Chuck Grimmett

Archives

Month: November 2022

  • Week of November 21

    This was a week of rest, recovery, and hanging out. Of course, it was Thanksgiving, but I also took Tuesday off to compensate for working last Saturday. I made some bread, renewed my passport online, and caught up on some much-needed household admin work.

    For Thanksgiving, it was only the three of us this year, but we had a nice relaxing day. I made a ham from Hemlock Hill Farm, homemade scalloped potatoes and rolls, and green bean casserole. Cranberry Galette for dessert. We sipped a scotch cocktail with cranberry syrup and oolong tea. Charlie spent the day going between playing outside in the leaves, helping in the kitchen, and playing in the living room. It was nice!

    Friday Amanda started cleaning out some stuff in the basement we wanted to get rid of, which we then dropped off at a second-hand store. We went to a birthday party for a 3 year old and connected with some new parent friends, got some coffee, ate leftovers, and played with Charlie.

    Saturday we went to IKEA to pick up a few things to help us turn part of one of the basement rooms into a play area for Charlie (the reason for Amanda’s clean-out!), then we went to some friends’ house for pizza, wine, and a toddler play date. I know I’ve said this before, but feels like we are getting more of a community here, which is nice.

    Sunday was more playroom clean up and assembly, grocery shopping, a trip to Home Depot, laundry, and getting ready for the week ahead. It is fun giving Charlie little jobs like putting screws from a disassembled bookshelf into a container, or wiping down the baseboards with a paper towel. He loves helping.

    Charlie has a new pre-bathtime ritual: Bringing us the Barnyard Dance book by Sandra Boynton and then pointing to the computer so we will play the song that goes along with it while he dances along. He loves it!

    Charlie is making his wants and interests more clear, which is great. He gets a thrill when we understand what he is communicating, and it is helpful to us to know what he wants. At the grocery store he made it clear that he’d like some raspberries and pretzels by getting very excited and pointing at them while we walked by.

    What do you call a gnome in the military?

    A nom de guerre.

    New infusion going: a ginger liqueur akin to Domaine de Canton. Ginger, vanilla bean, orange peel, sugar, water, and an aged rum.

    Every year around Thanksgiving I get a harebrained idea for a new project.

    This year the idea is to make a tool that will turn Jetpack likes into webmention-style likes as WordPress comments, kind of how brid.gy does for Twitter and Mastodon likes. The WordPress.com API exposing likes seems pretty straightforward and returns names, URLs, and avatars, which is all you really need for a Like comment with the Semantic Linkbacks plugin.

    I think this will be a one-time tool (you run it once to migrate, then turn off Jetpack Likes for posts) rather than a syncing tool. Probably something run with wp-cli. I need to look further into how the Semantic Linkbacks plugin is storing metadata in order to figure it out.

    Speaking of IndieWeb stuff, I’ve been on a mission recently. Yesterday I set up brid.gy to backfeed likes, shares, and comments from other platforms as webmentions, and I backfilled hundreds of comments on old posts. What a cool service. That brings my current state to:

    ✅ Sending and receiving webmentions
    ✅ Backfeeding mentions from other platforms via brid.gy
    ✅ Syndicating via RSS, JSON Feed, ActivityPub, and autoposting services
    ✅ Microformats and my representative h-card

    To do: Implement bookmarking + script a way to make that sync from other bookmarking services, set up short notes like tweets that originate on my site then get syndicated

    What else should I work on?

    I had some excitement on Twitter this week. I replied to a post by Archduke Eduard of Austria (one of the Habsburgs who used to be the royal family of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) where he said he was skeptical of “vox populi, vox dei.” I pointed out that we likely know the phrase from Alcuin, who said: “Nec audiendi qui solent dicere, Vox populi, vox Dei, quum tumultuositas vulgi semper insaniae proxima sit.” Translated: “And those people should not be listened to who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of God, since the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness.”

    The exchange got hundreds of likes, RTs, and replies, including a couple from Eduard himself.

    Work win of the week: I suggested an improvement to Tumblr’s open graph tags to make tumblr blogs show up better on Twitter. The fix got shipped within a couple hours and improved Twitter sharing for everyone. Twexit!

