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“The red icon on your iPhone or iPod touch always reminds you (and others when you show it to them) that you were rich enough to afford this. It’s a work of art with no hidden function at all.”

via wrongdistance.com

All in part to an offer I just couldn’t refuse, I’m now part of the Automattic team. I’m very excited and very honored to be working with such an awesome team. I’ll be working on top secret projects (and some not so top secret projects), pushing pixels, flipping bits, and bringing my insight to all that I can.

Most of you (that’s you Mom) know Automattic through their work on WordPress and Akismet.

Taken with a Canon G9

From some notes scribbled at the pool:

The sound of ocean waves hits you the moment you open the door. Like a wash of relaxation and solitude you soon realize that you are indeed being bathed in not just sonics but lifewaves of a very different kind of energy.

You go to bed, partly from exhaustion, but mostly from the hypnosis of the visual and sonic landscape that you have been drenched in.

Your first day begins in a bath of pure happiness. It was the first time you awoke rested in years - years! You grasp for a clock, yet realize that they have been removed from the room. Your watch, resting in the bottom of your carry on bag reads 8. You are awake and rested at 8am. (What has gotten into me?)

–

Leaving wasn’t painful, as I knew that I would go home with the one I came to relax with: my new and wonderful wife.

Artists and producers work hard in the studio perfecting their sound, but people can’t really hear it with normal headphones. Most headphones can’t handle the bass, the detail, the dynamics. Bottom line: the music doesn’t move you. With Beats, people are going to hear what the artists hear and listen to the music the way they should– the way I do.

Beats by Dr. Dre Headphones

My friend Sharon showed me this album art. Prince laying on his bed, semi-nude, with a blank canvas and a fresh set of water colors. Can anyone say, “pimp?”

Amid all this hi-tech digital trickery, it is sometimes nice to be able to cast one’s mind back to the simpler analogue age and the measuring devices of the past. For example, we hooked up an analogue meter like those used in many industries for decades, fed it some different input and ended up with a literal desktop dashboard that measures average website response time.

Last.fm – the Blog · Quality Control

• I’m now on a plane headed for the pacific rim. You will not see me or hear from me for 6 days.
• Dean blogs!
• Stefan Sagmeister is my hero. His TED talk was great. His book “Things I have learned in my so far,” is amazing. Here’s an article about him.
• I got married. It was the happiest day of my life. Pictures are forthcoming.
• I got a new job. I’m extremely honored. I’ll explain more, when I’m not busy sipping coconut juice and eating fresh pineapple while the natives give me hot stone massages.
• Draplin vs. USA I can’t explain how close I feel to these words. I mutter this stuff every day.

Wordpress 2.6 was released last week. It’s definitely my favorite release thus far. There are a lot of reasons to be excited about it, but I won’t waste my breathe - the Automatticians already have in this awesome recap video:

But, the coolest feature, and the one I’m proud to have spent a lot of time and hard work on, is the Press This bookmarklet:

Eve Duhamel