Playing simultaneous games against both children might have been less challenging if they hadn’t both kept trying to start fights with one another at the same time! 😂 | Continue reading
Rosie, who like me never even considered taking Automattic's alignment offer, writes about her experience of this week's meetup. | Continue reading
I’m back home from Mexico (and feeling a little worse for wear), where this young lady wanted to let me know that I was sorely missed. | Continue reading
As I come to the end of a week in Mexico with ~400 of my the smartest, friendliest, open-source-loving geeks I could wish to know, I come to realise that Automattic's meetups are just... magical. | Continue reading
Goodbye, Tulum! You were delightful, if very hot. It’s time for me to head back to the UK. | Continue reading
Cassie Jones asks what EXIF photo metadata would - or should - look like for a photograph taken on the moon. It got me thinking, a bit. | Continue reading
From safely outside of its predicted path, just around the Yucatan coast, Hurricane Milton seems like a forboding and distant monster. A growing threat whose path will thankfully take it away, not towards, me. My heart goes out to the people on the other side of the Gulf of Mexic … | Continue reading
It’s a bit hard to perform close-up magic to an audience 40 metres deep, so I pre-recorded my favourite card trick! Then I talked over it, explaining to colleagues from my division why it’s my favourite bit of slight-of-hand, and what great magic tricks have in common with great … | Continue reading
It’s 05:30 local time on the third day of my work meetup in Tulum, on Tyne Caribbean Coast of Mexico, and I was just woken by incredibly heavy rain. I got up and stepped out until it, and was surprised to discover that it’s almost as warm as the shower in my bathroom. In the […] | Continue reading
Something I’ve long enjoyed about Automattic gatherings is the opportunity to meet some the most diverse characters you’ll ever find in one place. But today was the first time I’ve ever been at a beachside disco that was attended by a foraging racoon. | Continue reading
Max props to my employer for providing pronoun pins not just in a diversity of options but also offering blank ones for people not represented by any of the pre-printed options. | Continue reading
It took almost twenty hours of travelling but I made it to Mexico! | Continue reading
Think I blew Ruth‘s mind this morning when I set off for a week in Mexico with only a medium-sized, underseat-suitable backpack. But since working for Automattic five years ago I’ve totally been bitten by the travelling-light bug. Highly recommended! | Continue reading
This week, Automattic made a very generous offer to employees who didn't feel aligned with the company and its leader: to pay them to leave. 8.4% of the company took it, and it's been a heartbreaking time, but we'll build back stronger, I'm sure. | Continue reading
Harry Segell’s 1938 play Heaven Can Wait went on to inspire such an extraordinarily long legacy of follow-ups. I’ve only seen the most-recent few and my experience is that the older iterations are better, so I probably ought to watch Here Comes Mr. Jordan, right? | Continue reading
This morning’s actual breakfast order from the 7-year-old: “A sesame seed bagel with honey, unless there aren’t any sesame seed bagels, in which case a plain bagel with honey on one half and jam on the other half, unless there aren’t any plain bagels, in which case a cinnamon and … | Continue reading
My colleague Paolo Belcastro invites you to play a little game: one of these phrases that begins "wp" is not like the others... | Continue reading
I've been doing a bit of tidying-up of the mess that is my personal Internet hosting. I've made a lot of progress, but the rest is probably going to have to wait until later in the year. | Continue reading
Ana Tudor shared an absolutely gorgeous effect based on SVG filters, CSS properties, linear-gradients, and (after all of that) relatively-basic animations. It's pretty amazing. | Continue reading
At work, we recently switched expenses system to one with virtual credit card functionality. I decided to test it out by buying myself lounge access for my upcoming work trip to Mexico. Unfortunately the new system mis-detected my lounge access as being a purchase from lingerie c … | Continue reading
After fourteen years of waiting, The Duck Song trilogy finally got a (proper, official, canonical, by-the-original-creator) fourth episode. | Continue reading
We made it! This young furbaby managed to pose a bleppy picture every single day of Bleptember. Thanks for coming along for the ride! | Continue reading
“You want more Bleptember pictures? I demand payment in the form of tummy-scritches!” (Wow, it’s the penultimate day of Bleptember. ) | Continue reading
