R.I.P Dean Allen

Personal

Dean Allen, a web pioneer and good man, has passed away. I’ve been processing the news for a few days and still don’t know where to begin. Dean was a writer, who wrote the software he wrote on. His websites were crafted, designed, and typeset so well you would have visited them even if they were filled with Lorem Ipsum, and paired with his writing you were drawn into an impossibly rich world. His blog was called Textism, and among many other things it introduced me to the art of typography.

Later, he created Textpattern, without which WordPress wouldn’t exist. Later, he created Textdrive with Jason Hoffman, without which WordPress wouldn’t have found an early business model or had a home on the web. He brought a care and craft to everything he touched that inspires me to this day. As John Gruber said, “Dean strove for perfection and often achieved it.” (Aside: Making typography better on the web led John Gruber to release Smarty Pants, Dean a tool called Textile, and myself something called Texturize all within a few months of each other; John continued his work and created Markdown, I put Texturize into WP, and Dean released Textile in Textpattern.)

Years later, we became friends and shared many trips, walks, drinks, and meals together, often with Hanni and Om. (When we overlapped in Vancouver he immediately texted “I’ll show you some butt-kicking food and drink.”) His zest for life was matched with an encyclopedic knowledge of culture and voracious reading (and later podcast listening) habits. I learned so much in our time together, a web inspiration who turned for me into a real-life mensch. He was endlessly generous with his time and counsel in design, prose, and fashion. I learned the impossibly clever sentences he wrote, that you assumed were the product of a small writing crew or at least a few revisions, came annoyingly easily to him, an extension of how he actually thought and wrote and the culmination of a lifetime of telling stories and connecting to the human psyche.

Dean, who (of course) was also a great photographer, didn’t love having his own photo taken but would occasionally tolerate me when I pointed a camera at him and Om has a number of the photos on his post. There’s one that haunts me: before getting BBQ we were at his friend’s apartment in Vancouver, listening to Mingus and enjoying hand-crafted old fashioneds with antique bitters, and despite the rain we went on the roof to see the art that was visible from there. He obliged to a photo this time though and we took photos of each other individually in front of a sign that said “EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE ALRIGHT.” It wasn’t, but it’s what I imagine Dean would say right now if he could.

When we first met, in 2006, from Jason.

Rosie O’Donnell

WordPress

This is too crazy — Rosie O’Donnell of talk show fame has a WordPress blog in which she writes poetry-like entries daily that get hundreds of comments. (And the site is very snappy, this is why more and more high-traffic publishers are switching to WordPress.) It gets better — she’s also on Flickr. I feel like I just stumbled into an alternate universe where celebrities are using software I helped write. Hat tip: neiljmorrow via email.

Two Thunderbird Extensions

Tech, ,

I find there are two extensions that I install for Thunderbird every time I set up a new computer. The first is Plaxo for Thunderbird, which does a pretty good job at syncing contacts. The second is Messagefaces with Gravatar support turned on, which you can find in Add-ons > Options > Online Services. (Wish it was on by default, it doesn’t really work without it.) Plaxo has an avatar feature but I turn it off because way more people have Gravatars than Plaxo avatars.

Thumb recovering, now flu

Google

Well the good news is my thumb seems to be recoving, though I’m still keeping it in a splint because it’s really sensitive. The bad news is a few days ago I came down with some sort of cold/flu or strep throat (going to doctor again tomorrow) that has really knocked me out. Maybe it’s the same thing as Om Malik and Matt Marshall. (Someone should do a Web 2.0 mashup of blogs, event calendars, and Google maps to identify Patient Zero.) The only thing that has allowed me to stay concious and not fall too far behind is Tylenol Sore Throat, which is one of the most amazing painkillers ever. My sister was in town and bought this for me and it has been magical, though it tastes awful. One of the biggest problems with sore throats is I don’t eat or drink because it hurts too much, which then gets you dehydrated and sicker. With TST I’m able to get some food and drink down and it also helps with the fever. Hopefully within another day or two this will run its course.

Brazil Meetup

WordPress

I’ll be at the WordPress meetup at Latinoware tomorrow (Saturday) at 17:00. I’m speaking earlier in the day at 11:00. Been around the conference today and been really impressed with the breadth of subjects covered and the number of attendees. Confused about the logo though. (Is South America tucked into Africa?) Se você fala Português passar esta sobre a sua audiência.

Exploring Ubiquiti

Audrey, Essays

I was looking for something else when I stumbled across a little $95 router that claimed it could do 1M packets per second, multi-WAN, was tiny, and had 80 5-star reviews. Huh? The reviews had some left-handed compliments (“for advanced users only”) but one mentioned getting hooked on the company’s other products as well. Next thing I know I’m looking at a $67 access point that has everyone raving about its range and extensibility. These things were too cheap — my assumption was it was a Chinese OEM like Zyxel that makes novel but ultimately not the best quality products.

