Хабрахабр / Блоги / WordPress / Мэтт Мюлленвег. I have no idea what that means, but I was interviewed for a Russian Digg-like website and if you can read Russian it might be worth checking out.
A Day on Necker Island
I had the opportunity to visit Necker Island and hang with some great folks including Sir Richard Branson, these pics are a collection of a day on Necker Island in the British Virgin Islands. (Sorry if you when you first tried to load this it crashed your browser, there was a bug in my gallery where it was loading the full-size images instead of the resized. All fixed!)

Thirty-seven
I turn 37 today. I look around and I feel incredibly lucky to be writing this after a topsy-turvy year. I have health. I have friends whom I love. These are all good reasons to feel optimistic about the future. A few unconnected thoughts today:
My father had me when he was exactly 13,300 days old, and this year I passed that number of rotations of the Earth.
It’s hard to plan when so much is changing, so resolutions this year haven’t felt the same. But in times like these it’s even more important to plan for the long-term. A look back, once a year, is enough to remind of what remains.
I’m so thankful for the internet. It’s where I learned and practiced my trade. It’s where I connect every day with the most interesting and eclectic group of people I could imagine, a modern day Florence during the Renaissance. I hope to make a lot more internet and enable others to do the same.
Many years ago I said “Technology is best when it brings people together.” This quote has taken on a life of its own on motivational posters and images. When I first said it I think I had in mind WordCamps and meetups and other physical gatherings; this year it transformed for me seeing how technology brought together those separated by the pandemic. This year has appeared divisive, so it’s easy to overlook how many times people came together. It’s like the old saying, it’s not how many times you fall, it’s how many times you get up. Fall thirty-six times, get up thirty-seven.
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.
Upcoming WordCamps
I really enjoyed attending WordCamps in Houston, Savannah, and Salt Lake City the past few weeks. You can always find upcoming WordCamps here, and I’m currently planning on attending Jerusalem (this Sunday), Portland (September 18-19), and Philippines (October 2). I’m looking forward to meeting more of the WordPress community and also answering your questions in the Town Hall sessions.
I’m really excited abou the new Jetpack, it includes toolbar notifications, mobile push for iOS, a new REST API, and fixes to the contact form.
Six Apart and Live Journal
I’m a little late to this, but the word is that Six Apart is buying LiveJournal. Congrats to the 6A and LJ teams! Big news, however you cut it. However, the question is: what exactly are they buying? LiveJournal has about 5.6 million accounts, but only about 2.4 million of these are active. That’s still pretty nice though, considering I imagine it’s about 24x what Typepad/Movable Type have now. Is it the technology? That’s already open source so they would have access to that anyway, and it’s Perl (which is 6A’s core competency) so I’m sure they could find they way around. (I wonder what will happen to the Open Source project after the dust has settled though?) That leads me to think it must be the people and engineers at LJ that 6A is after. Is this enough to position them against Microsoft and Google, as many have been suggesting?
98.6% of LiveJournal users don’t pay a thing, but that still gives 6A ~93,000 accounts paying $25/year. That revenue will be nice, especially since 6A has so many employees, but I don’t think it’s the coup most people are expecting. Remember the people who invested $10M in Six Apart are expecting it to be a quarter of a billion dollar business. It’ll be interesting to hear what the official word is on this, if and when an official word comes out. I’m probably missing something obvious. (And where is Yahoo in all of this? They better hurry up and buy someone too.)
Pownce
I’m really enjoying Pownce.

Jay Z + Me
I think it was Dustin Curtis who said something along the lines of “you can learn a lot about someone by their bucket list,” and he had posted his publicly recently. (Posting it is a great idea by the way, people will help you with it.) I began to think about mine, which was a little strange because I’ve been trying to move away from desiring things or experiences and just be more grateful in the present, but immediately a few music ones came to mind: have WordPress name-checked in a major hip-hop song, be in a rap video, and perform with one of my favorite artists (somehow).
It was less than a week later I got an email from a friend who was helping organize a hush-hush event where Jay-Z would sing his song Picasso Baby over and over 6 hours while interacting with various artists and an audience as a performance piece, and there might even be an opportunity to be one of the people he interacted with. My jaw dropped.
Continue reading Jay Z + MeWordPress Party Tonight
Tonight (Monday March 30) at 7 PM we’re opening up the new Automattic space at Pier 38 for the first time because so many of our friends will be in town for Web 2.0 Expo and all their fun events. Come by our spot (on Embarcadero in between Brannan and Townsend) starting at 7 PM and enjoy good music, free booze, and geeky friends. We’re on the left corner and there’s a bunch of circles in the window and an Automattic sign over the door. (Sorry for the late announcement, if you could help us get the word out I’d appreciate it.) You can RSVP on Facebook here.
T-Shirt Plea
Open letter to free schwag people: Not all geeks are XXL! There is a reason the small and medium shirts are the first to go. Please keep the smaller geeks in mind when purchasing your merch. Conference organizers: make t-shirt size part of the registration so you can give your vendors a heads-up to the size makeup of the conference. (Other than that, Gnomedex is going great.)
