new photo blog
I have a new photo blog!
I’ve always been a proponent of owning my own data, yet until now my photos have been scattered all over the web since I make use of and enjoy social networks such as Facebook and Instagram. However, these services hold the photos that I upload to them. While I might have the originals somewhere on my devices, it’s nice to have a permanent web home for my photos.
From now on new photos I take with Instagram, as well as my Nikon DSLR camera will be uploaded to the new photo blog. I’ll still share the photos via the usual avenues, so if you already follow me there, you don’t necessarily need to follow the blog too. I know several folks who don’t like or use Facebook or Instagram and I feel like my photos should have their own home, so here it is. As a bonus, I get to play around with all of the new WordPress.com gallery options and the new media manager.
I’ve imported all my Instagram photos and a few of my more recent albums/galleries on the new blog. In the next few days/weeks I’ll be back-filling more of my photos and of course adding new pictures as I take them.
If you’re interested, follow photos.jkudish.com.
The Jitterbug
Went to the Jitterbug bakery today, which my coworker Jane runs and to which I contributed to during its Kickstarter campaign. Such a lovely cafe with delicious pastries and amazing drinks. If you’re ever in the Tybee Island/Savannah, GA area, I highly recommend it!
Looking forward to WordPress.com hosting some restaurant websites, with the launch of our newest theme aimed specifically at restaurant websites. Check it out.
New Tools for Restaurateurs
Between starting the demi-glace and getting the case of chickens out of the walk-in for stock, the last thing we think you should be worrying about as a restaurateur is whether the guests showing up to your soft-open can actually find your phone number and location on your web site. Can phones do Flash yet? How long has that osso bucco been braising? We think the latter is probably a much better thing to take up your time, so we put together a few key tools to help get your mind off your website and where it belongs – on the food.
Introducing Confit
When looking at common restaurant site problems, one of the first issues that sprang to mind was how often broken animations, inaccessible information and bloated PDFs are foisted upon us when using our smartphones, when all we really need is a phone…
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WordPress.com now accepts Bitcoin as a way to pay. How many companies do you know who go out and build ways to accommodate users in otherwise restricted countries? Pretty awesome I think.
At WordPress.com, our mission is making publishing democratic — accessible and easy for anyone, anywhere. And while anyone can start a free blog here, not everyone can access upgrades (like going ad-free or enabling custom design) because of limits on traditional payment networks.
Today, that changes: you can now buy WordPress.com upgrades with bitcoins.
PayPal alone blocks access from over 60 countries, and many credit card companies have similar restrictions. Some are blocked for political reasons, some because of higher fraud rates, and some for other financial reasons. Whatever the reason, we don’t think an individual blogger from Haiti, Ethiopia, or Kenya should have diminished access to the blogosphere because of payment issues they can’t control. Our goal is to enable people, not block them.
Bitcoin is a digital currency that enables instant payments over the internet. Unlike credit cards and PayPal, Bitcoin has no central authority and…
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MacBook Pro Retina freezing/crashing
Just a little over 2 weeks ago, I got the new 13in Retina MacBook Pro, which is a great machine. I brought it home, moved over the files from my previous Air, and then proceeded to work as usual, etc… However, every few hours, seemingly at random, the computer would freeze and just stop working. Seemed a bit unusual for a brand new computer. I figured it might be a software issue with one of the programs I use and/or an issue with the migration from my old computer, so I just ignored it at first. It became more and more frequent after a few days, so I looked into it some more. The internet (aka the Apple support forums) recommended I do a SMC reset and a PRAM reset. Did both, and am happy to report that it’s been almost a week and no more crashing and freezing.
Goes to show that despite their reputation, Apple computers aren’t without problems. Also a good reminder, that Google is always there when you experience an issue, and is often a good first sanity-check/self-troubleshooting method before visiting the genius bar or other tech support 🙂
Making it easier than ever for a city or town to create a beautiful and easy website for their community. Proud of my coworkers from Automattic for launching this project.
City administrators: Don’t spend thousands of dollars on a proprietary system for your city’s website. We’ve launched WordPress.com/cities as the go-to place to start a site for your city or other municipal body, and there’s no charge to get started. (“Free” is a price that will get every taxpayer on board, and since WordPress.com has been approved as a hosting site for federal government agencies, you can be sure we take security seriously.)
To supplement the impressive stable of existing WordPress.com features like custom domains (i.e., a .gov or .com of your choosing), we’ve added a couple of new ones to help you build the best site you can for residents and visitors alike:
Starter Content
When you sign up, we automatically create the pages most commonly needed on city websites, such as Parks & Recreation, City Hall, and Law Enforcement, and add them to your site’s…
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Proposed talk for WordCamp Victoria 2013
I am proposing a talk for WordCamp Victoria which is coming up in January 2013. The session I’d like to do is a bit more beginner than I’ve done in the past; but should fit in well with the WordPress community in Victoria. Below is my proposed session.
Plugin development 101. I’ll show beginning developers and power users how easy it is to get started with WordPress plugin development. Many WordPress tutorials out there talk about copy this or that to your functions.php file in your theme. However, it’s just as easy to create your own functionality plugin; which makes for easier to maintain code in the future that isn’t theme dependant. I’ll begin with the basics of what a plugin is and how it’s structured. I’ll explain the hooks (actions and filters API) and talk about some of the most commonly used WordPress APIs in plugins. Finally, I’ll share some resources for developers and users to further learn from. A very basic understanding of what PHP is and how it works is recommended for attendees of this session.
Let me know if you have any further ideas on what I could talk about in Victoria, or if you have any questions, using the comments below. I’m looking forward to the event!
Current status
Lounging at the pool at my hotel in vegas, working on a few things and booking an ATV tour I am going to do tomorrow. Life is good right now.
Jetpack 1.9
Pretty significant Jetpack update out today. Exciting things coming from Automattic for self-hosted WordPress.org sites!
Jetpack 1.9 is here. That’s right, it’s time for another big helping of Jetpack awesomeness. This release brings you Toolbar Notifications, Mobile Push Notifications, Custom CSS for mobile themes, a JSON API, and improvements to the Contact Form.
Notifications adds a menu to your toolbar that lets you read, moderate, reply to comments from any page on your blog. Plus, if find yourself on TechCrunch, GigaOm, or any of the millions of other sites running on WordPress.com, you’ll be able to view and moderate comments on your own site from the toolbar there, too.
Mobile Push Notifications for iOS: Users who link their accounts to WordPress.com and use WordPress for iOS 3.2 can now get push notifications of comments.
Custom CSS can now be applied to mobile themes.
The WordPress.com REST API is now available in Jetpack. That means developers can build cool applications that interact with…
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Las Vegas
Enjoying a quick weekend trip to Vegas. First time here and so far so good. It’s definitely a nice break from rainy Vancouver.
Joey Kudish 