Cross-Datacenter File Replication

Asides, Linux

Anyone have any favorite tricks for geographically diverse real-time file replication on Linux? It seems like most information is pretty dispersed, and suggestions range from every-30-seconds rsync to putting all files as BLOBs in MySQL and replicating that. There has to be a better way. (The scariest part is Microsoft seems to show up first for most Googles I can think of, but Windows is not an option.)

WordPress World Tour

Asides

So I’m doing a little vacation this week and I’m going to be Florence, Italy until Tuesday the 29th, Venice until Friday the 1st, and then Copenhagen, Denmark through Sunday the 3rd. If anyone wants to do a WordPress/Photo Matt meetup while I’m in town, drop me a note. Also if you have any suggestions of things to do in any of these places please leave a comment. Blogging will be light this week, but I’ll be sure to take lots of pictures. 🙂

Thirty One

Asides

The first year of my thirties was both incredibly challenging and incredibly rewarding. I started a new decade and a new role as CEO at the same time, and at Automattic we grew to over 300 people and raised money for the first time in a while, both of which I couldn’t have predicted five or even two years ago.

My big takeaway from the year was the importance of habits and small actions for accomplishing big things. To be productive I don’t need any fancy setups or project management software, just a well-groomed todo list and a pomodoro timer. This year on my birthday I find myself in Egypt which is an awe-inspiring place in many ways, but most striking to me has been the enduring beauty of craftsmanship with access to only the simplest of tools.

In running, which I started this past summer while in Italy, I was able to slow down to go further and without injury, and ended up putting in about 140 miles which took my fitness to be better than it’s been so far in my adult life. At least half of those miles were with friends and you can’t underestimate the importance of friends in helping you overcome mental blocks. (Also flew 425k miles in 2014, a new record. You can run anywhere and with minimal equipment — it’s a great way to explore a city.)

Reading and writing, two of the activities still most important to me, benefitted from a “just do it” philosophy of putting one foot in front of the other. I published more words on ma.tt than any year since 2007, and I find blogging one of the most rewarding pastimes in my life. It was also a year of not trying to be all business all the time: I started reading fiction regularly after a decade away and letting the topics here drift wherever my interest is at the moment. Last year I talked about balance, and I think this is what drove many of the accomplishments I’m looking back on fondly now.

I’m proud of how 2014 went, and I hope to build on that foundation to be a better person and reach even more ambitious milestones in the year to come. Here’s to slowing down to go further, and tackling big tasks with friends.

All birthday posts: 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41.

Rich Brooks on Fast Company asks What’s the Best Blog Platform?. That’s an easy one to answer. There’s still some disagreement over “What’s the best CMS?” but we’re trying to make that one easy to answer, too.

NYC Meetup Update

Asides, WordPress

Based on the comments on the last entry I think we’re going to kick off the April 11 meetup at Bryant Park at 6:30, and if needed migrate for drinks at 8 PM when the park closes to someplace like Heartland Brewery on West 43rd. How’s that sound to the New Yorkers in the audience? Update: Scott says “The northwest corner of the park is the most accessible (south of the Starbucks, east of the Verizon shop). Plus that’s where the coffee is.” That’s where we’ll meet. I’ll be in a beige overcoat and green shirt.

Apple In My Eye

Uncategorized

So your Author would be a terrible blogger if he didn’t point out that iTunes is now available for Windows. It was immediately installed, requiring a reboot (the box had not been rebooted for 32 days), and preceded to crash consistently on a seemingly random set of files. It works swimmingly with about 95% of the files, but certain albums, when played or imported, crash iTunes every single time. Winamp, Windows Media Player, and every other media player installed works fine with said files. That said, one is very impressed with many of the features and how consistent it seems with the Mac version. Except the feature where it moves files out of their meticulously chosen folder hierarchy and renames them, losing track information in the process. Every feature but that one. Yes, it is an option, however the option does not communicate the weight it carries.