Starbucks Cheer Chain
At Starbucks people have been starting “cheer chains” where they pay extra money to pick up the coffee of the person behind them in the drive-thru. Some have gone 2 solid hours. The blogger is cynical, but some of the comments are from baristas that work at Starbucks. I want to believe.
State of the Word 2018
Over the weekend I was in Nashville with over a thousand other WordPress enthusiasts. I met a ton of people, learned a lot, and was able to share the annual State of the Word address with the audience, which is a big summary of what WordPress has been up to and where it’s going. This year we covered user testing, Gutenberg, 5.0, the future phases of Gutenberg, all the latest and greatest blocks, new minimum PHP requirements, the adoption of 5.0, and some event and community updates. You can also see just the slides. The Q&A is here in a separate video.
If you’d like a text summary and commentary on the speech, Post Status and WP Tavern both have good write-ups.
Single Malt Scotch Episode
The Single Malt Scotch Episode – Episode #509. I was on Wine Library TV with the inimitable Gary Vaynerchuk talking not about wine, but scotch. Much trouble ensues. Check it out! I ended up leaving my laptop at Gary’s store and had to go back to Jersey later that day. I took a few moments to browse around and discovered an awesome cheese called Ombra.
Buzz TV
Technorati Buzz TV yesterday: “Before Jesus was a carpenter he was a… gay escort?” No blog reactions at the time of this post. Has Technorati gone tasteless, or are you going to subscribe to the videocast and use Technorati more now? I’m curious about your thoughts.
Brands Everywhere
While brushing my teeth this morning, which is usually when my mind wanders, I noticed that just on the counter everything I was looking at had a brand or logo of some sort on it. It’s usually invisible to me but once I noticed it became garish as Times Square.
I counted 11 brands on the counter at that exact moment: Dr. Hauschka, Orabrush, Common Good (soap), Kohler (sink), Bongio (faucet), Philips (toothbrush), Rembrandt, Royal Velvet (toothpaste), Sonos, Neorest (toilet), and Tom’s of Maine (mouthwash). My iPhone was on the counter but the Apple was covered in a WordPress iPhone case, I guess a 12th brand, but the only one I chose to be there.
None of these labels are easy to remove either — the Common Good, a liquid soap dispenser, looked like it was going to be easy but as it started to peel off lots of sticky residue was left behind. I’ll try soaking it later. For most of the others, including the sink and faucet, the brand was embedded in a way that would be impossible to remove without switching the contents to a different container (toothpaste, mouthwash, or moisturizer) or sanding something off (toothbrush, Sonos…).
Earlier this year I attended Burning Man for the first time, and one of the things you notice after a day there is the complete absence of brands — it’s considered gauche to have visible branding there, some people even cover up small logos (Patagonia, the Polo horse) on their clothes. As much as the rest of the experience was bizarre, living a few days in the absence of brands and advertising makes it as alien as anything else.
I don’t think you can call it a trend, but it is interesting that brands like Muji or high-end fashion like Bottega Veneta distinguish themselves as much by the absence of branding as their product quality, the visual antithesis of Louis Vuitton luggage. It’s like the first level of affluence is about broadcast, and then the ultimate level is about (apparent) minimalism.
But for regular, everyday goods, how can we get all of the advertising off them? I don’t need my sink telling me who made it. If there’s a brand around me, I want it to be one I choose. I think this is one reason people appreciate the ability to 100% customize WordPress, and counter-intuitively why most choose to leave the “Powered by” somewhere on the site, because they have the choice.
Take a look around you, how many visible brands or logos can you count?
Update: Om writes on An Unbranded Life.
The Beginning of the End
Jacques Distler was flooded by random comments using a script specially designed for MovableType called FloodMT. Terrato.org seems to be down however the scripts are still widely available. We are working hard to address this sort of problem, for example comment throttling has been in WordPress from the beginning, but it is not a trivial problem.
WordPress in Sweden
Edenstrom wrote in the other day: “Several Swedish companies are pioneers using WordPress 2 as their new open source CMS platform. The nationwide magazine Fokus.se) and the food site taffel.se are two fresh examples. The bureau goodold.se are promoting WordPress as their choice of CMS.”
Facts Backfire
“In reality, we often base our opinions on our beliefs, which can have an uneasy relationship with facts. And rather than facts driving beliefs, our beliefs can dictate the facts we chose to accept. They can cause us to twist facts so they fit better with our preconceived notions. Worst of all, they can lead us to uncritically accept bad information just because it reinforces our beliefs. This reinforcement makes us more confident we’re right, and even less likely to listen to any new information.”
— Joe Keohane in How facts backfire. Hat tip: Ramit Sethi’s psychology bookmarks.
OS Enemy of State
Guardian: When using open source makes you an enemy of the state. “The US copyright lobby has long argued against open source software – now Indonesia’s in the firing line for encouraging the idea in government departments”
La Nacion Interview
When I was in Buenos Aires a few months ago I had the pleasure of chatting with Ariel Torres for a few hours, we had a great conversation. Parts of this have now made it into La Nacion as the article Matt Mullenweg, el chico Web. If you speak Spanish, it’s worth checking out. Hat tip: Mariano.