Today marks my one year anniversary with Automattic. I work with some awesome people and it’s been a rewarding first year. I’ve had challenges to face (my attention for one), fun speaking at conferences, shipped a number of improvements and new features of WordPress for iOS, and learned a ton of new things. I’m excited to experience my next year here!
Developers interested in contributing to the WordPress mobile apps can now connect to WordPress.com with their own account. More details to follow on how to set up the individual projects.
On occasion my Calendar on Mavericks gets hosed when syncing with Google. If I look in the console, I see errors like the following mentioning “An error exists on principal”:
6/5/14 10:05:00.337 AM Calendar[59555]: [com.apple.calendar.ui.log] [An error exists on principal: [iCloud]] 6/5/14 10:05:00.338 AM Calendar[59555]: [com.apple.calendar.ui.log] [An error exists on principal: [Time Off]] 6/5/14 10:05:00.340 AM Calendar[59555]: [com.apple.calendar.ui.log] [An error exists on principal: [Events]] 6/5/14 10:05:00.341 AM Calendar[59555]: [com.apple.calendar.ui.log] [An error exists on principal: [Launch]] 6/5/14 10:05:00.341 AM Calendar[59555]: [com.apple.calendar.ui.log] [An error exists on principal: [Conferences]] 6/5/14 10:05:00.342 AM Calendar[59555]: [com.apple.calendar.ui.log] [An error exists on principal: [Some Team]]
Hitting Command-R in calendar results in it sitting on Updating for some time (minutes?) and then an exclamation point appearing next to the calendars in question. I finally found a solution to fix it until the next time it happens. I’m not sure what the actual cause is but this can get you back up & running.
- Close the Calendar app.
- Go into System Preferences.
- Click on Internet Accounts.
- Click on the Google account (if you have multiple you may have to do this for each).
- Uncheck “Calendars”.
- Click Show All or close preferences.
- Open Terminal.app (Applications > Utilities)
- type: killall -9 CalendarAgent
- type exit or close the window.
- Go back into System Preferences and turn Calendar back on for the Google Account(s).
- Start up Calendar and hit command-R – everything should refresh properly.
Let me know if you have questions!
I posted a while back about what I’ve been doing to lose weight.
I was my heaviest last year around September 2013 at 277lb (125kg). I started on my ADD meds around October and stopped taking a medication for my cluster headaches that was causing weight gain as well. You can see the drop but then around end of January I came off the meds. The weight hopped back up for a bit but I dug deep and kept my exercise a bit more regular. So far I’m down 40lb! I don’t really have any goal in mind other than to reach at least 235lb which the lightest I’ve been for the past five years.
This summer I’ve been able to get on my bicycle and ride with my partner around our campground and neighborhood. He’s been getting more active as well which is great! Having the Nike Fuelband and Withings Scale has been great at tracking my progress and keeping me motivated. I also use RunKeeper still to track my workouts which feeds calories burned into MyFitnessPal. I’m also pretty consistently doing step aerobics at home during the week using Jenny Ford’s awesome videos. I recommend taking a look at her work on YouTube and then buying a video or two if you like them. 🙂
On occasion I’ve been taking a picture of myself with Photo Booth on my Mac to track visual progress of my success.
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- August 2013
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- December 2013
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- January 2014
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- April 2014
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- April 2014
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- April 2014
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- May 2014
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- May 2014
This is probably one of the best videos I’ve seen promoting the need for us as humans to reconnect with each other. I work for a distributed company and I call tell you, we realize the importance of face to face interaction. Also we need to make sure we’re connecting not just to our friends, family and other humans but also our pets. It’s so easy to ignore them when you’re tied into an electronic device all day long. They need love too :).
In January 2014, the Mobile Team at Automattic met in Tokyo Japan for our quarterly face to face meetup. Here are some of the pictures I took from the meetup. It was a great experience and I would definitely go back to Japan!
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- First arriving at the hotel
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- Last meal in Japan
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- Heading back home
Before coming to work for Automattic, I pair programmed a lot. Developers who pair learn from each other in a symbiotic sort of manner. It’s definitely a good way to get a project off to a fast start and to come to consensus on design and intent. Once I started working at Automattic, I realized pair programming is less of a reality since we’re all in disparate locations across the globe. We tend to use code reviews as our way of pairing together on code and making sure the design we discussed in chat came through properly. We’ve also done screen sharing but never really felt it was effective.
I recently discovered Screenhero and it’s not much different than screen sharing with Skype or Hangouts except for some simple, but significant differences.
- I can see the remote cursor.
- The remote can see my cursor and in addition the direction I’m scrolling.
- Dead simple to install and connect with people.
The HD video and audio also add to the awesomeness of Screenhero. I’ve only used it a handful of times and I can already tell you it’s in my arsenal of tools.
The price for individuals is free but there are some team-based features coming like group calls. Prices aren’t set yet but they’ve mentioned $20/user/month. Can’t say it’s worth it yet for that price – team sharing might indeed be worth it.
My friend Marty gave a nugget of wisdom today that I thought I’d share. I mentioned how I’ve been doing good at losing weight but this past weekend I cut loose a little with family over. I intended on relaxing the calorie count so I don’t feel guilty at all. His quote though, brought things into perspective.
Progress is never a straight line. You just need to re-focus this week.
Progress really never is linear. Looking at all of the metrics I’ve been capturing relating to my progress with improving my health that is certainly the case.
My suggestion is to make sure you’re normalizing all the data in your life. Look for trends, not sharp points. Learn to understand when a data point is an outlier and exclude it from your data set.
Enjoy chasing storms from your couch like me? There’s a great app called “TVNweather Live Storm Chasing” that I’ve been using to watch live streams from actual storm chasers out in the field. You’ll see names like Reed Timmer (TornadoVideos.net) and the team running the Dominator 2.
TVNweather Live Storm Chasing for iOS
The app itself needs some work with stability, but the collection of active streams is incredibly handy and fun to watch. An Android version is coming soon as well. Until then you can also watch on their site at http://tvnweather.com/live.
It’s grilling season again (finally) here in Wisconsin. I got my Range iOS-enabled thermometer over the winter season and only used it once with a ham. I used it today with grilling burgers, brats and steak and really enjoyed it.
The Range thermometer is really fast at responding to temperature change. The problem I always have with even the best analog thermometers is that once they reach a high temperature, it’s hard to test temperature of meat that may be a little bit colder. I can move the Range thermometer around from each thing on the grill and not have to wait for it to reset.
The Range also has a great feature that isn’t well documented. On the silicone cord there is a ring magnet that helps keep the cord under control when you want to close the lid to your oven or grill. It’s fantastic because the ring is a little bigger than the cord so it can move freely through it.
The application Range built is fairly basic but extremely useful. There is also a developer SDK available for anyone that wants to write their own apps to work with the Range. It’s definitely worth the money!