Wow, what a long week! Over the past few days, I spent a lot of time preparing for my Kinsta webinar next week. It was a lot of work, but I’m very happy about the presentation I put together. If you’re interested in learning about WordPress performance, I encourage you to register for the free webinar.
Summer is Almost here
The weather over here in Massachusetts was super nice today, so I clocked out half an hour early to get some Vitamin D outside with Ayaka and J. One thing I’ve struggled with lately is getting creative with my camera. Part of me feels guilty because I acquired a Leica Q2 a few months ago, and have only used it a handful of times since. Back in Tokyo, there were always interesting things to capture around the city. Now that we’re taking shelter in an American suburb, finding subjects to photograph can be difficult.
Team Muramatsu
A little known fact about me is I used to be a very serious flute player. Back in high school, I was in the all-state band. In college, I played in the wind ensemble for a few years as well. I don’t recall why I originally gravitated towards the flute, but I’m glad I did because I really enjoyed it for many years.
After college, I stopped playing because I constantly felt burnt out from working in the music industry. When it came time to relax, the last thing I wanted to do was sit down and practice flute. Shutting off my brain and playing video games seemed like a much better option back then.
Looking back, I regret not maintaining my flute chops over the years. The flute is the perfect instrument for a frequent traveler like me – it’s an extremely expressive instrument in a very small package. I wish I brought a flute along with me on all my travels over the past few years
In high school and college, I played on a Pearl Quantz 765, a decent intermediate level flute. Before purchasing it, I tried a bunch of different flutes including a 14K gold one – not that I could afford it. After my flute trials, I ended up really loving the Muramatsu EX. Unfortunately, at $4,700, it was too expensive for my parents at the time, so I settled for the Pearl. Nothing against Pearl! I loved my 765, but it didn’t give me the same feeling as the Muramatsu.
Fast forward to 2020, and my joy for playing music has returned. I’m sure leaving the music industry in my professional life helped with that. Lately, I’ve been playing the piano quite often. I’ve also felt a longing to start playing the flute again. Now that I’m a dad, I also hope to inspire J to learn about music as soon as possible. Since we travel so often, I figured getting good at the flute again would be a good idea because a piano certainly doesn’t fit in a suitcase.
A Muramatsu DS flute.
Long story short, I have a Muramatsu DS flute on the way thanks to the Flute Center of New York. A solid silver handmade flute like the Muramatsu DS will last a lifetime, and I hope to pass it on to J someday if flute ends being a passion of his. I don’t purchase many things, so for the things that I actually open up my wallet for, I want the best. For me, there’s no flute better than a Muramatsu.
My goal for 2020 is to get good at the flute again and starting posting cover videos on youTube by the end of the year. Stay tuned!
Slack is Down →
The Verge:
No, it’s wasn’t just you. Slack indeed went down due to an outage of some sort that appeared to have begun some time around 7:30PM ET. User-reported issues spiked on DownDetector.com, and the app was largely inaccessible, with posts not getting marked as read or not going through at all. The issues affected both the mobile and desktop versions of the app. Slack says it’s in the process of resolving the issue, but connectivity problems remain for some users.
The entire world just suddenly got a whole less productive. Global outages like these ones really put our reliance on technology platforms into perspective.
My Podcasting Setup
One of my goals for 2020 was to start a podcast. Five months in, I’m now co-hosting three podcasts – Various Artists, The RHIZOME Report, and TezTalks Radio. Over the past few weeks, my podcasts have started to gain some traction, and I’ve received a few questions about my podcasting setup. I’m actually in the process of writing a in-depth guide on how to get started with podcasting, but I thought it would be cool to write a quick post about my personal setup.
WP Engine Launches Genesis Pro →
WP Tavern:
Managed web hosting company WP Engine launched the new Genesis Pro add-on for customers of its hosting service today. The add-on brings additional block editor features for users who are using a Genesis-based WordPress theme.
The add-on includes a robust set of options that are primarily aimed at helping users build their webpages with custom blocks and designs. The following features are the foundation of the add-on:
- Block Library: Includes 17 custom blocks, such as a testimonial and pricing block.
- Page Layouts: Offers 22 full layouts for product, portfolio, team, and other pages.
- Content Sections: Adds 38 customizable content sections.
- Permissions System: Allows admins to set editing permissions on a per-block basis.
- Customization: Users can create and share custom sections and layouts with content creators.
Believe it or not, I used to be a huge Genesis fan. In fact, several earlier incarnations of this blog were built on top of the Genesis framework. I was originally drawn to the Genesis framework because I was looking for a lightweight and minimalist theme to use as a foundation for a custom child theme. Back then, the two contenders were Genesis and Thesis. After testing out both frameworks, I liked Genesis a lot more.
The idea of having a foundational layer that took care of basic WordPress housekeeping items was appealing to me. I only wanted to focus on my blog’s looks. I didn’t have much interest in making sure itw as SEO-compliant. Genesis excelled at staying out of the way, and I really liked that.
