially salt. Just keep adding and tasting until it’s good)

I start out by scooping, slicing and mashing up 1 avocado, and leaving one to the side. Then I’ll chop the onion, tomato, jalpeño and cilantro, and get that all in there. This is also when the garlic goes in (if you’re using it). While adding these, I’ll mix it and mash it a little bit, just to make sure it’s all mixed through. Now scoop, slice and throw in the other avocado, then add lime juice, salt and pepper. Mix it up (mashing a little more in the process) and keep adding salt/pepper until you get the taste you’re after. You can also tweak with more jalapeño or lime juice at this point, which is where a lot of the taste comes from.

Benchmade Volli on top, Kershaw Blur on bottom.

I just got my hands on a Benchmade Volli, and thought I’d do a quick comparison to the EDC knife that it’s replacing, the Kershaw Blur (black non-serrated blade). Here are my observations so far:

• The Volli is clipped so that it sits tip-up in the pocket. The Blur is tip-down, so that’s taking some getting used to.
• The handle on the Volli is noticeably thicker/fatter than the handle on the Blur. Since the clip also has a higher profile, the entire package is quite a bit bulkier in a pocket
• The AXIS lock on the Volli is really nice, and the locking mechanism along the spine is a nice touch — you can double-lock the blade open for heavier work.
• The Blur has a faster spring-assist, and a more satisfying “clunk” when coming open. I think the sound/clunk comes partially from the aluminum frame (vs the Volli’s “G10″ handle, which is some kind of plastic/fiber stuff).
• The Volli has zero blade-play, which the Blur has a bit.
• The thumb-stud on the Blur is “one-sided”, and has a bit sharper of an edge on it, which can be good or bad.
• Because of the slightly wider handle (and thus wider arc to get around it), I find the Volli harder to close one-handed.
• The straight edge on the Volli’s blade is a big plus for me. The slightly curving blade on the Blur really annoyed me when sharpening it.
• Handle length is (almost?) identical. Blade is a little longer on the Blur.
• The Blur is a little heavier .
• I really like the blade grind on the Volli.
• The Volli’s blade is a little thinner than the Blur, and is also ground down along the spine to make it appear even thinner still.
• Since the handle on the Volli is plastic, I guess I won’t be able to use it as reliably as a bottle opener (note the scratched out surface on the Blur, where the blade meets the handle ).

Overall, I’m happy with the Volli, and will definitely keep is as my EDC (at least for now). I do think that if you could take the Volli blade and put it on something resembling the Blur handle, but keep the AXIS lock, you might really have a winner.

Image shows leather hand-pad, copper-tipped pressure flaker, small stone (Jasper?) arrow head and larger glass/beer bottle arrow head (both made by me, today).

A few weeks ago I decided to have a look on Meetup.com and see if there were some meetups that looked interesting enough to attend in the area. I spotted the Wilderness Awareness and Survival Skills in Denver group, and joined it immediately. I’ve been interested in this sort of thing for a while, and even attended a week-long school with Tom Brown a few years ago. The next meetup was going to be a basic flint-knapping class, which is something I’ve wanted to try for a while. We talked about it at the Tom Brown Tracker School class, but like so many other things, didn’t have time to get any hands-on experience. I’ve also been watching a bit of Ray Mears stuff lately, and he does some basic knapping in some of his episodes, so I had some recent motivation to check it out.

I decided to start a separate blog as a kind of fishing journal to track my adventures in fishing. It’ll probably focus mainly on locations, what I tried to fish with, how I went, etc, but it might be interesting to you. If you’d like to check it out, head over to fishing.dentedreality.com.au (I’m still back-filling some posts back to when I relocated to Denver).

Once a year, all of Automattic gets together in one place for a full week of face-to-face work, learning, food and fun. We fly in from all around the world, shuttle to a hotel/resort/space of some sort, and then get together to work through a bunch of things. This year we descended upon Canyons Resort in Park City, Utah (another US state crossed off my list!). The week was roughly structured into a front-loaded, work-type-things section, and a tail end more loaded with activities. For my part, I:

I just got back from seeing Phantogram play at the Ogden Theater here in Denver, CO, and they blew my mind. It was definitely one of the stand out shows that I’ve seen recently, which was extra impressive for a Monday night, at a venue I can walk to from my apartment, for $25.

Their set was super tight, and flowed really well. Instruments were switching constantly, and the four of them wove guitar, drums, keys, bass and samples together flawlessly. The two core members, Josh and Sarah, switched vocals every few tracks to provide a balance and variety that kept things interesting, while one of the best-executed light shows I’ve seen played on around them. Their stage presence was dramatic, powerful and engaging, when it wasn’t intimate and personal, depending on the track.

