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People who are certain
I see this quite a bit in the industry I work in. People come along and talk with great certainty. Great certainly about their ability. Great certainty about how you should run your business. Great certainty that they have some magic insight which makes their opinion more valid than others. These people of great certainty also seem to thrive upon the humiliation of anyone who does not agree with them. They claim they’re ill informed, they’re not clever enough. Sometimes they’re just idiots (replace that with a multitude of words filled with more venom). I find that, given enough time,…
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The algorithm of intolerance
Most people will encounter a breadth of opinions and viewpoints about almost every issue. You think one thing, and it turns out that many of the people you know think differently. Over time, I think that this exposure to alternative points of view causes you to question the certainty you have about your own thoughts. You may still believe things, but you’re inclined to realise that other people differ from you, and that that’s okay. It’s not perfect and it certainly does not work all the time, or for everyone, or for every issue. People will disagree, but you get…
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Being important
It’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice. No idea who said this first, but follow it, and I suspect that you’ll have a jolly fine life.
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Morning sunshine
In the UK, we’re really quite far north. If you live in North America, take out a map and trace a line horizontally from London to your part of the world, you might be surprised just how far north we are. This means that in the summer we have long days and short nights. In the winter short days and long nights. There comes a point when you really want the long nights to become long days. A craving for the sun; a wish to be warm and to see without the aid of electrical lights. We move the clocks…
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Empires
I’m sure that if you were a citizen of any of the following empires at the height of their power, you’d have had no idea that it was possible that the empire would one day come to an end. “We are too powerful”. “There’s no adversary in sight which can match us”. “We’re too important to fall”. You can imagine dozens more proclamations like that, I’m sure. However, they all do fall. Slowly at first, and then suddenly, all at once. Historians do the job of joining up the dots and fitting the whole jigsaw together, because the people in…
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Dear Capitalism
Dear Capitalism. I think that it’s time that you sat down and had a long hard think about your actions. Sincerely, 95% of the population of Earth.
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Being nice
Can you find anything wrong with this sentiment: I like it when people are nice to me. I doubt that you can. If people are nice to you, it makes you happy. By extension, if you are nice to other people, you will make them more happy. In the year 2025 we seem to have forgotten this bedrock principle of life. Do I need to say more?
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Snowy break
We decided that we’d go away for a few days after the New Year. We went here, and were lucky enough to get some snow. I feel very lucky indeed.
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New Year 2025
Well, we’ve managed to reach 2025 years from 0, and there was quite a lot that happened prior to that, 13.8 billions years of things to be specific. It turns out that the date of the New Year (1st January) is quite an arbitrary thing, and depending upon when and where you live(d), it could have been a whole bunch of different dates. Anyway, for now I’m sticking to 1st January, and wish you a happy New Year on that basis.
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Little break in Wales
We’re lucky enough to be friends with the owners of a fine hotel in north Wales. Most years we get invited to stay there, and this year it’s fallen between Christmas and the New Year. It’s wonderful, and I’m in love with their place and where they live.
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I’m profoundly lucky
It’s the time of the year in which I find that I have more time to reflect upon life. Apart from the normal gratitude for my health, family, security and normality / predictability of my life, the thing that I’m most grateful for is WordPress. The ability for me to express my (mostly banal) thoughts and reach much of the world (should they wish to engage), is something precious and remarkable. This point bears further pondering. I have an idea, I log in, type, upload images and hit publish. It’s there for those able to browse the internet, all in…
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Christmas 2024
This year, I was mostly ill – yay! I tried to have fun, and I did, but gosh, I could have done without the sickness. Boo!
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Podcast no-show
You might not know, but I make podcasts in the WordPress space for a living. I talk to people about their products, services and their involvement in the WordPress community. One of the things that I do to make life easier for myself, and the guests that I have on the podcast, is to provide an online calendar booking system. People go to my booking page, book an appointment for a podcast recording. It’s really easy to do. This does however present me with the problem that I’m allowing an online booking system to control my calendar. If someone books…
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WPLDN Festive Event – what a blast!
The festive WPLDN event took place yesterday, and what fun it was. A speed build with Jamie Marsland v Dan Maby. A pub quiz with lots of nerdy WordPress facts and figures. And someone walked away with a brand new MacBook Air! I really had a great time, truly. The technical challenges from a AV point of view were many and difficult to overcome, but we got there in the nick of time!