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npub1cum6vyt0p0mg4fc5s9thjmjyg8hczgdd3mmntzpz6p6kzserak6qw4lr4w

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photomatt_at_mastodon.social@mostr.pub

Profile Code

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npub1cum6vyt0p0mg4fc5s9thjmjyg8hczgdd3mmntzpz6p6kzserak6qw4lr4w

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Last Notes

2024-08-23 20:31:16

Best Cities
When we had some calm seas while I was on the Drumfire, with my schedule unusually clear, I found myself writing Python with Claude to export and analyze all of my Swarm check-in activity. I have 14,021 check-ins. So now on my about page it lists the ~70 countries I've been to and the top 200 cities I've spent time in.
https://ma.tt/2024/08/best-cities/

2024-08-19 14:00:55

Jeff Jarvis
We no longer need companies, institutions, or government to organize us. We now have the tools to organize ourselves. We can find each other and coalesce around political causes or bad companies or talent or business or ideas. We can share and sort our knowledge and behavior. We can communicate and come together in an instant. We also have new ethics and attitudes that spring from this new organization and change society in ways we cannot yet see, with…
https://ma.tt/2024/08/jeff-jarvis/

2024-07-28 05:12:03

Happy Birthday, Charleen
I've had many blessings in my life, but the very first was the family I was born into. Today, I'd like to tell you about my only sibling, favorite sister, and best beloved, Charleen Mullenweg. With a gap of nine and a half years between us, we could have easily been distant from each other, but it was almost like I had a third parent, one who was just the coolest person I could imagine in the universe.
https://ma.tt/2024/07/happy-birthday-charleen/

2024-07-17 06:36:51

A nice new WordPress 6.6 is out, our 50th release, on the same day people are getting hit with huge bills from Webflow. I really enjoy working in Open Source. There is no more customer-centric license. There’s some really fun stuff cooking, too, I can’t wait to show y’all.
50 releases… wow. No matter what happens in the world, we’re just going to keep cranking. Three times a year. Relentlessly. A little better each time. Don’t believe me, just watch.
https://ma.tt/2024/07/6-6/

2024-06-09 21:25:05

Gravatar, which has been humming along quietly serving hundreds of billions of avatars into every app you love like Slack, Github, ChatGPT, Atlassian, Coinbase… has a new API which allows people to bring in not just the avatar but more profile data. Check it out. Gravatar continues to be a useful Schelling point for the internet to allow to choose what they want to share and liberate their data from a single platform.
https://ma.tt/2024/06/gravatar-is-back/

2024-06-08 23:35:29

Cowan Life Lessons
Sriram Krishnan calls Tyler Cowen one of the best talent spotters. I take a few life lessons from Tyler, who I consider a mentor even though we've spent, at most, dozens of minutes together in the past several decades. (Don't constrain your mentors by their availability, engage with their work!) He has blogged consistently on Marginal Revolution since 2003. As he learns he shares, and that's a lighthouse beacon attracting smart people around the…
https://ma.tt/2024/06/cowan-life-lessons/

2024-06-04 00:57:55

Melt Your Butter
In my life I like to experience things high/low, to stay grounded. So while I've been taken on culinary adventures with the best chefs in the world like René Redzepi or Kyle Connaughton, sometimes I find myself on a United flight, as I am today, ordering the chicken. When you move between two extremes it's not the big things that bother you, for example I'm sure this…
https://ma.tt/2024/06/melt-your-butter/

2024-05-15 13:35:11

Sabbatical Wrap
Today is my first day post-sabbatical, getting back in the swing of things with Automattic. W.org, all the things. What a unique experience! I found the lead up to the sabbatical and planning process to be infinitely valuable, the sabbatical itself to be interesting experentially, and I'm curious to see what the post-sabbatical effects are. I have that nervous excitement like it's the first day of school, which I haven't felt in years.
https://ma.tt/2024/05/sabbatical-wrap/

2024-05-15 03:28:37

Karaoke Hacks
You can't sing. I can't sing. But we both should sing, from the depths of our bellies because it's good for your soul. We don't sing enough in modern society! Hence, my love of karaoke. Live band karaoke is the best, which I've done everywhere from the basement of Hill Country BBQ in New York to someplace random in Davao after a WordCamp, but when you don't have a four piece band a there are electronic substitutes.
https://ma.tt/2024/05/karaoke-hacks/

2024-05-09 11:58:42

Illuminate has crossed the funding threshold it needed to actually kick off the project of bringing the Bay Lights back to San Francisco, as Heather Knight writes for the New York Times. The upgraded lights will be visible not just from San Francisco but also in Oakland, Treasure Island, Berkeley… all across the Bay. It’s felt like the lights have been the lumen-physical embodiment of San Francisco’s struggles: sparkling and inspiring at the start, then facing troubles,…
https://ma.tt/2024/05/bay-lights-are-returning/

2024-04-10 00:01:06

Beeper & Texts
It's such a delight when a plan comes together and unfolds, especially when it's something you've been working on for many years. Today the announcement went out that we're combining the best technology from Beeper and Texts to create a great private, secure, and open source messaging client for people to have control of their communications. We're going to use the Beeper brand, because it's fun.
https://ma.tt/2024/04/beeper-texts/

2024-03-26 07:14:28

Tom Scott on APIs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxV14h0kFs0 https://ma.tt/2024/03/tom-scott-on-apis/

