Keyring 3.0

Well it’s been a while, but I’ve just pushed a 3.0 release of Keyring.

Keyring is a generalized framework for WordPress which handles authentication with, and authenticated requests to remote services. It provides a set of predefined “Services” which describe how to communicate with a collection of popular platforms, and also makes it easy for you to plug into that framework and define your own Services for other systems.

This version includes a bunch of improvements and compatibility updates, including all sorts of contributions from other folks. There are a lot of fixes and tweaks that have come back into the project as part of it being used on WordPress.com, and as part of the hiring process at Automattic.

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Business, Product, and Marketing Concepts for Engineers

I worked as a full stack engineer/developer for many years before going into more leadership type positions, where an understanding of the business itself became much more important than specific product experiences, features, or codebases. Along that journey I’ve needed to learn a lot of acronyms and concepts that aren’t a part of pure engineering, and would like to summarize some of the more fundamental pieces below in case they’re useful for others making a similar transition.

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Replacing Wink with Home Assistant

I used to have Wink set up, managing some smart home devices throughout our house. I liked it because the app UI was quite nicely done, and it seemed to be compatible with “everything”. I had even upgraded from their version 1 hub, to the version 2. But then a few months ago they decided (somewhat out of the blue) that they were going to start charging a subscription fee. Coupled with some recent outages and frequent command delays, and it was the “motivation” I needed to invest in a Home Assistant system, and move away from Wink entirely.

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Using Dynalist as a Productivity Tool

I’ve been searching for years for the “perfect tool” to help me take notes, organize ideas, and keep track of all the tasks I need to do. I’ve also been deeply obsessed with lists forever. At some point I came across Workflowy, which I quite liked. I don’t remember why, but I then discovered and switched over to Dynalist.io. I don’t know if it’s the perfect tool, but I’ve adapted a way of using it that’s working well for me. I now pay for a yearly subscription, and use it for most things.

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Remote Work At Scale

COVID-19 (aka coronavirus) has many companies suddenly experimenting with remote work for the first time. I tweeted yesterday that unfortunately people are likely to have a pretty rough time due to the rushed nature of the experiment, and some folks asked if I could expand on that, so here we are. There are already a bunch of write-ups, resources, and tools if you look around (including one from our CEO Matt, and this great webinar-format session from Cate and Nicole), so it’s worth getting other views and ideas as well.

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Management Communication: Priority Exceptions

Constantly-changing priorities and surprise projects erode team morale and leave everyone unsure of if they’re working on the most important thing, or if they’ll ever get to finish anything. While being adaptable and flexible is critical for most teams, it’s always important to have some kind of roadmap and approach to prioritization and planning work. There are many different ways to plan and prioritize your work; what’s important is that when priorities change — and they will change — you acknowledge that change and adapt quickly.

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Arc’teryx Norvan SL Hoody Review

Before we get into any details, let me just get this out of the way — I absolutely love this thing, and giggle every time I get to use it. It makes no sense, I know, but here we are.

OK — now that you know how biased I am, let’s jump into some details.

I have the black and red, size Large. I’m 6’4″ and have bizarrely long arms, but the Norvan SL Hoody fits as well (if not better) than most standard long-sleeve items I get my hands on, and isn’t too baggy around the body. When I first pull it out of the pouch it might be a little short (because the fabric is all crumpled up), but then it smoothes out to full length pretty quickly. The semi-rigid hood rim and extended and reflective cuffs are really nice touches, and help make this jacket feel like more than just a super-expensive poncho.

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Engineering Management Lessons From Mountain Biking

Since moving to Colorado, I’ve been lucky enough to get out mountain biking pretty frequently. I love it. On some rides you’re just trying to get up or down the mountain in one piece, but on some rides you get good time to think quite deeply. On a recent ride I was rolling around (pun intended, you’re welcome) some ideas about engineering management, and realized there are some good parallels between mountain biking and leading teams of engineers.

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Keyring 2.0 and Keyring Social Importers 2.0

Yesterday I released new versions of both Keyring and the Keyring Social Importers packages, containing a bunch of updates and new additions. If you’re already using them, you should have update notices in wp-admin. If you’re not yet, then download them at the links above, or search for “keyring” in wp-admin under Plugins > Add New.

What’s changed? It’s been a while since the last official release of Keyring, so there’s a bunch to catch up on:

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DJI Mavic Air Review

After drooling over it for months at Costco, I picked up a bundle package with a DJI Mavic Air back in November. I’ve now flown it a fair bit, and wanted to write up some observations on it.

