Image Archives

PostHog

It’s always fun to see someone pushing the limits of the web experience, as I reminisced about Flash and Dreamweaver the other day. The new website for Posthog is a delightful rabbit hole to explore, akin to a Meow Wolf, with meticulous care and craft applied to every corner of the product in a way that is both fun and playful. They even have their own version of pineapple on pizza.

What I want to enable with WordPress is the ability with thousands of plugins and themes for people to have unique, funky experiences like this on their website, while still providing a content structure that’s legible for interoperability and hacking. Major kudos to Cory Watilo and James Hawkins for coming up with this.

UH Magazine, Revisiting My Alma Mater

My father attended University of Houston, and it’s where I went to college to study political science, I started WordPress when there, and then dropped out after two years to move to San Francisco. It was fun seeing UH Magazine feature an article about my journey from a University of Houston student to co-founding WordPress and leading Automattic. I was surprised they put me on the cover of the physical edition! I wish my Dad were still around to see it.

The piece explores my commitment to open-source, my vision for democratizing online publishing, and the values of creativity and adaptability that have shaped my path. It’s an honor to reflect on these experiences with my alma mater.

New York!

You tear me apart. The greatest city in the world. (San Francisco has its allure.) I am so drawn to the impeccability excellence of uptown. Just at a baby shower at 111 West 57th… wow! You have never seen a better building, everything is executed to the highest degree par none.

Yet, I’m so drawn to downtown. The jazz. The creativity, the spark, the drive.

Automattic’s office at 166 Crosby feels like a creative center. We’ve built something pretty cool there to inspire and delight people in space.

Animated WordPress Wallpaper

I didn’t realize this, but apparently macOS has a built-in ability to show really stunning animated wallpapers, like this one created by Folletto that subtly changes colors throughout the day in an incredibly engaging well:

Check out Folletto’s blog for another dynamic wallpaper and some of process behind creating it. This would be awesome to have for iPhones as well.

Atavist & Automattic

As reported by the Wall Street Journal, and an interview about on the WP.com blog, Automattic has acquired the Atavist platform, magazine, and team. Looking forward to working alongside the team: we’re keeping the magazine going and it’ll complement Longreads, and integrating the best of the platform’s CMS and publisher features into WordPress.com and Jetpack and after that’s done providing an upgrade path so all of its publishers can move to being WordPress-powered.

Chinese Bikeshare Photos

A worker rides a shared bicycle past piled-up shared bikes at a vacant lot in Xiamen, Fujian province, China December 13, 2017. Picture taken December 13, 2017. REUTERS/Stringer

I find myself frequently returning to this Atlantic photo essay on the Chinese bike share companies flooding the streets with bikes. It’s strangely beautiful.

WordPress 14

Today is 14 years from the very first release of WordPress. The interface I’m using to write this (Calypso) is completely unrecognizable from what WordPress looked and worked like even a few years ago. Fourteen years in, I’m waking up every day excited about what’s coming next for us. The progress of the editor and CLI so far this year is awesome, and I’m looking forward to that flowing into improvements for customization and the REST API. Thanks as always to Mike for kicking off this crazy journey, all the people chipping in to make WordPress better, and Konstantin and Erick for surprising me with the cool cake above.

First Father’s Day

This is my first father’s day without my father. His memories and spirit have been very present with me the past week, but today is still tough. Miss you, Dad, and I will continue to try and make you proud.

Unsplash Photos

Unsplash is a collection of Creative Commons Zero licensed photos that area really amazing, and I curated a collection of ten images for them which you can check out here. The hard part was trying to pick only ten — there were so many beautiful and stunning images.

Merry Christmas!

I hope it’s filled with lots of comfortable sweaters, like this one..

Joule Sous Vide Machine

kitchen-essential (1)

On Eater check out the story of how a video game mogul, an airplane engineer, a scientist, a designer, and a bunch of chefs developed a new immersion circulator they named Joule. I’m a big fan of the Chefsteps team.

Changing America’s Mind

Bloomberg has a cool look at societal changes, called This Is How Fast America Changes Its Mind.

Love is the light that sparked when only darkness existed

Taken in Houston today. Happy birthday Mom!

First Time Movember

Automattic is participating in Movember for the first time this year, and so to join I shaved for the first time in the better part of a decade. (Before and after pictured above.) For those not familiar with it, you shave clean on November first and grow and groom a mostache (no beard, goatee, etc) through the course of the month, and when people comment on how ridiculous you look you encourage them to donate to Movember which is a non-profit which has raised over $500 million and funded over 800 programs in 21 countries. (Wow!)

I doubt I’ll be able to match the ‘stache of some of my more hirsute colleagues, but it’s for a good cause and seems like good fun as well. If you’d consider dropping a few dollars in the hat to support men’s health, here’s the link to the Automattic team page where you can donate to support the entire team, which is currently ranked #163.