Wordpress Desktop for Mac

I’ve been using the Wordpress Desktop for two days and its seriously good.

I have several different way to write blog posts and publish them - Mars Edit, Byword, DeskPM, Pixel Pumper … I’ve tried so many of them. But most often write in plain text in markdown format and then use Marked to convert to HTML. Plain text lets me use Sublime Text or Multimarkdown Composer for simple, uncluttered writing.

The company behind Wordpress has developed a desktop app to make writing blog posts simpler and easier. See below:

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This free app works with Wordpress.com hosted (and free) as well as self-hosted Wordpress (such as this blog). Its really great, its free and you have fewer excuses for not blogging.

Here is the app. https://desktop.wordpress.com

Windows and Linux versions are coming once they have ported & tested the Javascript frameworks on those platforms. (its hard to test Windows & Linux when so few bloggers use them).

Gratuitous Plug

If you need some help to start blogging  then perhaps my guide on how to write could be helpful - go here to check out the book

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No More Google Chrome Browser

I’m finished with Google Chrome.

  1. Its wiped my toolbar bookmarks AGAIN. This is the fourth time in six months.

[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“595”]Chrome toolbar wipe optChrome toolbar wipe opt

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  1. It still burns more battery than Safari or Firefox.

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  1. The updater wastes bandwidth by updating every 60 minutes

[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“595”]Google chrome continuous update requestGoogle chrome continuous update request

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  1. The updater keeps changing - I've seen wget, ksfetch, curl and custom updater. I'm wasting too much time on my outbound security setup here.
  1. It performs a hidden installation "Google Search" app on my Mac. What the hell ?
  2. Chrome keeps phoning home to tell Google what I'm doing (I monitor outbound traffic requests). Safe browsing is a feature but there are far more requests to Google domains that I cannot explain. Thats creepy and increasingly I worry about the data leakage that is occurring.
  3. Its big. 800MB so far and that's after a regular monthly cleanup

[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“595”]Google chrome sizeGoogle chrome size

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I’m back to using Apple Safari. Its not perfect either, but right now it is better than using Chrome on Mac OS X.

SD-WAN Night of Nerdery Nov 2015 with Viptela

Quick post to publish some photos from the Viptela Night of Nerdery event on SD-WAN held at the Flatiron Bar in New York last night that I have collected from social media. (I hope people don’t mind, I wasnt able to track where I got them from)

If anyone else has some photos I would love to have them - email them to packetpushers@gmail.com.

This was a live event timed to start after the ONUG conference was finished for the day. We brought the portable recording deck, a lot of cables and recorded a show with a lot of audience engagement.

It was awesome. I’m glad its over. Can’t wait to do it again.

 

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The Crowd From the back IMG_0300

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OS X: Replace Audio Alerts With Screen Flash

I can’t stand a computer that bings & bongs (no matter how fancy the audio files are or pleasing the sound) but I still need to know when something is alerting. Mac OS X has an accessibility feature that will flash the screen instead:

You can disable the sounds like this:

General mac tips Sound

And this settings will flash the screen when an alert event occurs:

General mac tips Accessibility

Mac OS X: Boom2 is worth the money

If you listen to Youtube, Spotify or other on-line streaming service you might notice that your music is flat or boring. Thats because they stream that music at limited audio rates to reduce bandwidth - e.g. Youtube is just 120Kbps and I believe that Spotify uses a variable bit rate to save bandwidth but sacrifices the audio quality.

Version 2 is much improved. The audio quality is much improved. An recent update added new audio processors that sounded good to me. For example, I might use Ambient on external speakers but will switch to Fidelity when using a headsets.

Boom2 screenshot opt

It also makes nice job of boosting the Netflix audio. I have a low-cost pair of desk speakers connected to my MacBook that cost less than GBP£50/USD$80 and they make room shake with Boom2.

Boom2 has as IOS App that acts as a remote - if you are using your Mac as a TV or “Stereo System” then you will love this app.

Boom2 is GBP£10 if you buy direct from their store (recommended). http://www.globaldelight.com/boom/index.php

Note: Back in 2008 I reviewed and recommended using SRS iWOW but sadly the company has stopped making this software. It still works and has better audio results than Boom2 but was for iTunes only.

Future of Storytelling

Drawing carton characters in a 3D space.

Glen Keane – Step into the Page from Future Of StoryTelling

Mac OS X: DirectLinks - Canisbos

This extension circumvents certain techniques used by Google and Facebook to track link clicks.

When you click a link in Google search results, Google uses JavaScript to replace the actual link with an indirect one, which they use for click tracking. Google then redirects the browser to the actual destination after logging the click. DirectLinks disables the JavaScript that replaces real links with indirect ones, so that when you click a search result link, Safari goes straight to the destination.

I’m in because that pisses me off.

DirectLinks - Canisbos: ""

Travels Jan-Aug 2015

A collection of photos from the last six months. Significant events:

Paris - to meet family. I hate Paris, its truly awful.

Interop Las Vegas - Speaking and meeting people.

New York - recording a live show, meetings in tall office towers in Manhattan and ONUG.

Beers - in my local pubs.

