A bit of sightseeing. Milan at sunset.
Open Source Ghost
If you’re up for a morning laugh you should read one of the most brain-dead posts on open source I’ve ever seen. So many different things are mixed up there it’s hard to keep track, it’s like twenty issues tangentially related all being tied together in a conspiracy theory that is interesting but frightening. I left a comment but it hasn’t shown up yet. Update: The comments and pings have been updated and they’re letting all viewpoints through, so speak your mind over there if you want to.
General Motors using WordPress
General Motors Embraces Open Source for New Community Site. “GM has introduced a new website called GMnext. The site utilizes WordPress and launching in spring a Wiki allowing General Motors to get better feedback on topics such as energy, design and technology from the community.”
2.1 downloads
Version 2.1 of WordPress has been downloaded an average of 19,483 times a day since it was released. The increased traffic on the site as a result has put a strain of the single server it runs on, we’re adding more soon.
On the new Simplenote
Last week we relaunched Simplenote, an app Automattic acquired along with Simperium earlier this year. The coverage so far has been really overwhelming with great articles:
But, even after my foray into Simplenote alternatives and doing research and trying out other note-taking apps, I’ve stuck with Simplenote as my iOS note-taking app of choice. […] However, I could consolidate them all into just one app if I had to. And that app would be Simplenote. The reason I’d choose Simplenote is because it’s a quick, easy-to-use app with great search and it has fast, reliable sync.
Shawn Blanc: The New Simplenote Apps
Go check it out. For me it was easy – even though I dropped Simplenote, I had kept NVAlt syncing with it in anticipation of an update as good as this one. I launched it, logged in and a few moments later I was back up and running. Best of all, Simplenote is back on my first home screen.
Charlie Sorrel: Like Rocky, Simplenote Is Back In Front After Years Of Neglect
Simplenote has always kept the focus on content — your content. With a bare minimum chrome in its apps, Simplenote has stayed away from flashy gradients, big UI elements and detailed icons and instead, has offered a minimal, mostly white user interface to its users. I liked everything about Simplenote, so paying for its Premium subscription and supporting the service was a no brainer for me.
Preshit Deorukhkar: Simplenote — The Perfect Notes App Suite
Also the Simplenote for Mac app rising in the app store listing. I am excited about all of this above and beyond what any rational measure would support.
Probably the most comprehensive was by Ellis Hamburger in the Verge, Simplenote reborn: the first great notes app is back. I’d recommend reading the entire thing. Ellis asked me a number of questions via email and I’d like to share the entirety with you here:
What is so compelling about Simplenote, and why exactly was it worth “reviving?”
From the day I first used Simplenote it felt like a breath of fresh air in a crowded sea of cluttered apps. I use and rely on the service every day. We do many things at Automattic, but our core passion is creating great products. When we see something we feel isn’t our best work it bugs us until we’re able to loop back and iterate on it — it’s a blessing and a curse. This latest iteration of Simplenote on Android, OS X, and iOS is something we’re all very excited about sharing with the world.
How big a role did Simplenote play in Automattic acquiring Simperium?
It depends on how you look at it: I probably would have never heard of Simperium if it wasn’t for Simplenote, and the app really demonstrates the power of the Simperium API and the tastefulness of the people who created it. But the bigger interest was in what we could build alongside Fred and Mike on top of Simperium across all our products.
Where do Simplenote and Simperium fit with Automattic? Will any of each service’s features make their way into your other products, like WordPress, or do you intend to operate them separately?
Simplenote and WordPress share one key characteristic: they’re about writing. They both aspire to become invisible and be a canvas for your creativity. WordPress has succeeded above its competitors year after year because we’re ruthlessly focused on the experience of the author, and I saw the same spirit in Simplenote. It fits in Automattic like a glove.
One of the keys of Simplenote is, well, its simplicity. I think as we integrate it more with the broader Automattic ecosystem it’ll look more like Simplenote inside of WordPress rather than vice versa. It’s all backed by an easy-to-integrate API so if people want something more complex someone will build a client for that.
