-
·
Migrating to FSE, a Learning Journey
This site is over a decade old, which in WordPress is a long time – it’s been a long time to work in WordPress and a long time in software evolution. The theme I’ve used up until today is frankly a dinosaur – it’s called Simply Read, I was one of only 112 sites using…
-
·
Five Interesting Engines
Not the five best engines ever built — the five that earn their place for a mix of history, mechanical audacity, and the sheer noise they make. Reciprocating, rotary, and gas turbine, spanning a Spitfire to a Fulvia. In no particular order except the one they occurred to me in. 01Rolls-Royce Merlin The Merlin is…
-
·
The Many Lives of Vaughan Williams’ Tallis Fantasia: A Personal Listening Project
I have listened to perhaps 20 different recording of a specific work of classical music, each multiple times. It’s been an exercise in trying to understand the composer, the work, the orchestras and conductors, the recording technologies, the changing culture of classic performance, and learning how I myself listen to and respond to music. It’s…
-
·
Karim & Ant’s Bangkok Adventure (Crowd Favorite at WCAsia 23)
[You ever find a great blog post in your drafts and think ‘damn that’s way too late to post!’? Sod it, YOLO!] The inaugural WordCamp Asia was held in Bangkok Thailand from the 17th to the 19th of February 2023, and Crowd Favorite sent myself (Ant) and Karim to represent the business on this stage.…
-
·
A New Role – Crowd Favorite Director of Client Engagement
Today we have announced my starting at Crowd Favorite, a global digital services agency delivering Open Source, mostly WordPress based, solutions to enterprise clients. I’m coming in to take on the sales and business development role, working alongside Karim Marucchi and Adam Buckeridge and Meghan Goetz and the rest of the awesome global team. It’s…
-
·
The 2022 Adventure – Part 4 – Real Life
This is part 4 of my review of 2022 – in this post I explore life away from work, with the family, and where things really matter. While all of the work crap was going on, I was also a dad and a husband. And owe it to myself and my family to admit that…
-
·
The 2022 Adventure – Part 3 – Lessons, and What Counts
This is part 3 of my 2022 round up, following up on part 1 on leaving Human Made, and part 2 on the Norse Adventure. I want to draw together some lessons I have learned over the last 1 months, because it has been quite an education, and put them in the bigger context of…
-
·
The 2022 Adventure – Part 2 – A Norse Saga
This is part 2 of my roundup of 2022 – predominantly focussed on my work at Maksimer UK. Part 1 is here. Maksimer are a fantastic agency, established in Norway about 12 years ago by Nils-Fredrik and Anders, they are far and away the best e-commerce team operating in scandinavia They specialise mostly in WooCommerce…
-
·
The 2022 Adventure – Part 1 – Leaving the HM team
2022 was a bit of an exciting year for me – I left a company I’d loved working with for over seven years, and had grown a global team within. I set up a new company, took overseas investment, plunged into a relatively new market segment, and saw that venture wind up. I made great…
-
·
MCing, Some Thoughts
Publishing a rough draft- links and images to follow: In the last couple of years I have emceed at a few WordCamps. Not many, but they have been pretty large ones. As someone who works in WordPress and really values the broad open source community around the software, but whose day to day work doesn’t…
-
·
Hinkley Point C – Ought it be built? A Series of Hard Questions Part 2
Question 2 – Why is this such an expensive project, and could we do something better and cheaper? Hickley Point is staggeringly expensive. So much so that the Chinese Government is being leant on to pay for it, and the financial head of the operators (Electricity de France) resigned as he says it’ll make EDF…
-
·
Hinkley Point C – Ought it be built? A Series of Hard Questions
Hinkley Point C is a planned nuclear power station on the Somerset Coast. Whether or not it *should* be built is a vexed question – most people i know have an opinion one way or the other, but it’s taken some time for me to try and work my own point of view out. Over…
-
·
Trident and the art of the possible
I am of a pacifist persuasion, but with an unhealthy interest in all things military. It’s curious combination that led to a brief and unhappy stint in the Royal Navy over 20 years ago. None the less I have maintained an interest in the workings of the defence industries and services, especially the senior service,…
-
·
I do not share your consensus, and that’s fine
Dare I wade into a post about politics? Actually, the fact that question is even a question is rather the point of this post. I’m going to argue here that for the last decade, no, probably two decades, we have forgotten that politics, actual different points of view on how things ought to be run,…
-
·
One of those “I needed to post this” posts
Pool requests! #hmgoes #hmretreat A video posted by Petya (@petyeah) on Jul 2, 2015 at 5:00pm PDT
-
·
WCEU 2015: Bonus Podcast – Contributor Day
The final day of WCEU 2015 this year was Contributor Day. Weirdly it felt a little like an after thought – I’m sure it’s not intentional, but the atmosphere was lower key, the after party had been the night before, and the whole set up was less formal. I guess a few people had…
-
·
WCEU 2015 Podcast: Brent Shepherd
Remember I AM A NOOB here- and was even more so in Seville. I don’t really ‘get’ the whole of the WordPress “Theme/Plugin/Extension” system, let alone the myriad ways there are to run a business in all that complexity of relationships. So, I may have asked some clenchingly naive questions when talking to the utterly…
-
·
WCEU 2015 Podcast: Drew Jaynes
I caught Drew‘s talk online on the Friday of WCEU before I flew out – I’m sure it’ll be up online soon, and I highly recommend checking it out as he goes pretty in depth on the UX work that is around the admin interface these days – it’s here on slideshare. The Customizer gets…
-
·
WCEU 2015 Podcast: Ryan McCue and Jack Lenox
We caught Jack and Ryan after they’d both presented on day 2 at WCEU – the conversation was already fizzing along, so it was just a question of dragging them into our little studio and unleashing the elephant. Great guys, clearly very good friends – the REST API is in good hands. This is a…
-
·
WCEU 2015 Podcast: Brad from Alley
Bronson and I caught up with Alley Interactive‘s Brad Campeau-Laurion in the insane, intense sweltering heat of the shade of Seville. Brad and I had already talked online about IPR and contracts for WordPress development (it’s an ongoing trope in my work as Commercial Director – the compatability of the GPL and commercial business is, well,…