Category: Useful stuff

  • Tips for being productive on GitHub

    Tips for being productive on GitHub

    I spend much of my day interacting with GitHub in one form or another as part of my day job, even though I’m not working at Automattic as a software developer. Between coding little scripts to make me more efficient, and managing or contributing to work-related projects, I use GitHub daily. This is why I…

  • Switch your family to Ubuntu Linux, it may be less confusing than Windows

    Switch your family to Ubuntu Linux, it may be less confusing than Windows

    As my family knows, I clearly prefer Linux over Windows, and if we didn’t have the option of using macOS computers, we’d be using Linux, likely Ubuntu. With that in mind, I enjoyed Simon Frey’s post “How switching my parents over to Linux saved me a lot of headache and support calls“, partly because I…

  • A new, open source font designed for aircraft cockpit screens

    A new, open source font designed for aircraft cockpit screens

    I get a kick out of stuff like this: In 2010, Airbus initiated a research collaboration with ENAC and Université de Toulouse III on a prospective study to define and validate an “Aeronautical Font”: the challenge was to improve the display of information on the cockpit screens, in particular in terms of legibility and comfort…

  • A vague Notion of a more productive system

    A vague Notion of a more productive system

    I spent a little time in my Pocket recommendations, and found this great post by Marie Poulin titled “One Tool To Rule Them All” and her, and her partner’s search for a more effective, more complete productivity solution. Along the way, she considered Bullet Journals. I wanted to get on the bullet journal bandwagon, but…

  • A desperate plea to MS Office lovers everywhere

    A desperate plea to MS Office lovers everywhere

    Dear MS Office lover Although I don’t see the appeal*, I understand that you love using Microsoft Office for your daily tasks. It seems like pretty good software, and if it helps you become more efficient, then that’s terrific. Anyhoo, I’ve noticed that many of you have a tendency to do some interesting things with…

  • Watch this if you’re still on the fence about the new WordPress Editor (aka Gutenberg)

    If you’re still unsure about the new WordPress Editor (aka Gutenberg), it’s worth watching Matt Mullenweg’s State of the Word keynote at the recent WordCamp US 2018 event in Nashville. You can find links to parts of the talk, along with slides, and commentary in Matt’s post, here: I’ve been using the new Editor almost…

  • MarsEdit + WordPress 5.0

    MarsEdit + WordPress 5.0

    MarsEdit is my favourite blog editor for my laptop. I use it daily, mostly for work-related posts that I publish. It makes it so much easier for me to publish to a variety of blogs (we have a lot of internal blogs at Automattic). The new WordPress Editor has changed how we write blog posts…

  • The tragedy of women’s pockets (or the lack thereof)

    The tragedy of women’s pockets (or the lack thereof)

    My wife has frequently explained just how little modern women’s fashion caters for a basic need: decent pockets! It made no sense to me (or women everywhere), at least not until I watched this video: unsplash-logoFeatured image by Mikaela Shannon