Ironically, today is also the day one decided to never by a Mac because one’s PCs were significantly cheaper and of comprable quality, the Windows OS is sufficently stable, and because of the beautiful things Michael Heilemann was able to do with Windows. (Not to mention the wonderful things he does with WordPress.) Something similar will be attempted here as soon as time permits. One program, Windows FX, was bought months ago as a result of its attractive functionality.

Update: I just saw this quote and thought it was worth including:

“We’re going to fight illegal downloading by competing with it,” said Jobs. “We’re not going to sue it. We’re not going to ignore it. We’re going to compete with it.”

—Steve Jobs. No wonder people love this guy. Hat tip: Wired.

Update: Something similar, but much worse happened to Adam.

Grey Followup

Uncategorized

On the bright side, last week’s hatchet job in Techcrunch generated some great blog posts. For whatever reason they don’t show up as links on Techcrunch’s page, but here’s some of the better ones:

To summarize some of my responses:

  • I have no problem with people making money from Open Source, in fact I think some of the most successful OS projects have profit motives aligned with user motives.
  • Related: I have no problem with Pligg being sold. I think it’s better than them selling links in the software.
  • It is possible to make money while giving your users something they want and provides value rather than something they never asked for. (Think of selling a hosted version vs. selling paid links meant to spam search engines.)
  • The fact that I made a similar mistake in the past gives me unique perspective into both sides of the issue.
  • The developer blogroll links in WordPress are nothing like the links being bought and sold for the intention of spamming search engines, but regardless they have been replaced with links to WordPress resources instead of individual contributors.
  • Duncan said “Money is money, no matter how you make it.” I could not disagree more.
  • While anyone can do almost anything with WordPress under its license, that doesn’t mean we have an obligation to promote folks who we feel are doing so in a way which is not ethical or in the best long-term interests of the community.

Tramadol Attack

Asides

Just had a spam attack, about 90 comments over the course of two hours I was away from the computer. Not a single one is visible because every one was caught by my filter. How to delete them all? Comments Mass edit mode → Search for IP → Check all → Delete checked. Basically less than five clicks to delete 90 comments. The search could have keyed on any part of the name, email, or comment. It took longer to write this sentence than it took to delete two hours of spammers work. This isn’t a new 1.3 feature, this has been in WordPress for months.

Ask Matt: Tips On Public Speaking

Ask Matt

I get asked a lot about tips on public speaking because I do it so frequently. Positive response when I give a talk is generally proportional to how relaxed I was when giving the presentation and on good days I’ll get comments like people were able to relate to what I was saying or that watching me calmed them down. I don’t mention this in the video, but besides breathing and remembering the audience is there to see you do well, the best way to relax is to know your material down cold. I’ve lived and breathed WordPress for almost 7 years now, so I can talk about it for hours without thinking twice. I think practicing and knowing your material well comes across most in your body language which probably affects how people perceive your presentation more than what you say.

https://videopress.com/v/VSvor57H

We recorded this before Scott Berkun’s new book Speaker Confessions was out, which I recommend now.

Over on the BruteProtect blog they have a look at the Jetpack Bloat Myth, and find that counter-intuitively even though Jetpack has more comprehensive functionality it’s faster than using individual plugins to do the same things. There are economies of scale to Jetpack’s approach, and it doesn’t even include the impact of doing things more advanced and complex like Related Posts. There’s a reason why some web hosts like WP Engine ban most related post plugins but encourage the use of Jetpack.

The performance of the plugin code, though still faster, is still a small difference when compared to the benefit of offloading certain tasks like image resizing, related posts, stats, video transcoding, and more in the future to the WordPress.com cloud (which is now across 11 datacenters worldwide).

Of course if you don’t need the functionality at all it’s always faster to have nothing, but that’s a shrinking minority. There are still more optimizations to be had, and in line with a performance focus in 2015 look for more improvements to come in the future. In the meantime, check out the Jetpack benchmarks.