Since WP Engine’s acquisition of StudioPress, I’ve lost interest in using Genesis on my WordPress sites for a few reasons. The Genesis community doesn’t feel the same anymore. Back then, things felt very grassroots and I liked that. Brian Gardner, the founder of StudioPress, was constantly in touch with users and customers – that kind of interaction is irreplacable. Lastly, there was a huge focus on minimalism which appealed to me – this was mostly the work of Brian Gardner who now runs a minimalism blog.
The post-acquisition direction of Genesis goes against its core values. Features like a variety of page layouts, permissions systems, and a large library of Gutenberg blocks isn’t something that’s needed in a framework that preaches minimalism. The fractured vision of the product gives off mixed signals, and it makes consumers uncertain about what they’re buying into. If feature bloat is going to be StudioPress’ new product strategy, I think a site redesign to move away from minimalist ideals is in order.
Adding Next and Previous Post Links in Hugo
Today, I decided to add next and previous post links to the bottom corners of my single page template in Hugo. I purposely made them “fixed” to ensure people would see them even if they don’t scroll all the way to the bottom of the page.
Learning Swift
After months of internal deliberation, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s finally time for me to learn Swift. Since I started working at Kinsta a year and a half ago, I’ve felt inspired to learn how to code – probably because I get to see the work of our awesome developers firsthand.
Initially, I tried learning JavaScript, but quickly gave up on it because I realized I have no intention to build webapps, and I think there are better languages for backend development. Next, I moved on to Python, which I was able to pick up pretty quickly. I actually really like Python. The language makes sense to me, and I was able to prototype ideas quickly. ICON, the blockchain project I do a lot of work for, uses Python primarily, so I was able to develop a few ICON blockchain-related tools as well.
- A tool to timestamp a webpage with blockchain.
- A tool to prove server uptime with blockchain.
- A tool to fetch some basic blockchain performance metrics.
I’ve also written a variety of personal Python scripts to boost productivity by automating repetitive tasks.
I know enough Python now to be happy. I don’t see myself ever becoming a Python developer because I’m not super interested in automation, infrastructure deployment, and API development – a few things which Python excels at.
I am quite interested in developing apps in the Apple ecosystem though. Over the years, I’ve continuously procrastinated learning Swift because I kept telling myself that learning a platform-specific language is limiting. Recently, I came to the realization that learning a niche language like Swift might actually be good for me. I have a tendency to try too many things at once. For example when I was learning Python, I got sidetracked with trying to figure out Django, Ansible, and Flask all at once – it ended up being a huge waste of time because I only really needed Python for blockchain and automation work. Thus, I think limiting myself to creating an iOS app with Swift will be a refreshing experience.
For now, I’m going through the Swift documentation. Next week, I’m going to start a Udemy course that was on sale for $11.99 (wow). I’m hoping to set aside one hour a day early in the morning for learning Swift, but I’m not going to put too much pressure on myself because life with a full time job and a baby in the middle of a global pandemic is difficult.
I’ll provide a progress update every week or two. Stay tuned!
Zoom Acquires Keybase →
Keybase:
Initially, our single top priority is helping to make Zoom even more secure. There are no specific plans for the Keybase app yet. Ultimately Keybase’s future is in Zoom’s hands, and we’ll see where that takes us. Of course, if anything changes about Keybase’s availability, our users will get plenty of notice.
This is a very interesting acquisition. Optics-wise, I think it’s a win for Zoom. Technical and privacy-minded people who respect Keybase may reconsider Zoom after this acquisition. On the flipside, mainstream consumers will see this headline as “Zoom partners with security company to enhance privacy features” – these are the people who likely didn’t care much about Zoom’s security flaws in the first place, so reading a headline like this will only make Zoom “even better” in their minds.
This acquisition announcement also comes at somewhat of a key time in terms of Zoom’s stock performance. Over the past week and a half, buy pressure on $ZM has been easing up – a clear bearish divergence can be spotted on the 4H chart.
$ZM has undoubtedly been a hot stock since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic – approximately 160% in the green. Now that Zoom has “normalized” around the world, there needs to be another hype cycle to keep the rally going. The acquisition of a company that focuses on Zoom’s biggest flaw (security) seems like a “cheap” way to keep the stock rallying.
$ZM is up 6.5% today. Zooming out, I think a short opportunity down to the $105-110 range isn’t too far away.
A Real-Time ICON Notification System →
RHIZOME:
The platform uses a publish-subscribe architecture to allow the user (app or system) to subscribe to any event that occurs on the chain, and be notified immediately when it happens. In the case of MetrICX we are using Push notifications to let users know when they receive a deposit or receive rewards. The platform is evolving; it’s exciting! We are innovating as we go and are open to suggestions.
I’m happy to announce that our real-time notification system for ICON on-chain events is finally live! This has been a work in progress for the last two months, so I’m glad to see it deployed to production. Right now, we are using the new notification system to power push notifications for MetrICX.
Previously, notifications suffered a 1-5 minute lag due to the way the notification functionality queried the blockchain. With this new system, the notification lag has been reduced to 1-2 seconds – pretty much nonexistent.
In the future, we plan on opening up the notification service to the public via an easy to use API. With API access, developers will be able to generate webhooks to subscribe to notifications for specific on-chain events.
Stay tuned.