automattic

WWWP5k

So it’s been a busy few months which have seen me move to the other end of the country (back to London), followed by a trip back to China. In the meantime I’ve been waiting with the utmost patience while BT take 5 weeks to install a telephone line in my new place, just so I can get proper broadband access. Thanks, BT.

Anyway, along with some fellow colleagues, I took part in the Automattic World Wide Walk 5k – a chance for the good people at WordPress.com to feel a bit more connected. It was also a good excuse for me to get out of the house and explore my new surroundings.

My walk took me into the chaos of Sunday in Camden Market, giving me a chance to pick up a Chaboba bubble tea, before heading along Regents Canal into The Regents Park. This was followed by a walk around the park before heading to Primrose Hill for a lovely view over London.

And here’s my less-than-perfect attempt at photo stitching.

Springfield Castle, Ireland

I spent last week with a bunch of Automatticians at Springfield Castle, Co. Limerick, Ireland. It’s a grand old place spreading across several centuries and varying states of repair. The owners were very accommodating and went out of their way to be as nice as possible.

The week was finished with a trip down to Cork and a nice meal with Donncha and family.

Anyway, here’s the obligatory photo gallery (courtesy of WP 3.0).

Earlier on this year Matt Mullenweg got in touch to see if I was interested in doing a bit of work for Automattic, with the idea of allowing people to post to their blog using email. I jumped at the chance and after a few months of part-time tinkering and a shock exposure to MIME, out came Post by Email and an introduction to the vagaries of spam.

Today marks my first day working full-time as a ‘code wrangler’ for Automattic. As a prelude to this the past three weeks have been spent manning the support desk at WordPress.com, which has been enormously useful in learning how WordPress.com works.

Suffice to say that I’m very excited about what’s coming up, and I’m looking forward to working with the rest of the team. There’s a whole bunch of good stuff going on and after having spent four years using WordPress, writing about WordPress, and developing more than a few plugins for WordPress, I can’t wait to get stuck in.

All About Email

I’ve been doing a bit of work recently for Automattic, culminating in Post by Email. If you’ve not seen it yet it’s a nifty way of publishing a post to WordPress.com by sending an email. Text and attachments are all converted into a WordPress post, and everything works just as if you’d typed it into a browser. All told a very quick and simple way of publishing and it’s been a lot of fun (and frustration) to develop.

Talking of which, the pace of development at Automattic is really quite astonishing and there’s a lot of very exciting stuff going on. From a technical point of view I never realised just how deep the rabbit hole goes. From a user’s point of view this is exactly how it should be.