Simperium is at the core of several new things we’re either building or hope to build in the near future. We’re investing quite a bit to make the service robust and flexible for our needs as a top-ten internet site, and that development will benefit everyone who uses the service much the same way our investment in anti-spam benefits the internet at large through Akismet. You will start to see the Simperium engine make its way into almost everything we do.
Will Simplenote someday be a fruitful business? If so, how?
The beauty of Simplenote being under Automattic’s wing is that we are already blessed with incredibly fruitful businesses in WordPress.com, Akismet, and VaultPress. The biggest thing I didn’t like about the old app was the ads, and as you’ve noticed those are gone in this new version. Our main goal is to pour our heart into something and make it great, then share it with the world. I find Simplenote indispensable, delightful, and use it every day, and I hope you will too.
That’s that, I hope that you check out Simplenote and give it a try. It’s now available for Android, iOS 7, and Mac.
Red Herring Alert
I just got a Google alert for a Red Herring article on Six Apart set to publish in a few days. They mention us here: “Critics of Six Apart say that WordPress, a blog publishing platform developed by a grassroots team, is more robust than Movable Type. WordPress is also open source and free. But things are different in Six Apart’s cash-crop enterprise space, where support and security are at the top of the list. Half of Movable Type servers sit behind a firewall, says Mr. Berkowitz.”
South Africa: Stormhoek Tour
Sunday tour of the Stormhoek wine farm; pizza + pool.
Cool Powerbook Cases
My bud Kelly just pointed me to these cool Powerbook bags. This looks like it could work. I want something very slim and form-fitting for my 12″ to basically protect it from scratches. Most of the time it’ll probably be inside my messenger bag, but I need to protect it from scratches inside of that. Any suggestions?
Yahoo Mail (or lack thereof)
I saw Ernie had done some work on the new Yahoo sites so I thought I’d log in to check it out. Notepad was… a textarea. Calendar was cool. Contacts still had all the information I had imported 4 years ago, which I thought was pretty neat. When I went to the mail tab, however, I was greeted by this not-so-friendly notice:
Your Yahoo! Mail account is no longer active.
Why is my account inactive?
Yahoo! Mail deactivated your mail account because either:
- You have not logged into your account in the last 4 months, or
- You have asked that your mail account be deactivated
What does this mean?
- All emails, folders, attachments and preferences have been deleted
- All messages sent to saxmatt02@yahoo.com are being bounced back to the sender
- You can still use your Yahoo! ID to access other registered services on Yahoo!
- Deleted information cannot be recovered
Protect your account!
Subscribe to Yahoo! Mail Plus and you will not be required to sign in […]
I got tired of typing. I think everyone at Yahoo should be banned from using exclamation points for a month, even in their code. I hope I didn’t have anything important in that email account.
Wired has a fun and informative look at How to Rig a Presidential Election in 1000 Easy Steps. Basically it’s impossible — I hadn’t really thought of this before, but every precinct has its own officials from both parties that certify everything, there are just a ton of people involved at every step of the process. All that said, I would love if voting platforms were completely open source software and had paper receipts that could be verified manually.
Also speaking of politics getting dirty, the San Francisco State Senate race has had a ton of falsehoods and attacks from Scott Weiner, someone I’ve met before and previously thought was a nice guy, but the latest mailers I’ve seen have just been deceitful (especially considering the Guardian actually endorsed his opponent, Jane Kim).
Hot Blogs
Speaking of lists, I have a small list of well-designed WordPress blogs I’ve come across. I’m open to suggestions, so if you have a favorite that isn’t on the list let me know.
Automattic Beta
Automattic.com is no longer a placeholder, it now has a bit more info about the team behind WordPress.com and Akismet. This is what I’ve been working on since I left CNET. The site is still just a shell though, a lot more tidying up to do there. Your mileage may vary. (Should we call it Beta?) This week is pretty jam-packed with announcements, so stay tuned. 🙂
DTD Magic
Nerd Attention Damage
I would like to award the prize for the Most Damage Inflicted to the Geek/Nerd World in the Past 5 Years to Michael Lopp, author of the seminal Nerd Attention Deficiency Disorder in 2003. No article more effectively romanticized an inability to do one thing at a time, and do it well. On the bright side, Digg and Bloglines should probably give him stock. Need an antidote? Spend 10 minutes collecting everything you need to work on a problem, and unplug the internet for 2 hours. You’ll finish in 30 minutes.