I’ve been asked a few times recently what programming language I’d learn if I was just starting out. Right now, the answer is definitely JavaScript, and here’s why:

Easiest Development Environment

I believe one of the biggest hurdles for people to get into programming is actually all of the other stuff around just writing code. Anything you can do to get to the point where you’re writing code faster (at least while you’re learning) is a win in my mind. Everyone has access to a web browser, which means everyone now has access to a simple development environment. If you’re using Chrome on a Mac, press cmd-opt-j. Welcome to the console, you’re now able to start writing JavaScript to manipulate the page you’re looking at. That’s pretty awesome. There are also a bunch of online editors and tools like CodePen, JSFiddle which allow you to dive into a more complete development/testing/prototyping environment right in your browser.

I’ve been pretty fascinated with the idea of recording my own location for a while now. I started using Foursquare at SXSW in 2009 and have mostly continued to do so since then (I have over 3,700 check-ins). You can see my check-ins being syndicated back to this website (using Keyring Social Importers), and if you scroll back through the history of the main page, you’ll get maps aggregating a few check-ins at a time.

On May 11 (today) in 2009, I started full time at Automattic. I’ve written about my experiences over the years, and marked the occasion each year in some small way. Let’s continue the tradition.

This year has actually been a particularly big year. Probably the headliner happened only a week ago; Automattic raised $160 million, on a valuation of $1 billion. That’s a lot of money. That’s a large valuation, and it feels kind of weird to be employee #35 of a company of that scale. We’re now at 247 employees, and we span 30[1] different countries. Whoah.

Last weekend, I went to a friends house for a “story telling” night. The theme was “time”. I decided to tell the story about how I cut my thumb with a hatchet recently, and someone recorded it, so now you get to hear it as well.

http://dentedreality.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/A-Moment-In-Time.m4a

(It’s pretty quiet, so you’ll need to turn your volume up to hear it properly).

Today is kind of exciting, although it’s been a long time coming so it’s not much of a surprise for me Today Scott Berkun, the author of books such as The Myths of Innovation, and Confessions of a Public Speaker, releases his latest book, The Year Without Pants: WordPress.com and the Future of Work.

The book gives an inside look at what it’s like to work at Automattic, and to work on something like WordPress.com. Scott was my direct team lead (of the team that I now lead) while he was at Automattic, so the book contains a lot of personal interaction with yours truly. It also happens to be a fun read with a bunch of interesting insights into distributed teams, management, and the open-source-based culture we have at Automattic, and which may well be the future of many more companies.

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 Tommy Lee Jones and Benicio del Toro in it, so I figured it would be at least decent. Instead of being just decent, I loved it. Apart from becoming a favorite movie, it started me down the path of discovering Tom Brown (who was a technical consultant on the skills and knife used in the movie) and a field of interest that continues today.

We were hungry, but we were ready, so we decided to just go to the airport and eat there. Airplane food tends to be horrible, but airport food is normally at least bearable. On the train heading to SFO, an incredible example of a hipster geek presented itself. We counted the following “authority indicators” testifying to his most definite geekiness. The first 5 were immediately obvious, but then he just kept pulling things out during his 10-minute ride:

After posting to peterme.com about how I’d like to see more tools available for the IA community, I got an email from Lisa Chan from Stanford saying that she was also looking into creating a Search Log Analyser, and that if I was going to be working on one, why don’t we work together! This is really cool, I love how the Internet allows things like this to happen. I am here in Perth, WA, knowing all of 2 other IAs personally, and yet I will now be collaborating with another IA from one of the largest Universities in the US to build a tool to help all IAs.

Fortnightly articles/reports posted by Monsieur Guru Nielsen himself. Some of these are pretty good, personally I think some of them are just plain stupid.

An example of taking things too far: in the most recent alertbox, Nielsen extrapolates his calculated statement that the companies he studied which would “spend $3,042 per employee annually to cover time spent on the sixteen tasks we measured” to mean that if we improved intranets to the best ones they saw in their tests, we would “save the world economy $1.3 trillion per year”… come on dude, seriously. You so can’t make that assumption.

I have decided that in the spirit of the dot-bomb, I should outsource some of my normal, daily operations. I am not talking about business, I am talking about life.

What it really comes down to is that I don’t have time to do everything that I’d like to do, and there is even more that I would like to do, and in fact soon will be doing! To this end, I realised that it would be worth listing out everything that takes up time in a normal day/week of my life, and analysing what, of that list, can be outsourced to someone else (no doubt at a price).