First of all — this thing is amazing. It’s so much fun to fly, and honestly feels a bit like magic, especially when compared with cheaper, fully-manual quadcopters. Probably the coolest feature of this thing (for me, a n00b) is that if you let go of the control sticks, it’ll automatically just hover in place. Brilliant.

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Thoughts to Ponder

Loved these thoughts from the outgoing Chief Data Scientist of the White House:

The card I’ve carried in my notebook#YesWeCan pic.twitter.com/0XsDwdRWQw

— DJ Patil (NARA) (@DJ44) January 11, 2017

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  • Dream in years

  • Plan in months

  • Evaluate in weeks

  • Ship daily

  • Prototype for 1x

  • Builder for 10x

  • Engineer for 100x

  • What’s required to cut the timeline in 1/2?

  • What’s required to double the impact?

h/t ma.tt

New Year, New Theme

To ring in 2019, I’m changing this blog’s theme to Twenty Nineteen, the new default WordPress theme, designed and primarily created by my excellent colleague, Allan Cole (check out his music, published as The Stuyvesants, they’re groovy).

Apart from being pretty similar to, but a nice upgrade from the previous theme here, Twenty Nineteen also harnesses the full power of Gutenberg, the new WordPress Block Editor. I’m going to convert some posts to blocks so that I can use some of the better gallery options and whatnot, and will be using Gutenberg for everything going forward. It also reminds me a bit of the styling used throughout Instapaper, which I’ve spent a lot of time in lately 🙂

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Honeymoon in Japan

After our wedding, and cleaning everything up, we had just another day or two at home before heading off on our honeymoon. We decided to go to Japan, since neither of us had ever been there, and we both really wanted to go. It was a really amazing trip, even though it was brutally hot and humid at the time of year we went. We managed to do most of it on award points/miles as well, so that made it all even sweeter 🙂

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Married

Erika and I finally made it official and got married this year. We were legally married on July 5th (at the courthouse), and then we celebrated with friends and family properly on July 7th. Here are some pics from the week.

Thursday Courtroom Wedding + Photos

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Friday BBQ

We invited people from out of town over to our house for a casual BBQ on Friday the 6th. Since a huge portion of the people attending the wedding were from out of town, it ended up being a pretty big affair, but it was fun. I was running around like a madman, so I mostly forgot to take photos. Here are a couple though.

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Loosely Joined

I had to chuckle recently when I realized just how complex some of the systems in my life are, even if I rarely think about the details.

  1. Most nights, I weigh myself on a Withings wifi scale (an older version).
  2. That data syncs over Google Wifi, via a Comcast Xfinity connection, to the Nokia/Withings Health Mate service.
  3. Then MyFitnessPal automatically syncs the data from Health Mate, and keeps a copy,
  4. before Garmin Connect also syncs a copy to integrate back with other data (like heart rate and activities) .
  5. If I’ve been doing specific activities, then some of the data from Garmin Connect (although not that weight info) will also sync out to Strava and create activity records.

The last step remaining is that I want to hook up my copy of WordPress to sync all of the data back so that I have a copy under my direct control.

Fjällräven Classic USA, 2018

This year, for the third year in a row, I participated in the Fjällräven Classic USA here in Colorado. Read about the 2016 USA Fjällräven Classic and the 2017 USA Fjällräven Classic.

As with previous years, this was a 3 day, 2 night backpacking trip in the Colorado backcountry, hosted by Fjällräven and their sister brands. This year felt like they are really hitting their groove with organization, distance, and difficulty, and I think it was overall the “best” one yet.

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Specialized Enduro 29″

I bought a bike!

Back in Australia, back in the day, I had a Specialized P3 which I used for some downhill riding. I sold that eventually in San Francisco, after years of not really using it (it’s not a practical city-bike, and I didn’t have easy access to get out and mountain bike with it). When I moved to New York I bought a Cannondale Bad Boy 9, which was a much better choice for in the city. Fast forward a few years, and living in Denver means I’m close to mountains and a bunch of world-class downhill riding. In 2016 I picked up a Motobecane Boris X9 fatbike, which was fun, but pretty impractical.

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Backpack Review: Arc’teryx Brize 25L vs Patagonia Nine Trails 28L

Looking for a simple daypack for quick adventures? Me too. I’ve been using a Geigerrig Rig 1210 (looks something like this one) for a while, but found it to be a little too small, awkwardly configured, and generally just not really what I wanted. After weighing some options, I ended up with a decision between 2 packs: the Arc’teryx Brize 25, and the Patagonia Nine Trails 28L.

