Went for Napa / Vacaville hot air balloon ride with Janitorial team at Automattic, had dinner at 54 Mint, and caught the end of the symphony masquerade ball in San Francisco. Here are Nick’s pictures from the same day.
I’m honored to be have been chosen alongside some cool folks like Kevin Rose, Dave Morin, Andrew Mason, and Charlie Cheever as one of Bloomberg BusinessWeek’s Best Young Tech Entrepreneurs in 2011. I only have 3 more years before I’m too old for these lists. 🙂
Batters Up: Major League Baseball Now on WordPress.com. MLB’s blogging system used to be powered by Movable Type, and about 15,000 blogs switched over to WordPress.com as part of this. It’s an honor and delight to have so many great bloggers joining the family. They’re also in good company with VIP blogs for the NFL, NBA, NBC Sports…
Bruce Mau Design Incomplete Manifesto for Growth — “Written in 1998, the Incomplete Manifesto is an articulation of statements exemplifying Bruce Mau’s beliefs, strategies and motivations. Collectively, they are how we approach every project.” I dig. Hat tip: Noel.
Nassim Taleb on Living with Black Swans — “During a recent visit to Wharton as part of The Goldstone Forum, he spoke with Wharton finance professor Richard Herring — who taught Taleb when he was a Wharton MBA student — about events in the Middle East, the oil supply, investing in options, the U.S. economy, the dollar, health care and of course, black swans.”
Ricardo Semler on Leading by Omission, a good weekend watch.
I think there’s a difference between having a bestselling book–meaning through marketing, PR and buying that first wave of customers–and writing a bestselling book. The second implies that the product propels itself to the best seller list. That’s not to say that I’m Tolstoy or the best writer, but I used Facebook and Twitter more for feed back as I was creating and refining the book than for the actual marketing itself. My main online tool for priming the pump for the launch of the book was the blog. That was the heartbeat and the nexus for all the different tools that I use.
Via Tim Ferriss On Facebook, Twitter And Building A Huge Web Brand – Steven Bertoni – Money Talks – Forbes. I also liked this quote:
SB: How can a magazine catch up to the Web?
TF: If I worked for a magazine that’s very behind the times, I wouldn’t reinvent the wheel. I’d use WordPress as a content management system which has very good SEO out of the box. Companies spend so much time trying to develop something proprietary it’s ridiculous–you have thousands of people already working on WordPress.
Douglas Van Bossuyt says What VaultPress means to me.
Bloomberg TV Interview
At SxSW last month I was interviewed by Cris Valerio from Bloomberg TV. The interview aired recently and you check it out below:
Wu-Tang Meets Blue Note
Logan Walters reinterprets classic Wu-Tang covers in the Blue Note aesthetic:
Hat tip: Patrick Jarenwattananone.
Nathan Myhrvold and Modernist Cuisine
Nathan Myhrvold, an interesting character I’ve following for a few years now, has been in the news lately for his co-authorship with Maxime Bilet and Chris Young of the new food bible Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking (Amazon link). (Peep that beautiful, 100% WordPress-powered site.) I pre-ordered it forever ago, a fact that may surprise friends who know how little I cook, but I do love food and I was as interested in the pictures and the result of a detail-oriented and science-driven obsession with quality that goes all the way down to the stochastic printing process as the articles/recipes .
The books are, in a word, stunning. I’m probably a lifetime away from attempting a 30-hour burger, but last night I did try a sous-vide approach to a New York sirloin and it turned out amazing. (Though that photo probably won’t be in a future edition of Modernist Cuisine.) The fact I can barely scramble eggs but made a super-good steak might portend the apocalypse. I think sous-vide cooking is something that will appeal a lot to engineers or analytically minded folks because it’s a controlled process with predictable outcomes.
Here are some interesting links and videos I’d recommend around Modernist Cuisine, sous-vide cooking, and Nathan Myhrvold himself:
- Nathan’s appearance on the Colbert report is a good 5-minute overview.
- Incredible Edibles, the Mad Genius of Modernist Cuisine is the New Yorker’s review.
- Cook From It? First, Try Lifting It, New York Times review.
- Serious Eats has had fantastic coverage, but I was most jealous of the 29-course meal from the Modernist Cuisine cooking lab.
- A 1997 profile of Nathan Myhrvold in New Yorker.
- His company Intellectual Ventures is controversial for its use of patents, as Malcolm Gladwell covered, the NY Times, an excellent Wired UK profile last month, and less kindly in Fortune.
- From this excellent New Yorker blog post there are links to profiles of David Chang, Grant Achatz, and a cool article on desserts that includes Albert Adrià .
- The Serious Eats sous vide steak article was my main guide for last night’s attempt, including their guides on resting meat, slicing against the grain, and general steak tips.
- Here’s a pretty friendly Youtube video for the same that is basically what I did except without the mushrooms or pre-sear.
- The eGullet forums appear to be a hub for all things modernist cuisine, and an epic thread about MC-the-book.
- If after reading/watching the above you’re ready to dive in like I was, I ended up with the Sous Vide Supreme after reading this review.
- The WP-powered Modernist Cuisine official blog has a ton of great links and photos.
If you made it this far, two bonuses:
At the EG Conference in 2007 I interviewed Nathan Myhrvold about the Dvorak keyboard layout, which I’ve used about 11 years now, and here’s that video:
Second, Mark Pearson of Pear Press (also associated with one of my other favorite authors John Medina) recommends the Pizza Nepoletana technique in volume 2 page 26 as an accessible dish, and the tip on decanting wine in a blender.
Thanks to many friends for the links, and also for listening to me blather on about this for the past week or two. You may also be subject to more experiments in the future.
I’m just going to keep updating this post with more links:
- 2008 article on Sous Vide with some recipes, including a nice-looking salmon one from Nathan.
Peplink Multi-WAN Routers
Update Sept 2014: My favorite Peplink is now the Balance One, and my favorite router if you’re super-techy and want to configure networking stuff is the Ubiquiti Edgerouter Lite. Read more about Ubiquiti here.
I live and work on the internet, so when I have trouble connecting it really slows me down. About a year or so ago I started looking into multi-WAN routers that would, at least, support two internet connections and failover to the other one, and as a bonus maybe provide some speed benefits as well. Here’s the story of that journey.
At dinner the other night Om snapped a picture of Ev and I chatting, probably about snow.
Interview with John Battelle Video
Remember my resolution to “Launch secret new thing, code abbreviation JP”? There was even a WP Candy thread guessing what it was. Well it’s live, and you can click here to read all about Jetpack. Check it out, every WordPress deserves a Jetpack. 🙂
On Friday at 3:30 I’m going to be interviewed onstage at SxSW by the formidable John Battelle on the Future of WordPress — you can see details here. Would love to see some of you there.
Last year Audrey made an investment in Enterproid, which just came out of stealth. Basically it’s a mod of Android that creates a virtualized environment so you can separate your work stuff and personal stuff, and be able to do fun stuff on your phone that everyone expects but not many IT departments allow. They’ve gotten good coverage on TechCrunch and ReadWriteWeb, and just won several hundred thousand dollars from the QPrize and presented at the DEMO conference.
A few super-hip folks (Automattic, Wall Street Journal, and HostGator) are hosting a WordPress party with open bar and all-you-can-eat BBQ on Friday night at SxSW (deets here) but it’s invite only and there’ll be a list at the door. (We can only feed so many people!) However I have 15 spaces to give away to Ma.tt readers, which will go to the first 15 people to comment with a link to an image of the WP logo in a cool place (Photoshop allowed) and your WP-powered blog.
