Five Minutes with David Cole

The WordPress.com Blog

Every so often, we sit down with an Automattician to help you get to know the people who work behind the scenes to build new features, keep Automattic’s wheels turning, and make WordPress.com the best it can be. In this installment, we’re delighted to introduce you to husband, father, Happiness Engineer, sports fan, and Justice League of America superhero alumnus, David Cole.

Thinking about applying to work at Automattic? We’re hiring.

What kinds of awesome things do you do at Automattic?

“There’s always something that I can do to make a difference here, and I don’t necessarily have to do the same thing. For instance, in any given week, I can help individual users, improve documentation, report bugs, train staff, and increase my own knowledge and skills.”

As a Happiness Engineer, everything I do revolves around helping others and making WordPress.com a better experience for us all. Since…

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Celebrate Poetry, All Month Long

The WordPress.com Blog

NaPoWriMo , or National Poetry Writing Month, is back!

NaPoWriMo is an annual project in which participants write a poem each day in April. It unfolds in the tradition of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, held in November) and motivates, inspires, and engages poets of all levels, genres, and backgrounds.

While a poem a day is your ultimate goal, there’s really no “right” way to participate. Start today and keep at it, and experiment as you see fit. Focus entirely on sonnets, or experiment with free verse. Participate on your own, or collaborate with others. Publish on your blog, or experiment offline.

Ideas to get started

• Publish poems each day, focusing on a different genre each week.
• Handwrite poems in a journal, for your eyes only.
• Start a collective with others, plan themes for April, and publish poems on your own blogs focused on these themes.
• Create a new blog or group site specifically for this monthly challenge.

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Lessons from vacation

Chop Wood, Carry Water

 

We just returned from our annual Spring Break vacation to the ocean. So you’ll probably want to avoid me for a few days while I decompress after spending 16 hours in a car with children during the last week. I take a vacation every year with my family and yet I am still surprised at the things I learn. For those of you that haven’t had Spring Break yet, or who won’t be traveling until this summer, here are a few important lessons you might want to remember. 

1) The trip to your vacation spot is going to be worse than you can ever imagine. Traveling with children is similar to childbirth. The only way we do it more than once is by forgetting how horrible it truly was. We learned our lesson this year and we split the kids up (thanks Grandma and Grandpa)! Still, we were a…

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Customizing Tumblelog Themes

The WordPress.com Blog

Over 250 free and premium themes on WordPress.com offer plenty of choice when it comes to personalizing your blog’s design. Today, let’s get inspired with Tumblelog-style themes by looking at how three awesome bloggers customized their sites with a bit of experimentation and creativity.

How I Met You

Blogger Puti Ceniza Sapphira Akbar, a.k.a, “Chica,” uses Reddle‘s minimalist look to her advantage. Her site title, “How I Met You,” and her tagline, “Now We’re No Longer Strangers. Hello!” roll out the welcome mat for visitors. We especially loved the letter-esque custom header image treatment, complete with a fun postmark.

Chica’s fun custom header image stands out, acting as a warm, friendly welcome to visitors.

Chica’s Instagram widget.

A mom to two young boys, Chica’s into baking and photography. She blogs about life in New Bedford, Massachusetts, chronicling her house design ideas and family craft projects.

Reddle’s…

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On Overhearing People Talking About You

rjheeks

I had a very strange experience a few days ago. I was walking along the canal in Saltaire, about a mile from where I live. A man and a woman were walking towards me along the towpath, and as they passed me, the man was saying ‘… what it was, is that he blows bubbles and then photographs them...’ That’s all I heard. Blowing bubbles and photographing them is what I do! I have had some coverage in the national and international press for photographing bubbles, and I had been photographing bubbles in a nearby woodland just a couple of days before.

So I think there’s a really good chance that they were talking about me. They might have been talking about someone else, but I think it all points in my direction. They weren’t looking at me at all, so I think I just heard them…

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The Exxon Spill: 25 Years of Tears

Time has a strange effect on events in our lives. I feel I’m looking through a glass of water when I look back 25 years to this day, March 24, 1989.

SHANNYN MOORE: JUST A GIRL FROM HOMER

Prince William Sound, 2010

Time has a strange affect on events in our lives. I feel I’m looking through a glass of water when I look back 25 years to this day, March 24, 1989.

I’d left Seattle University and the Ballard Lochs on the M/V Westward heading north through the Inside Passage of British Columbia for the sac roe herring fishery in Sitka. No time in my life is etched as clearly as that spring. There is a certain magic about following Spring to Alaska. Per my not so scientific study, I’ve determined Spring moves at about 9 nautical miles an hour, about the same as the hundred foot boat I worked on. The inside passage is glorious. The bow of the boat pushes Technicolor into black and white. Winter gives up her fight to the brilliance of the whippersnapper called Spring. The smell is of thawing earth. Porpoises…

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The Happy Faces of Ghana: Photo Essay by Ryan Bolton

Ryan Bolton.

The kids in Ghana are full of life. In all of my travels, they are some of the most happiest, proud and beautiful kids I’ve ever met. And they love to have their photos taken as you will quickly see. I just returned from a 2 week stint photographing with Me to We in small villages along the ocean coast of Ghana. I was tagging along with a great bunch of high school students from Hunstville that were helping build a school for these very kids in Asemkow. The following is a first set of photos from the trip that I will publish. Many more to come.

For now, enjoy these happy faces of Ghana.

Shot in Asemkow, Ghana. Photo by Ryan Bolton.

Shot in Asemkow, Ghana. Photo by Ryan Bolton.

Shot in Asemkow, Ghana. Photo by Ryan Bolton.

Shot in Asemkow, Ghana. Photo by Ryan Bolton.

Shot in…

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3am Dangerous Zone and Working With Pride

atelier emily

My father lost his job this past January, coincidentally while I was paying them a short visit. It did not come as a surprise to him and – although I wouldn’t put it past him to hesitate discussing his emotions with his daughter – he seems pretty happy about retiring for good, puttering around the house playing Myst or Riven for the 15th time or reading The Hunger Games.

One of the reasons he cited for being fairly happy was that he hadn’t liked how his workload had continued to increase in the latter part of his career. He had felt pressure to be on-call at hours outside of his scheduled work time, and had seen others’ personal lives slowly assimilate into their office lives until they were nearly one and the same. Specifically, he had seen this in his younger peers, and assumed that they would hire a…

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Reading Out of Context

radical eyes for equity

ac·a·dem·ic: adjective a-kə-ˈde-mik having no practical importance; not involving or relating to anything real or practical.

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Currently, I have three seniors on track to certify as secondary English teachers doing extended field experiences in local schools—one is placed in an eighth-grade ELA class and another is teaching college-bound students in a high school.

While observing at the middle school, I arrived early one day while the full-time teacher was finishing a discussion of Walter Dean Myers’s Monster. The teacher had to cut the read aloud short, and one student begged for him to continue reading. The teacher asked for the books to be passed forward, prompting that same student to ask to hold on to his copy so he could keep reading (the teacher arranged for the student to retrieve a copy later, by the way).

In the high school class, the teacher-to-be has been teaching poetry by…

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Amazing Solar Flare Erupts

A Spectacular Solar Flare

In recent months, the sun has awakened from its longest and quietest period since the satellite era began in the late 1970s. An increasing number of sunspots, solar flares and Coronal Mass Ejections have occurred as solar activity builds towards a peak expected in 2013.

Youtube video

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