    Speaking of, have you heard of the 1973 Scorsese mafia film Goncharov? It was so good. You should watch it if you haven’t.

    Archived Link

  • Week of November 14

    Charlie has been showing more interest in stuffed animals recently and has been very affectionate toward them, giving them hugs and snuggling them. This week he started carrying around a stuffed sloth almost as large as he is. Some times when he gets home from daycare, Sloth is the first thing he picks up.

    Charlie also has a new thing where he takes his sippy cup and hits it against your cup and says “Cheers!” He’ll also do it with whatever food he and you have in your hands at any given time.

    I was a solo dad for a few days this week while Amanda was on a work trip. Totally doable, but it tends to crowd out the possibility of doing anything other than the baseline during that time. Each time I solo parent for a few days, I have a new appreciation for single parents.

    I had to work on Saturday for a quick turnaround project. Thankfully that only happens once a year.

    After I published last week’s post, I spent some time outside sowing some flower seeds that need cold stratification. Then I came in and made dinner. Sitter was sick and we couldn’t find anyone else, so we canceled our dinner reservations for Amanda’s birthday and instead did “NY Steakhouse Night” at home. A 2.5in NY strip cooked in the sous vide and seared in butter, creamed spinach, hash browns, and a bottle of French wine. It was great!

    First big freeze of the season froze all of my jalapeños before most of them turned red, so I had to pick them all and throw them in the smoker to make chipotles, even though they were still green. They seemed to turn out pretty well after 6.5 hours in the smoker, though I haven’t eaten any yet. The plan is to pack most of them in adobo sauce.

    IndieWeb stuff:

    Two project ideas:

    1. I like the idea of BookWyrm, but I like keeping my books all on my own site. Perhaps I write a dedicated ActivityPub feed for my books page? Something like @books@cagrimmett.com. What If I make this into a WordPress plugin so others can use it, too? Make book lists and notes available via RSS and ActivityPub. Maybe it extends the existing ActivityPub plugin. We can call it the IndieWeb Book Club.
    2. A good project for learning how to make WordPress blocks: An easy block to allow WordPress site owners to add a representative hCard to their site. It should optionally support all hcard properties.

    A couple thoughts on the Twitter debacle:

    • If Musk were quietly, diligently making changes internally for the first month and announcing occasional improvements after they were shipped and stable, we’d all have a different outlook and maybe give him the benefit of the doubt. Instead, he chose mass firings and daily public spectacles. Makes me think the real reason that Tesla and SpaceX are so loved is because of incredible PR and comms teams keeping his nonsense reigned in. People he doesn’t have at Twitter.
    • How can the remaining staff at Twitter get anything done amidst such radical uncertainty?
    • Chris Aldrich on your Twitter Go-Bag.
    • Scrape useful metadata about your Twitter archive.

    This week I learned there are tools run by OpenDNS, Google DNS, and Cloudflare DNS where you can request that they update their DNS cache for a particular domain and record type.

    Two cocktails we’ve been enjoying this week:

    1. Scotch hot toddy
      • 2oz Scotch
      • 1 tsp honey
      • 1 star anise
      • 3 cloves
      • 1 lemon slice, juice squeezed into the cup
      • Top with boiling water
    2. As an alternative to the scotch toddy, I subbed in an amaro for the scotch, which was pretty good!
    3. Bobby Burns
      • 1oz Scotch
      • 1oz Sweet vermouth
      • 1/2oz Benedictine
      • Stir in a mixing glass with ice, strain into a coupe.

  • Week of November 7

    Charlie is getting better at making some animal sounds like “ruff ruff” and “moo.” It is adorable.

    We went to a friend’s house last weekend and Charlie discovered the magnets on their fridge and loved playing with them. We have some art magnets, but they are difficult for his little fingers to pull off the fridge, so we ordered some fun magnets that he can play with. Now every morning while we are making coffee he has fun putting magnets on the fridge, pulling them off, transferring them to the dishwasher, etc. There are some on the garage door in my office, too. Great purchase.