[gallery columns=“2” link=“file” size=“medium” ids=“3030,3042,3040,3028,3029,3031,3032,3037,3038,3033,3027,2926,3050,3043,3045,3046,3048,3047,3039,3041,3044,3049”]

I Love Ad Blockers For Lots of Reasons

Things about web-based advertising that offend me:

  1. Speed - page load times for images, scripts, videos mean that site performance can be degraded by 400% or more. Bad on the desktop, really poor on the smartphone/ipad.
  2. Privacy - to make ads "relevant" or "better experience" means extracting targeting data about you. Pervasive monitoring is simply a matter of time to build a comprehensive profile of who, what and how you think, emote and care.
  3. Visual Turds - this pervasive profiling includes the sale of your data between entities. The desire to show you relevant content to keep you engaged means that companies exist to show you "relevant" content. These companies get paid to promote this relevant content and only if you read it to see more ads which pay for the service.

Promoted posts crap

I think this is a visual turd. How people can put this on their sites and expect to sustain an audience over time is beyond me.

  1. Paying for Bandwidth in Time & Money - I pay for the bandwidth consumed by these services, especially on mobile. The load times for large amounts of content and lag while my data is analysed and sold in online exchanges is substantial. Note that this sale happens while the page loads and can add seconds to the web content that you expect to see.

I also pay for bandwidth in money. Buying ever larger plans to but still reading the same 800 words articles.

  1. Content Distortion - the human brain is keyed to respond to certain social cues. Our brains evolved to use rapid recognition to "see food" and "notice threat" as a survival trait. SEO tricks likes "5 Reasons", "One big thing" and "you won't believe" work because of this.

The downside is that titles often drive the written content that follows. And the pictures which must be graphicaly intense - obvious, bloody, horrifying, sexualised or stereotypical. And over time, we become inoculated against it, driving ever more graphic depictions of violence, sex or social disorders.

Ad Blockers

I use Ghostery as my ad-blocker today - in combination with an outbound firewall for certain sites (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn) that track you using share buttons on blog posts.

I have used, and donated to Ad-Block Plus in the past but it no longer works as well.

Mozilla’s Privacy Badger might work OK eventually but my tests showed it to be “gentle” and failed to block much.

Doctor Who Trailer for Sep 2015

I was never a HUGE Doctor Who fan. More of slow burning, watch it if I can type of thing.

But the current series is good. I’ll be waiting.

[embed height="315" width="560"][www.youtube.com/embed/0cs...](http://www.youtube.com/embed/0csVdLbDMO4)[/embed]

1000 People Play Foo Fighters "Learn To Fly"

I’m not a Foo Fighters fan but this is a glorious waste of time and tremendous human celebration. I hope it works.

10 Types of Networking Sh*t

The Ten Types of Networking Shit:

  • Spanning Tree
  • Cabling
  • Getting paid jack
  • Security
  • ITIL
  • Routing
  • Vendor
  • Change
  • Knee deep in

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On Having Favourites and Location Beers

I don’t really have a favourite coffee shop. For me, a coffee shop is a place to rest, a place to wait between meetings, a place to have meetings, to meet friends. The best coffee shop is one that is in the right location  (except for Starbucks, which has the same atmosphere as a production line in a factory). But this coffee shop is my “location coffee shop” when there are events at my daughters school.

Many years ago, my brother & I spent a few years wandering around Southern Europe and Eastern Africa. You couldn’t call it travelling, really, since we rarely planned where we going. One day we woke up in Cairo, fresh off sailing a felucca down the Nile for a week or so. We had seen as much of the pyramids, souks, markets and sights as we really needed and it was time to move on. At breakfast we met some other guys who had just arrived from Jordan, simply bursting to tell us how fantastic Petra was with its amazing buildings carved into living rock (as seen on Raiders of the Lost Ark).

We decided to go there. Packed up and headed to the bus station without giving any further thought to it. The bus station was busy, and we had to wait 10 hours to catch a bus and it wasn’t until we got Al Ismailiyah that we realised our mistake. It was Ramadan when many people would visit their families and celebrate the festival together. The passenger queue for a ferry across the Suez Canal has several thousand people after a breakdown at the start of the busiest period of the year.

It was the second day of patiently sitting in the heat that the drink seller came around.In the 45ºC heat, this man was walking around with a insulated box, filled with ice, soft drinks and water. We started bantering with him in broken english and our few arabic phrases, and joked that what we really needed was beer. How I remember this next moment.

He broke into a beatific smile, spat out a laugh and string of arabic words before diving into his coolbox and fishing around before holding out two bottles of ice-cold, frosty, luscious beer.

I swear that the choirs of heaven were singing songs from the vestibule at this moment. My mouth watered to touch the cold liquid, to feel those little angels of beery goodness dancing across my tongue. Mouths watering, my brother and I dove for our dinars to buy his entire stock. We drank the first beer while standing there, surrounded by thousands of people who had queued for two days to catch the boat to Jordan. In those days, Egyptian pilsener was quite awful but amid the smell of sweat, desert heat, open fires, overflowing toilets and endless impatience, I had the best beer I’ve ever had.