Dvorak on Linux Console
For my benefit more than anything. I always forget how to change the keymap on a linux console session:
loadkeys /usr/share/keymaps/i386/dvorak/dvorak.map.gz
This seriously could have saved me an hour or two earlier today.
QWERTY is so painful! Switch to Dvorak. You’ll thank me later.
Update: Matt Brubeck informs me I could just use loadkeys dvorak
in most modern distrobutions. Thanks!
Find three hobbies you love: one to make you money, one to keep you in shape, and one to be creative.
I’m not sure the provenance of this quote, but I read it and it really resonated with me, and I’ve found myself repeating it frequently.
More Googlebot Flailing
Now I’m seeing the Googlebot request /about/
pages relative to known blogs that don’t have any links to any /about/
URI. The last time the Googlebot flailed around like this it was fun to watch for a little bit and wonder what they had cooking in the labs, but then it got annoying. I don’t know if there are rules of bot etiquette, but requesting imagined unlinked resources while spidering can’t be a best practice.
There is of course one blog vendor who consistently has about pages at Now my question Google is: what should the rest of us do if we want our about pages indexed by this new system? Mine happens to be in the /about/
URIs, and that’s Typepad.about
subdirectory of my blog, but what about people who have about.html
or about-me.php
? Should I set up a permanent redirect for every blog I have redirecting to the real about page?
(Note: That’s faux indignation. I don’t have any juicy conspiracy theories, and I’m not really that peeved, mostly I’m just curious what they’re up to. However juicy conspiracy theories are welcome in the comments. [As long as they don’t make fun of me for noticing these things.] )
UPDATE: It just requested a non-existent non-linked /contact/
URI.
UPDATE: It just requested a non-existent non-linked /stats/
URI.
DEVELOPING . . .
Stream Like a CEO
Update: There’s an updated 2021 version of this setup.
When Bill Gates was on Trevor Noah’s show it was amazing how much better quality his video was. I had experimented with using a Sony camera and capture card for the virtual event we did in February when WordCamp Asia was canceled, but that Trevor Noah video and exchanging some tweets with Garry Tan sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole, even after I was on-record with The Information saying a simpler setup is better.
The quality improved, however something was still missing: I felt like I wasn’t connecting with the person on the other side. When I reviewed recordings, especially for major broadcasts, my eyes kept looking at the person on the screen rather than looking at the camera.
Then I came across this article about the Interrotron, a teleprompter-like device Errol Morris would use to make his Oscar-winning documentaries. Now we’re onto something!
For normal video conferencing a setup this nice is a distraction, but if you’re running for political office during a quarantine, a public company CEO talking to colleagues and the press, here’s a cost-is-no-object CEO livestreaming kit you can set up pretty easily at home.
GEAR GUIDE
Basically what you do is put the A7r camera, shotgun mic, and the lens together and switch it to video mode, go to Setup 3, choose HDMI settings, and turn HDMI Info Display off — this gives you a “clean” video output from the camera. You can run off the built-in battery for a few hours, but the Gonine virtual battery above lets you power the camera indefinitely. Plug the HDMI from the camera to the USB Camlink, then plug that into your computer. Now you have the most beautiful webcam you’ve ever seen, and you can use the Camlink as both a video source and an audio source using the shotgun mic. Put the Key Light wherever it looks best. You’re fine to record something now.
