Author Archives: Donncha

Ten Years at Automattic

Working

I still remember the day in 2005 when Matt asked me to come work for him. I still remember the exact spot I was standing where I took that call. It was only a couple of metres from where I sit typing this now.

Ten years, time has flown. I work for an absolutely amazing company with great people. It’s hard to believe there’s well over three hundred people there now. Remember when you needed an invite? It’s a far cry from WordPress.com today.

I wish I could provide an insightful comment on the challenges and rewards of working remotely but it’s late and I just wanted to get this post out there to mark the day. If you want to experience the remote work lifestyle for yourself, come work with us!

1c and 2c coins to go (in Ireland)

image

Finally! These tiny coins will be on the way out if all goes to plan.

I guess I should add those coins above to my small stockpile of Irish coins.

Government sources have told the Irish Independent that the matter is to be brought to Cabinet tomorrow.

It is understood Finance Minister Michael Noonan will bring the memo recommending the withdrawal of the coins, which cost more to mint than they are worth.

Dr Emoto Water Blessings

From an unsolicited spam email:

Greetings,

Have you heard about Dr Emoto, who discovered that placing positive words on water bottles produced beautiful crystals in the water?

We are an inspirational publishing company. Inspired by Dr Emoto we have developed Water Blessing Labels, re-usable static cling decals that you can place on any water container.

Please reply to this email and we will email you our wholesale catalog and offer you a complimentary pack of decals. No obligation.

Customer Service Team

Pearls Of Wisdom Publishing Co.
Spreading Blessings All Over The World

Seems legit, but what happens if you put negative words on water bottles? That would be a nasty trick to play on someone you don’t like!

Searching for Animals

searching for animals

The stand alone Google Photos app went live last night and I’m playing with it this morning. I love that I can search my photos for animals, family or San Francisco and it will return meaningful results.

The app is really nice to use now, I love the new month view for quickly moving back through the years. I only wish Google Backup would work on all DNG files. Despite what their documentation says those files aren’t getting backed up. 🙁

I’m not so fond of the limited editing features. Many of my older photos need to be rotated because they were shot in Jpeg and some app I used long ago changed the rotation bit in the files. To rotate I have to select an image, click the pencil to edit, click the crop tool, click rotate 3 times, save, X. Then move on to another. Hopefully they’ll allow batch editing of photos in the future.

Samy is my Hero

Samy Kamkar

I started listening to the Tim Ferriss podcast after Matt Mullenweg was interviewed by him and I’ve been hooked since.
Tim’s interview with Samy Kamkar is really interesting as he’s the guy who launched the Samy computer worm that infected MySpace back in 2005. It was a little chunk of Javascript code that added itself to MySpace profiles, added Samy as a friend and added him as a hero of the visitor. They took down MySpace to clean it out!

Since then he’s had a really interesting life and the interview covers many subjects like hacking online dating and opening locked cars by hacking their key fobs. Nice to see he’s a Vim user too! 🙂

Check it out here.

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