    This is the first Daylight Savings change that affected Charlie. On Monday he got up at 5am and we ran out of things to do, so I took him grocery shopping at 7am. He loves the grocery store.

    So, what do you do with an energetic toddler at 6:30am? I still don’t know, but today we made some cinnamon bread together. I went into it knowing there would be a mess, and there was, but he enjoyed it.

    It was Amanda’s birthday this week! I decorated the dining room, got a cake and her favorite ice cream, and threw a little get-together for her. Also planning on making her a nice dinner tonight (our sitter plans fell through so we canceled the restaurant plans) and soon going to Regarding Oysters to celebrate.

    It feels like so much of what we considered our normal lives was put on hold during the pandemic and is now pretty different with a child, so we have to be flexible and celebrate whenever and however we can.

    This Elon Musk Twitter takeover has been such a mess. Early on I thought it would go pretty well (cutting costs, shipping features faster), but in reality it is a lot worse than I thought.

    The $8 verification has turned into a fiasco, with accounts impersonating huge companies:

    • Lockheed Martin
    • Coca Cola
    • Tesla
    • SpaceX
    • Nestle
    • Eli Lilly
    • Every major politician you can think of

    It has honestly been funny to watch, but I expect lawsuits to start popping up.

    Advertisers pulling out, entire teams (including the communications team and accessibility team) fired, and reversal of their work at home policy. Like I said, a mess.

    Meanwhile, the team over at Tumblr is having fun trolling Twitter with their Important Blue Internet Checkmark.

    Combine that with the FTX.com bankruptcy and someone running off with the FTX.us assets, it is been a wild week on the internet.

    Honestly, Mastodon is not the answer. It is a crappier Twitter and I don’t expect it to get better. Instead, I think I should spend my time reading more indie blogs and liking/responding via webmentions. I know this isn’t a great setup for everyone, but I feel it is right for me.

    There are a number of new tools this week to find people who have Mastodon handles in their profile, but I’d like a tool that looks for blogs with RSS feeds. There has to be one out there. If not, modifying one of the Mastodon tools could do the trick.

    Hoping to carve out some time this coming week to work on it.

    Another related tool: shawnhooper / twitter-archive-to-wp – import your Twitter archive to a custom post type using wp-cli.

    GitHub Blocks looks pretty cool! Kind of like the next iteration of bl.ocks.org or a GitHub-centric lightweight Observable.

    If you update to macOS Ventura and have trouble with your SSH connections, you’ll probably need to add PubkeyAcceptedKeyTypes +ssh-rsa to your ~/.ssh/config file.

    macOS 13 (Ventura) ships with a version of OpenSSH that “disables RSA signatures using the SHA-1 hash algorithm by default.”

    Still reading Hernan Diaz’s Trust. I’m very close to the end. Maybe picking up Benjamin Rosenbaum’s The Unraveling or Monica Byrne’s The Actual Star next.

    I’ve been more frustrated, irritated, impatient, and less empathetic than normal this week by small-ish things that don’t usually get under my skin. I’m not sure why, but I do know it isn’t other people, it is definitely me. I probably need to get outside, maybe start meditating again, and get back to my practice of writing down three things I’m grateful for each day.

    I have a couple ideas for new posts on my neglected cooking blog. I need some time to put them together, but hoping I can make it happen!

    The rosemary has been blooming like crazy. Almost time to bring it back inside since we are expecting some freezes this week.

  • WordPress 6.1 Sponsored Contributor Stats

    A month ago I wrote a post about stats for WP Core releases and received some good feedback on it. Some folks also pointed out that Jb Audras writes better general stats posts for releases than what I put together, and I agree!

    One thing that I found was missing from all other sources was stats on sponsored contributors, so I’m starting to keep track of that here in this spreadsheet: 

    I’m collecting:

    • Number of sponsored contributors
    • Breakdown of the companies they are being sponsored by
    • Breakdown of listed employers, sponsored or not

    If anyone wants to help me backfill sponsorship stats for previous releases from data Jb Audras and the core release team pulls before each release, I’d be happy to collaborate!