What I learned was that it is not the beer that matters, its the context. This matters more than anything. Its about why you had the beer ? What led up to the moment ?

Thats why I don’t really have favourites.  Everything is relative.

Thats why I don’t have a favourite coffee shop. But I do have my location coffee shops.


 

Note: This article was first published in the Human Infrastructure Magazine Issue 10. You can subscribe free at http://etherealmind.com/magazine-human-infrastructure-newsletter/

Grumpy Clown on A Rollercoaster

This picture resonates deeply.

Grumpy Clown On a Rollercoaster

Source unknown.

Which light takes you home 

the three lights

Tell me a different way home 

Hearth, street and country 

And I cannot decide which way to go

  

Happiness That You Don't Notice

What you really want is the happiness that you don’t notice because its always around you.

 

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Epic Music While Working

Been enjoying these music mixes on the youtubes. I’ve been on a binge for Epic Music for the last 10 day or so and finding that this music fits my current mood ……

 

PS: I use an audio utility to boost the audio quality on my big speakers.

▶ Gemini - Fire Inside (Mr. FijiWiji Remix) - YouTube

Getting some flow with this music this morning. Chillstep with a kicking bass and vocals that float over the top.

Perfect background.

[embed]www.youtube.com/watch

Thats A Good Question

“Thats a good question”

Don’t you hate it when someone tells you that the question you just asked, is a “good question” ?

I mean, really, its time to move on from the 1980’s mantra of the making the customer feel good by telling the customer that they are good.

In an era where the Internet has generated cyncism and mistrust, you don’t want to appear condescending or patronising. Don’t tell me that I ask good questions, because my questions are all good questions. Or I wouldn’t be asking them.

I hate being patronised. And that what it is.

Virgin Atlantic - New Seats So Close I Can't Work

Flew from Gatwick to Las Vegas on Flight VS43 in economy yesterday and was delighted to see new seats to replace the crappy the old ones. Got a bit excited at the new entertainment system and started to think the trip might be OK.

It took about 10 minutes before I realised how much closer the seats are together. Gut feel is that they are 5cm closer together. I am average height at 175cm tall , and my knees were right up against the chair in front. Then the person in front put their chair back and it was right in my face. Really, I measured it with my ruler, 10 inches from seat back to my face (or just a bit more than one iPad wide).

I could not open my laptop. I could not work. 

I look forward to the time on the plane to think and work on special projects. If I can’t work, the travel time is wasted time.

I could not easily read my iPad with the table up or down or see the TV properly. 

When I put my chair back to get some space, I am looking at the ceiling and can’t see the TV screen properly.

I could have used the time to catch up on reading & research. I could have made use of the quiet time to think but wasn’t able to open my notebook and use a pen because of the angle of the seat in front or because I was reclined so far.

The food on Virgin Atlantic is much worse in recent years and, effectively, inedible. I no longer eat on long haul flights, I buy sandwiches and snacks from the airport instead.

I will ignore the fact that the audio jack in my seat didn't work properly. That happens.

Outcome

The burdens of air travel are getting worse for me.

The cost of Airport parking and car travel have risen to about  20% of plane ticket ( £100 return in car costs, £100 per week to park. A return flight to SFO is ~£1000)

Airports are giant shopping malls that crush my soul and I loathe being there. Lets not talk about healthy food and clean air.

Flying has become such a miserable experience that:

  1. I'm going to stay at home and do less air travel so I can use my time efficiently.
  2. I'm going to use the Internet for business and replace travelling to events as much as possible. It is cheaper, I have more work time.
  3. I'm going to try other airlines when I fly next and see if seats are workable.

 

Listening to Chillstep

I often like to listen to Chillstep, (a cross between Chillout and Dubstep) when working and Youtube a is great source for it. Here is a selection of what I have been listening to recently.

Mac OS X: LaunchBar Convert Case

This is one of my most used features in Launch Bar.

 

  1. Select the text you want to convery and copy it.

  2.  Activate and type 'convert', select the conversion you want

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  1. Paste the text
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  1. press enter, then copy the text
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  1. Go to where you need to the text and paste it.

 

Addendum:

The people at ObDev sent me some tips over twitter to make this even faster.

Twitter

 

Recent Beers for Reddit

Some beers I have drunk recently.

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Human Vision & Computer Colour

Video that explains the relationship of colour between computers and human eye. Turns out that digital colour isn’t directly relating to our brain perception.

Well, I AM INTERESTED IN THIS STUFF.

Apple MackBook USB-C Connector is a "Docking Station"

 

Many people look at the Apple USB-C port on the MacBook and complain about missing ports on the computers. I see the docking station accessory I have always wanted.

  • A single plug that connects to all the devices when I get to my desk.
  • One day (I hope) my desk would have an Apple display that can provide power for the dongle. (Can't find how my Thunderbolt displays with MagSafe will connect to USB-C yet)
  • Then I have only a single connector when docking my Macbook at home
  • I have no plans to buy a MacBook today, not enough RAM, CPU or storage to be useful in 2015.
  • But hopeful of MacBook Pro refresh later this year if money permits.

 

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