In getting there, I worked out a rough list of things I cared about:

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YouTube Service for Keyring

In 7072886 I added a first swing at a YouTube Service definition to Keyring. It’s based heavily on the Google Analytics one that was recently submitted via PR. It’s not part of an official release yet. I’m curious about enabling people to import the videos they publish on YouTube into a WordPress install though, as that feels like something that folks who use it heavily would want as part of their web presence.

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Keyring v1.9

I just released version 1.9 of the Keyring plugin for WordPress.

Keyring v1.9Keyring v1.9

This version includes a few pretty cool updates and additions, as described in the changelog:

  • Added a Google Analytics Service definition.
  • Added a Strava Service definition.
  • Added a “Settings” link to the plugin listing if you’re using the bundled Admin UI.
  • Fitbit tokens now refresh properly.
  • Tumblr now requires HTTPS, so updated all request URLs to use HTTPS.

My favorite part of this release is that I didn’t personally do most of the things in there. Two of my colleagues did some of it (Strava service and Tumblr fixes), while a generous and otherwise unknown contributor on Github added the Google Analytics service.

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iPhone X / High Sierra Update

Yesterday, I received my new iPhone X. I thought I’d post some notes on the painful process that has been switching over to it. Might be time to start experimenting with a Pixel.

I’m on the Apple Upgrade program, so I assumed it would be a relatively simple process to get bumped up to the next phone, since it’s been more than a year since I got the iPhone 7 Plus. Instead, it ended up involving talking to multiple different people at the Apple store before I could figure out how it all worked, and how to get a new phone, even though my current phone had a cracked screen. Their online eligibility check kept saying that I had used my allotted AppleCare instances, even though I’ve never used any. Eventually I found out that I need to just tell their system there’s nothing wrong with my phone, and then when I send it back in, I’ll end up being asked to pay the $29 to fix the screen, and then they’ll accept is as a trade-in. OK, fine.

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Ted Rheingold

I’m sad to hear that Ted Rheingold has lost his fight with cancer, and died on Monday. Through a pretty random turn of events, Ted was one of the very first people I met in the SF technology “scene”, back in 2005, after I moved to San Francisco. I attended the first BarCamp, and didn’t have a good way to get there. In amongst the communications about attending, Ted volunteered to give anyone a lift from SF down to the South Bay, so I accepted graciously, and grabbed a ride with him. We chatted all the way there and back, and on and off throughout the day. I remember Ted being open, energetic, passionate, and really light hearted about who he was, what he did, and what he valued. I can’t really imagine a better introduction to those days of the web, and to the community helping build it.

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Canoeing the Colorado

A few weeks ago, Erika and I joined some friends on the Colorado River for a repeat of a trip we took last year.

I got all my gear sorted out on Thursday afternoon/evening, then drove out to Fruita (our put-in point) on Friday morning. By noon we were all loaded up in our canoes and ready to hit the water.

This year’s highlight was probably the felon we ran into who claimed to be on the run. Seriously. Right when we started, we saw someone putting in on the other side of the river in a yellow kayak. Not too long later he caught up with us, and asked to borrow a phone. His story was confusing and rambling, but he claimed to be on the run from Federal Marshals, and was taking one last river trip before he was put away for 20+ years on a felony “paleolithic” offense, which apparently involved finding and trying to sell a dinosaur bone on federal property. The guy was wearing jeans and runners, and had nothing with him. Our guess is that he stole the kayak and was just making a run for it.

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Fjällräven Classic, USA, 2017

This week, I’ve been roaming the Colorado wilderness with 250 of my closest/unknown friends, participating in the second annual Fjällräven Classic, USA. I participated in the inaugural event last year, which conveniently fell during my 3-month sabbatical from work. At the time, I said that no matter what else was going on, I would definitely be attending again in 2017. As promised, when the 2017 Classic was announced, I immediately grabbed tickets, and this time even talked Erika into going.

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Working on an iPad

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.

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More 14ers – Grays and Torreys Peaks, Colorado

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.

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First 14er – Mt. Bierstadt

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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.

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Backpacking Eaglesmeare, Upper Cataract and Surprise Lakes, Colorado

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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.

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Fjällräven Classic 2016 (USA)

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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.

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SCOUT Epic, Days Seven & Eight (August 11 & 12)

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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.

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SCOUT Epic, Day Six (August 10)

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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.

(more…)

SCOUT Epic, Day Five (August 9)

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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.

(more…)

SCOUT Epic, Day Four (August 8)

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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.

(more…)

SCOUT Epic, Day Three (August 7)

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.

(more…)

SCOUT Epic, Day Two (August 6)

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.