    Stats for 6.1

    Total contributors: 798
    Sponsored: 149
    % sponsored: 18.7%

    The top sponsoring companies:

    • Automattic sponsored 63 contributors (42.28%)
    • WPDeveloper sponsored 11 contributors (7.38%)
    • Yoast sponsored 8 contributors (5.37%)
    • GoDaddy sponsored 6 contributors (4.03%)
    • Awsm Innovations sponsored 6 contributors (4.03%)
    • XWP sponsored 5 contributors (3.36%)
    • Multidots sponsored 5 contributors (3.36%)
    • Extendify sponsored 5 contributors (3.36%)

  • Week of October 31

    I spent Sunday through Friday in Denver at an Automattic meetup. This was the first large meetup held since I joined the company in early 2020. ~200 people across three of the companies divisions attended. It was wonderful to meet so many of my coworkers and make new connections. The days were packed and I think I made the most of my time there by:

    • Working on some projects in-person
    • Sitting with different groups of people at meals
    • Giving a flash talk
    • Taking walks with people and chatting
    • Asking a question during the group AMA with Matt
    • Volunteering to help coordinate some of the programming
    • Connecting with other teams like some of the Jetpack product teams, Pressable, Day One, Sensei, etc.
    • Participating in the coffee exchange (swapping coffee from local roasters around the world)
    • Going out for social time at the end of each day (board games, karaoke, bars)

    I met a lot of cool people I want to keep in touch with and am looking forward to the next one.

    One thing I did is taking some time before dinner each day to write some notes on the conversations I had, which will be very helpful in following up on some project ideas once we are back at our desks next week.

    Me giving a flash talk about making bitters. I'm standing in front of a slide showing photos of bitter ingredients explaining how I use each one.
    Me giving a flash talk about making bitters
    Team photo. Look at those nerds.

    Bob Ralian, head of advertising at Automattic, told me something very insightful (and maybe even inciteful!) during dinner one night:

    Don’t assume good ideas are being worked on.

    Bob Ralian

    This week I learned about the The HTTP Archive, an open source project that tracks how the web is built, including historical data. It is queryable by BigQuery, so I plan to check that out this coming week.

    Before I left for the work trip, I did some grocery shopping and meal planning for Amanda and Charlie. The goal was to minimize stress where I could even though I was away. I’m going to continue doing that when I travel in the future because Amanda found that helpful. Wrangling a toddler solo is no joke!

    Some of our planning to make more local friends, especially other parents of toddlers, is finally starting to come to fruition. We went to a morning play date on Saturday where everyone seemed to have a good time, and then made some concrete plans again before leaving. Looks like a rotating “Saturday morning donuts” playdate is going to be a monthly occurrence.

    Charlie enjoyed painting pumpkins and himself.

    We also had some new neighbors over for dinner, which was really nice. They are the closest in age to us on our street and we have some interests in common, so it was nice to connect.

    When Amanda and Charlie picked me up from the train station when I came home on Friday, I picked Charlie up and he immediately buried his head in my shoulder, clutched me, and refused to let go for ~5 mins. That really got my heart. I missed him so much last week!

    Charlie’s vocabulary is continuing to expand, as is his understanding of what we are saying and what is going on in pictures and illustrated books. You know that part of Llama Llama Red Pajama where baby llama is weeping wailing for his mama? When we get to that page, even if we don’t say anything, Charlie throws his head back, raises his arms, and yells. It is very funny.

    We’ve been listening to a lot of Caspar Babypants with Charlie, so I started to listen to Presidents of the United States of America again, which is Chris Ballew’s other band. It is funny how similar the lyrical style is. Peaches could easily be a Caspar Babypants song.

    Looking for an alternative to Twitter? Give Tumblr another try. (Yeah, that-thing-you-used-10-years-ago.tumblr.com). Great community, good people behind it, good vibes.

    I read a lot of Hernan Diaz’s Trust during my flights and am really enjoying it. After I finish it I might pick up his In the Distance.

    Charlie is waking up from his nap, so it is time to wrap this up, make some lunch, and spend the rest of this unseasonably warm day outside with Amanda and Charlie 👋