The eldest is really getting into her WW2 studies at school, so I arranged a trip for her and a trip to the ever-excellent Bletchley Park for a glimpse at the code war that went on behind the scenes. They’re clearly looking forward to the opportunity to look like complete swots o … | Continue reading
This checkin to GC9GTV3 Drive Slowly; Fox Crossing reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. Noticed while on a dog walk that the container looked a little loose, so came by to tighten it up. Noticed that the logbook was missing – muggled? – so replaced t … | Continue reading
Tttttthbbptt. The sound of a bleppy dog deflating like a balloon, this Twenty-Eighth of Bleptember | Continue reading
Wouldn't it be nice if there were a standard for multilingual emails? Oh wait, there is! Let's see how it works, and whether it's (ever going to be) ready for mainstream use... | Continue reading
Joost de Valk weighs in on the WP Engine drama, but pivots into some excellent ideas that think bigger about the future of the WordPress community, contribution, and collaboration. I'm not 100% convinced by his ideas, but I'm enormously impressed by his big-picture thinking. | Continue reading
This Bleptember pic looks a bit like a political poster to me. Vote Dog, for a future with More Ham, Fewer Vacuum Cleaners! | Continue reading
The YouTube channel @simonscouse has posted exactly two videos. The first came a little over ten years ago. It shows a hand waving and then wiggling its fingers in front of a patterned wallpaper. The second came a little over five years ago, and shows a hand - the same hand? - wa … | Continue reading
Matt Mullenweg kicked off a battle of words between Automattic and the WordPress Foundation and hosting company WP Engine. Without weighing in on the legal aspects (IANAL), I've written up my thoughts. | Continue reading
A round of especially-crazy zoomies on the morning of this Twenty-Sixth of Bleptember was apparently too much for this little pupper, who’s now looking like she’s in need of a morning nap. | Continue reading
Happy Twenty-Fifth of Bleptember from our adorkable doggle. | Continue reading
The Twenty-Fourth of Bleptember will go down as a Good Day in the diary of our warmth-loving dog. It was finally cold and autumnal enough that we lit the fireplace, affording her the opportunity to snuggle up as close to it as we’d permit her too. | Continue reading
Our doggo’s sleepy face this rainy Twenty-Third of Bleptember seems to say: “Mondays, am I right?” | Continue reading
This checkin to GC3WYMN Tactically Clever Placing reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. I solved this puzzle ages ago but when I came to find it the GZ was so full of dubious and disgusting litter that I didn’t want to go poking around. I decided to r … | Continue reading
It looks like a rainstorm is imminent this Twenty-First of Bleptember, but that won’t stop this optimistic blepper from waiting near the front door in case anybody’s willing to take for a walk. (She hates the rain, but sometimes if she’s found it to be pouring down out the back d … | Continue reading
When she’s in need of some love and attention, like this Twentiest of Bleptember, my dog will place herself underfoot at my desk. She won’t necessarily put her blep away, though. | Continue reading
When Juan Pablo Sarmiento thought to himself "couldn't Sex and the City's love triangles be squared-away by polyamory?" he didn't just sit down and write slashfic. No; he came up with a formula for idealised polycules, and open-sourced the algorithm. That's my kind of nerdity! | Continue reading
She might not have completely slept through me serving her a dog treat this Nineteenth of Bleptember, but our dog was still dozy enough from her nap that she didn’t notice for a while that I’d placed it directly onto her bleppy tongue. 😅 | Continue reading
I replied to Steve Faulkner's 2022 post about screen readers and emoji, highlighting the underlying interpretation problem with emoji, and sharing a topical joke that Chris McCausland made on Would I Lie To You? a few years prior. | Continue reading
“Is is walkies time yet? How about now? Now? What about now?” Her blep partially-engaged, our doggo buzzes with excited anticipation as I put on my shoes. | Continue reading
More mlem than blep, but I ❤️ this picture of our happy pupper mid-playtime too much not to share it with you this Seventeenth of Bleptember. Photo courtesy Lisa from Muddy Paws. | Continue reading
Usually our dog ignores the television, but when a horse appeared it was interesting enough that she sat up to take notice. Not interesting enough for her to put away her half-asleep blep, though. | Continue reading
This checkin to GC9XJDB WLMCP #2E Bridge The Gap reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs. A quick and easy cache-and-dash in-between errands. I’ve got gardening gloves; I’ve got supplies to make brunch… and I’ve got ten minutes spare, so I came to find t … | Continue reading
“What’chu lookin’ at?” our doggo appears to ask, this Fifteenth of Bleptember. | Continue reading