At this point I should confess I’m a bit of a consumer networking geek — it’s a hobby of mine. I really enjoy upgrading people’s routers so they have better range in parts of the house they didn’t before, getting them a DOCSIS 3.0 modem so their connection is faster (and buying it so they don’t pay an exorbitant rental fee to their cable company), everything about Sonos, hooking up an Airport Express to Sonos so you can Airplay things, showing how you can set up two APs with the same SSID and clients will just connect to whatever they’re closest to, you don’t need each one to have a unique SSID, you can give the 2.4ghz and 5ghz networks the same SSID, Time Machine for backups, setting up failover internet with multiple connections or a USB LTE stick… I redo all my home stuff about once every 18 months, and then take the best of what I’ve learned and set up friends. I’m constantly updating firmware. My current best practice setup is Sonos for all audio, usually streaming from Spotify or SiriusXM, a Peplink Balance One router, Netgear Nighthawk R9000 access points (though I liked the ASUS AC66U just as much), if I need a switch I’ll go for a higher-end managed one that support spanning tree protocol (STP) properly because otherwise the way the Sonos does bridging can spaz out and overload your network, Nest themostat and smoke detectors, Smartthings for everything else. I’m waiting for August for smart locks.

At the Automattic office we run Meraki, which was pretty solid until we upgraded to the MR34 to get 802.11AC, but it’s expensive, and you need to subscribe to a per-device yearly license fee for everything to work. They also have a great WP-powered blog, and generally the cleanest site of anyone out there. That said, they’re impossible to buy without going through a terrible reseller, so I’ve never been able to justify using it at home.

Back to Ubiquiti. First I come across their forums/community sites, which are ugly and sprawling and full of amazing info from people who do wireless deployments across all of the top companies like Aruba, Ruckus, Aerohive, Xirrus, Meraki. You see people making builds for alternative UPNP packages and that going into their core release months later. (Everything is Debian based, from what I can tell.) The company is based in San Jose that went public a few years ago, and is now worth about 3.7B, and the founder (formerly of Apple) bought the Memphis Grizzlies. They seem to have gotten their start with long-haul point-to-point wireless radios that can go dozens of kilometers, which makes sense why their APs would be known for their range. You can buy direct from them, or like I mentioned most of their stuff is available on Amazon. And it’s inexpensive! Even Ubiquiti’s AC product, which is $300, is much, much cheaper than the Meraki MR34 which costs $1,400 and requires a yearly license or it stops working.

Plus they make these wonderfully cheesy product promo videos:

Normally I wouldn’t post about something until I’ve tried it in-person, but I was excited to find this whole new (to me) world of high-performance, reasonable-cost devices. John Pozazidides, long-time WP community member, did an overview of the Unifi devices on Youtube. At Automattic our once-a-year grand meetup is coming up in Utah, and every year wireless is an issue, especially the first day or two. I ordered some of the Ubiquiti equipment to test when I’m in Houston next week, looking forward to playing around with it.

Any Ma.tt readers with experience with any of these or big WLAN deployments?

Do you know someone who is an amazing developer or designer? Someone who is passionate about helping people? An awesome lounge manager? Or maybe that person is you. Automattic is hiring for a variety of positions, and for all except two you can live and work wherever you like in the entire planet. There are also a number of other benefits; the main downside it’s a high performance culture and expectations are extremely high. Automattic hires the best folks regardless of geography, and we are especially looking for people right now outside of US timezones.

Driving on the Left

Personal, Travel

We’ve been driving all around the Dublin area, through Slane, Dunleek, Dowth, New Grange, and finally Drogheda and becoming accustomed to driving on the left has been an interesting experience. First in the rental car there are no fewer than 4 stickers throughout the driver area reminding you to be on the left, and there also seem to be signs to remind you about it around all the tourist areas. What I found difficult wasn’t driving on the left side, which was fairly easy to remember, but rather I found myself aligning myself as the driver with the part of the lane I would be in if I was driving on the right side. Needless to say, this can put you dangerously close to anything to the left of you. So my new mantra (oft-repeated by my sister) has become “Guide to the left.” Thank goodness for collapsible mirrors. On the bright side, left turns are easy.

Funding Warning

Email

Just a warning for entrepreneurs out there, if you ever announce funding you will be contacted by people offering the following services: banking; debt financing; PR services; other VCs; fancy SoMA offices; telephone services; India outsourcing; Kansas IT outsourcing; recruiting (x10); equipment leasing; renting/leasing/buying real estate; stories about Audrey Hepburn; web analytics; bandwidth; data communications (?); Java programming. Expect 50+ emails in the first 12 hours, and a steady trickle after that. They will also send emails to firstname @ your domain for every name they can find on the website. It gives you a newfound appreciation for those nice Nigerian banking folks, who gave you attention before you were “big.”