If you’d like to have a more two-way conversation Interrotron style, set up the teleprompter on the tripod, put the camera behind it, connect the portable monitor to your computer (I did HMDI to a Mac Mini) and “mirror” your display to it. (You can also use an iPad and Sidecar for that.) Now you’ll have a reversed copy of your screen on the teleprompter mirror. I like to put the video of the person I’m talking to right over the lens, so near the bottom of my screen, and voilà! You now have great eye contact with the person you’re talking to. The only thing I haven’t been able to figure out is how to horizontally flip the screen in MacOS so all the text isn’t backward in the mirror reflection. For audio I usually just use a headset at this point, but if you want to not have a headset in the shot…
Use a discreet earbud. I love in-ear monitors from Ultimate Ears, so you can put one of these in and run the cable down the back of your shirt, and I use a little audio extender cable to easily reach the computer’s 3.5mm audio port. This is “extra” as the kids say and it may be tricky to get an ear molding taken during a pandemic. For the mic I use the audio feed from the Camlink, run through Krisp.ai if there is ambient noise, and it works great (except in the video above where it looks a few frames off and I can’t figure out why. On Zoom it seems totally normal).
Here’s what the setup looks like all put together:
After that photo was taken I got a Mac Mini mount and put the computer under the desk, which is much cleaner and quieter, but used this earlier photo so you could see everything plugged in. When you run this off a laptop its fan can get really loud.
Again, not the most practical for day to day meetings, but if you’re doing prominent remote streaming appearances—or if your child is an aspiring YouTube star—that’s how you can spend ~9k USD going all-out. You could drop about half the cost with only a minor drop in quality switching the camera and lens to a Sony RX100 VII and a small 3.5mm shotgun mic, and that’s probably what I’ll use if I ever start traveling again.
If I were to put together a livestreaming “hierarchy of needs,” it would be:
- Solid internet connection (the most important thing, always)
- Audio (headset mic or better)
- Lighting (we need to see you, naturally)
- Webcam (video quality)
We’ve put together a Guide to Distributed Work Tools here, which includes a lot of great equipment recommendations for day-to-day video meetings.
Thirty-Three
I’m taking it easy this week, nothing too crazy — just sharing good meals and wine with friends. Which is probably a good example of my goals for the year: putting family and loved ones first, slowing down (to go further), and deliciousness. (Single Thread Farms blew me away.)
2016 was a year of incredible contrasts: it was the saddest and most challenged I’ve ever been with the passing of my father, and while that overshadowed everything there were also bright moments of coming closer to family, deepening friendships, and growing professionally with incredible progress from both WordPress and Automattic. That momentum on the professional side is carrying through and right now I’m the most optimistic I can recall, and thrilled to wake up and get to work every day with the people I do.
I talked about trying to spend longer stretches of time in fewer places, and that definitely happened. I flew 162k fewer miles than the year before, and visited 35 fewer cities. My blogging decreased a lot too — from 252 posts in 2015 to 76 posts in 2016, but the posts I did write were at least 50% longer. I made it to 9 more of the Top 50 restaurants and stand currently at 50% of the list. I finished 22 books, including a lot more fiction including my first few graphic novels like Ex Machina, Y: The Last Man, and Watchmen. I watched 35 movies, 9 of which were from the Marvel universe on a single flight from Cape Town to Dubai.
Last year I said, “it’s exciting to make the most of the opportunity that the volatility, love, loss, glory, failure, inspirations, and setbacks that 2016 will bring.” I didn’t know how right I would be, and wish I hadn’t been.
This year doesn’t start with new plans, but rather three intentions continued from a few months ago. I revealed one yesterday, and promised I would expand today on the others, so here they are:
- Symmetry — Balance in all things, including my body which is stronger on my right side and much tighter on my left side. We also need symmetry in WordPress between the .org and .com products which differ too much.
- Stillness — In echoes of Pico Iyer, so much of my life in my 20s was about movement, and “going places to be moved.” In my 30s I’m looking inward. As Saint Augustine said in Book X, chapter 8 of Confessions: “Men go forth to wonder at the heights of mountains, the huge waves of the sea, the broad flow of the rivers, the vast compass of the ocean, the courses of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering.”
- Yellow Arrows — The idea that there are clear indications of where to go next at every fork in the road, and if not you should paint them. I wrote more on this yesterday.
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.
Jerusalem Syndrome
Apparently a number of people who visit Jerusalem are so affected they dress up in biblical garb, preach at holy sites, and then days later don’t remember a thing.