2024-03-15 23:39:07

Hugo on Vision Pro
Many of my friends are ridiculous overachievers, and Hugo Barra is no exception. In response to my birthday blog post present request he has published a magnus opus of over 10,000+ words on his thoughts on the Apple Vision Pro from his perspective having been present for some foundational moments for Google, Meta, and Xiaomi. This is my dream, to get people writing more.
https://ma.tt/2024/03/hugo-on-vision-pro/

2024-03-10 03:16:32

Amazing Brad Mehldau Interview http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oT7O-ujYoo https://ma.tt/2024/03/amazing-brad-mehldau-interview/

2024-02-10 22:51:45

Vision Pro + Drone http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MT2UNpNv8T4 https://ma.tt/2024/02/vision-pro-drone/

2024-02-09 21:11:15

WordPress, Taylor Swift, Super Bowl, oh my
There has been quite a bit of buzz in the WordPress community because during the Grammys red carpet Taylor Swift's website went down and this is what everyone saw: Hey there! That looks familiar. What a beautiful WordPress logo! (Hat tip: Alexa Scordato for telling me about this.) The website also had some ups and downs, we haven't been able to get in touch with anyone on Taylor's tech team, but if you're there, we're standing…
https://ma.tt/2024/02/wordpress-taylor-swift-super-bowl-oh-my/

2024-02-05 21:35:57

National Security
If I were President for a day, the first thing I would do is instruct our national security to patch and secure every American technology company, as they are our gems to the world. I would burn every zero-day I had on a US company and help them patch it. The rest of the world would know our immense defense budget was now being used to secure our companies as well, as China does.
https://ma.tt/2024/02/national-security/

2024-02-04 18:05:09

iFixit Teardown of Vision Pro
When I read things like the iFixit Teardown of Vision Pro, I am moved almost to tears at the sheer beauty of craftsmanship in this thing. It is literally incredible. I have so much respect for the big tech companies like Apple that invest in long-term science, research, and development to create innovations like this. It is literally the engine driving our economy forward.
https://ma.tt/2024/02/ifixit-teardown-of-vision-pro/

2024-02-04 01:44:42

Old Emails
I just replied to an email from 2018. I am tragically, comically, behind on email. Because Automattic doesn't use email, we use P2, it's never been a priority for me. But I have been sloppy, careless, and derelict in my duty of answering emails. Apologies to you all. You're going to get some weird, very late replies.
https://ma.tt/2024/02/old-emails/

2024-02-03 06:29:14

Vision Pro First Impressions
Okay... wow. The hardware and display are like nothing I've ever seen, really feels like it's from the future. That said, I found the setup clunky and buggy. Some might have been user error, for example I kept trying to "select" things with my middle finger and thumb and not my left finger. I almost got stuck in the Persona setup, couldn't continue.
https://ma.tt/2024/02/vision-pro-first-impressions/

2024-02-03 00:35:13

Rowing to Alcatraz
My friend Neal Mueller, who holds a Guinness World Record for longest non-stop row in Arctic open water—1,000 miles over 41 days in 2012—gave me the incredible gift this morning of introducing me to the Dolphin Club in San Francisco, which has a rich lineage of these hand-built rowboats and love of the craft of rowing. It was awe-inspiring. He then rowed me to Alcatraz!
https://ma.tt/2024/02/rowing-to-alcatraz/

2024-01-28 18:37:59

Freedom Grants
The Audrey Scholars program is still getting started, but I wanted to introduce another opportunity: Freedom grants. As the page says "If you are an open source contributor, and you feel your current political environment is incompatible with open source values, we would like to offer the opportunity for a grant to help you get set up in a new environment.
https://ma.tt/2024/01/freedom-grants/

2024-01-22 14:27:13

Open Source Creed
Every human has an intrinsic right to put their creative work into the commons. Once freed, work can never be withdrawn, and it has the opportunity—but not the obligation!—for everyone to improve upon it. (v1)
https://ma.tt/2024/01/open-source-creed/

2024-01-05 02:31:12

On Mastodon
This is me on Mastodon, it's really me, also added to my Gravatar.
https://ma.tt/2024/01/on-mastodon/

2024-01-05 02:14:31

- reply

@npub1sen…ycjl Okay, I'm nudged. :)

2024-01-05 01:46:28

- reply

@npub1jx7…0jmm This is very embarrassing! Major mess-up on our part, thank you for pointing it out.

2024-01-02 01:49:45

Birthday Gift
It's true, it's true, I turn forty years old in ten days. What do you get the guy who has everything? I admit I'm not the easiest to shop for, I can be quite particular in my preferences of this cable versus that one, but the good news is the gift I most want for my 40th is something everyone can do.
https://ma.tt/2024/01/birthday-gift/

2023-10-03 00:53:59

Preserving Harvard’s Blogging History
This month, Automattic had the privilege of working with the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society (BKC) to migrate their early 2000s blogging platform over to our Pressable infrastructure. (Pressable is a small host Automattic runs to develop our WP.cloud infrastructure, it gets you all the performance and security of our high-end WP.com plans, but with a more plain-vanilla WP interface.)
https://ma.tt/2023/10/preserving-harvards-blogging-history/

2023-07-19 08:08:56

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@npub1c32…ps3k My first job was at CNET! The OG of content management systems.