(more…)

SCOUT Epic, Day One (August 5)

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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.

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Southern Colorado and Utah (SCOUT) Epic Roadtrip/Adventure

SCOUT Map

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.

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Minnesota Boundary Waters Canoe Area Adventure

As chance would have it, in the weeks leading up to my Colorado River canoe trip, I managed to hitch onto another canoe trip. This one was a little more “extreme”. A group of us were going to Minnesota for a friend’s wedding, and so the plan was to get there early, drive up to the Minnesota Boundary Waters, and head out into them on canoes for a 4 day/3 night adventure. Apart from this being the first time I’d flown into a different state to go camping, I’d also be going with 4 people I’d never camped with, and canoeing into very, very remote wilderness, where we had to portage our canoe between lakes, and were beyond the reach of motorized vehicles of any kind (let alone cell phone reception).

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Colorado River Canoe Adventure

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This was my first ever canoe-camping adventure, and actually crossed something off my “bucket list” — going on a multi-day canoe-camping trip. I’ve kayaked a fair bit before, but have only been canoeing once or twice, and only on lakes, so in very calm water. For this trip, I was lucky enough to just tag along on something organized by Erika’s friend, Tom. He has actually done a very similar trip a few times before, so it was good to have someone who knew the score to point us in the right direction.

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Backyard Makeover

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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.

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All New WordPress.com

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Almost 2 years ago, I wrote about how the future of WordPress needed to be a REST-based API, with a JavaScript client on top of that. There were even public rumors that, gasp, we were thinking about porting WordPress to Node.js. Well, while that’s not exactly true, it’s closer to the truth than a lot of people probably realized.

We are in fact using Node.js to power part of WordPress.com now. If you go to https://wordpress.com while logged in, your request is handled by a Node.js server, and the entire UI is written in JavaScript, although the majority of it is actually React.js. Unless you end up back in wp-admin, your admin/editing/posting/dashboard experience on WordPress.com is now handled entirely (well, almost; we’re still working on some pieces still) with JavaScript.

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Guac-Off

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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.

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Home Automation/Presence

I’ve been thinking about home automation a bit recently, and I realized that what I want as a big part of a system is some sort of generic presence-system. I’m imagining something along the lines of:

  • Small/cheap nodes that can be plugged in around a house/space
  • The nodes would form a mesh and talk to each other
  • Nodes would determine the strength of a signal (Bluetooth LE?) and “discuss” it amongst each other to determine which one you’re closest to, and thus roughly “where” you are (triangulate your location based on signal strengths)
  • Nodes would all connect to a server/service (could be locally-hosted), where they would broadcast your current location somehow. Maybe something like a Socket.IO server, so that other services could connect and receive live updates of location changes?

I wonder if this could be hacked together from iBeacons somehow, or if it’s too much the reverse of what they’re intended for? Does this already exist? Is there a better/simpler solution already available?

Benchmade Volli vs Kershaw Blur

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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.

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Flint-Knapping Arrow Heads

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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.

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One Less Plugin, Thanks Jetpack

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As a developer, I’m a huge fan of “red changesets”; when you get to delete more code than you add. Less code means less maintenance, less potential for bugs, security problems, etc. Today I got to “red changeset” the plugins powering this website because I realized I could just go ahead and delete the plugin I was using for update notifications.

I’ve been running a plugin here for a while now that emails me when I have updates available for plugins, themes or core on my WordPress installation. With the latest version of Jetpack though, I get that notification via a simple little indicator on WordPress.com (and I’m there every day already). In addition to the notification, I’ve enabled the auto-update feature for all plugins on all sites connected via Jetpack, so now I don’t even have to think about keeping my plugins up to date.

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Simple Search Operators

I’ve long wanted to be able to do some simple, operated-powered searches within WordPress (especially relevant in a project I’m working on at Automattic). After a conversation with Allen, where he wanted to do the same thing, I figured I’d just whip up a quick plugin to see how hard it’d be. Turns out the answer is “not very”.

Simple Search Operators is a quick plugin that expands the functionality of the default search system in WordPress so that you can use a few useful operators (might look at adding some more at some point) [all links in the following list go to live searches on this site, using that operator]:

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WordCamp Saratoga

Through some lucky scheduling, I was able to attend both LevelUp Con and WordCamp Saratoga in a single trip. I spoke at WordCamp about how to build a quick Backbone.js application which used WordPress as the backend (interfacing via the REST API). I thought my talk went OK, although I didn’t love it to be honest, and in hindsight I kind of wish I’d dived a bit harder into some better examples of how Backbone works with Views and whatnot. Here are the slides I used:

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LevelUp Con

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Last week, I attended the first ever LevelUp Con (which WordPress.com sponsored) in Saratoga Springs, New York. I was really impressed with the event, which was organized by the crew at Mad Glory to help draw attention to upstate New York’s tech scene, and to expand people’s horizons and help them cross-train a bit.

Apart from the wonderful people, beautiful setting (upstate NY is ridiculously gorgeous at this time of year) and smoothly-operated event logistics, there were a few really good talks that made the 2-day event click for me.

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Phantogram Blew My Mind

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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.

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Why JavaScript Is The Next (or first) Programming Language You Should Learn

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.

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The Future of WordPress: REST API + Javascript single-page app?

DISCLAIMER: Personal thoughts only, based on what I’m seeing around the web over the last few years.

Working on o2 for the last few months, and spending more and more time in amongst the Javascript community at events like jQueryConf, BackboneConf and dotJS, I’ve started thinking about the future of WordPress differently.

WordPress currently consists of a large, complex, PHP codebase, sitting on top of a MySQL backend. plugins are primarily PHP, with a light sprinkling on Javascript to mostly provide UI “candy”. Part of the reason for that is probably because:

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The Year Without Pants

The Year Without Pants

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.

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A Whole New Dented Reality

Back in April, this blog celebrated 10 years of existence, and it’s been almost five years since the theme on this site changed. Yesterday I decided to just go ahead and flip the switch on something I’ve been working on here and there since late last year. It’s a complete new, very experimental theme that I call “Homeroom“.

There are some specific things driving what I was aiming for with Homeroom:

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Keyring v1.5 & Social Importers v1.4

Yesterday, I released version 1.5 of Keyring, and version 1.4 of the Keyring Social Importers bundle for WordPress. This update moves the Social Importers away from using a postmeta value (keyring_service) and introduces a new taxonomy that keeps track of where posts were imported from. It’s optimized towards management within wp-admin, but you can also use it for front-end queries of your posts. The update for Keyring introduces a new service file for Moves, and fixes a bug in the OAuth2 base service.

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Client Education Library for Information Architects (CELIA)

Aim:

Provide a collection of resources which will help Information Architects to educate potential and existing clients about the importance and relevance of Information Architecture and strategy.

Contents of Collection:

  • Diagrams
  • Quotes
  • Statistics
  • Case Studies/Examples
  • Online Resources

A search facility would be available, allowing you to hunt down certain things, as well as all widgets being categorised carefully and fully browsable. I’d like to be able to give everything a “permanent URL” within the collection as well, so that people can link back to it’s entry, and “reference” their resources properly, thus keeping authors happy(er) about the fact that their work is being used by other people in a relatively generic format.

Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox

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.

She Wants The World… And a Search Log Analyser!

Just kidding, but I got some details back from Lisa C, and she appears to have some very specialised requirements for her system. I have suggested that it might be better if we work together to develop a “base system” which would include the complete logging functionality, and then she can customise and/or extend the reporting/analysis interface as required.

I think this approach should work quite well, allowing me to collaborate on a logging module, and to refine the database schema, then develop a generic, “useful-across-the-board” analysis interface, which should be capable of being extended easily. Metabase, here I come.

The Silence of the Asilomarians

After joining the AIfIA (and paying the membership fee), I have been somewhat disappointed with the response I received from the CELIA idea.

I signed up for the IA Library project with AIfIA, and have suggested that perhaps CELIA could be done as a part of that project, but have received no response. Zero. Nada. Zip.

I think Karl and I are going to start planning it out a little, hopefully I will be able to knock together a simple-ish system which can handle the stuff we would be working with, and that would allow us to get started. I think it’s a really valuable thing, and something that perhaps isn’t as important is the US, because IA is more established, but it sure is important here, where I have met all of about 3 people who even took a punt on what Information Architecture is!

We have response

Well, I thought they were silent, turns out I just needed to put the idea of CELIA to the whole AIfIA membership to get a response.

After being sparked on by a discussion on the [aifia-members] list, I posted about CELIA and had some reasonable responses. One of them was from James Robertson, of Step Two, an Australian Knowledge Management and CMS company based in Sydney – so he has offered to be a part of it, and this can be Australia’s biggest contribution to the community yet!

Where Are You Stanford?

Lisa Chan from Stanford emailed me, wanting to know if we could work together on building a search log analyzing system. I emailed her back with a stack of the details of stuff that I was planning and haven’t heard back… I wonder why not? Maybe she’s taken my ideas and is off building it without me?

UPDATE: I still haven’t heard from Lisa :P