My internal drive being 320GB (~135GB used), I partitioned the drive in two: 340GB for incremental backups using Apple’s Time Machine software and the remainder (~160GB) for extra/portable space when I need it.
I quite like the stylish black brushed metal enclosure design. For lovers of the Mac Pro design, it also has the tell-tale cheese-grater effect in the front. 🙂
The drive only requires USB to be powered, and as shown in the picture above, its cable sports two USB connectors. Plugging both at once gives you twice the power, and therefore allows for maximum USB2 transfer speed of 480Mb/second. Plugging in only one will save on power, especially useful when the laptop runs on on battery power, but will reduce the transfer speed to around half its maximum. This, to me, is perfectly acceptable and is a great feature. Having no extra power adapter to carry around is a big win.
Inside is a 2.5″ Samsung HM500JI SATA drive. Time will tell if this is a good thing or not, but so far, the drive is both very quiet and fast (read/write). It also is not showing signs of overheating, despite having just written 135GB to it at high-speed (1,655,488 items). This is also very important in a fan-less enclosure design (quieter).
So far so good, very happy with my purchase. At CDN $79 with free shipping, I couldn’t really go wrong or afford to not have full backups of my cherished laptop.
It’s not that much of a stretch when you know WordPress is estimated to be powering around 8.5% of the Web, but there seems to be a definite penchant for it in the BMX industry.
Here are 20 of my favorite ones to follow, in alphabetical order. Click on the image to visit the related site.
DefgripDeluxe BMXDemolition PartsDigital BMXFast Forward BMXFederal BikesG-Sport BMXJared Souney PhotographyKink BMXMacNeil BMXMutiny BikesNice BrandOdyssey BMXOlivejuuuuice, aka Nuno OliveiraQuis, aka Chris Hill-ScottSunday BikesThe Least MostThe Come UpTransworld Ride BMXWoozy BMX
The exterior of a high-school nearby is being remodeled and in it I see a sweet new Montreal BMX spot in the making.
Keane making a cameo on one of the grass mounds.A little on the rough side but this ledge and those steps are going to be fun.Those grassy buttes are between 4 and 6 feet tall, at different angles.
W00t on being part of the best band o' brothers (and sisters) workforce around.
It has now been over a year since I joined Automattic and I am still as ecstatic about my job as I was on day one!
As a Systems Wrangler, I was venturing into unknown waters, taking on a huge challenge: coming in to a systems administration position. Systems was the missing link in my web career, being the only web-related role I had not worked full time before, despite having had to handle some of the responsibilities the task entails as a developer before.
Since 1994-95, I’ve held the positions of application architect, software developer, interface and user experience designer, database administrator, project and team leader. I’ve dealt with client relationship management and even was co-founder of a consulting firm. I believe that an inherent component of my ultimate personal career vision, which is to be the best team and project lead possible, is that one should be able to actually do everything his/her team members face in their own subject of focus. I am not going to get into the reasoning behind this philosophy, its details being likely as obvious to you as they are to me.
The other challenge implied with the systems administration responsibilities was the scale of it all. WordPress.com and our other properties are after all some of the largest sites on the Web, sporting over a thousand individual servers spread across multiple datacenters, powering millions of blogs, and being home to millions of individual users.
My year in systems had to be THE most challenging I have ever faced in the past. It was also easily one of the best. Combining the people I have the incredible luck to be working with with the constant stimulation it provides was nothing short of – pardon the analogy but… – intellectually orgasmic.
However, hardware, network and systems is not where my heart lies. I found myself missing the creative aspects of development too much. Unarguably, infrastructure design and low-level troubleshooting can require just as much creative thinking as many other web-related tasks, but they did not spur mine as much as development does. One has to be true to his/her own strength and affinities. 🙂
With this in mind, I have now switched to a development role, thanks to Matt and Toni‘s (as well as the entire company’s) firm belief in a happy, inspired and motivated employee invariably translating into a peak-performance one.
I have now joined the ranks of the NUX team, along with Joy, Nikolay, Michael and Terry, as a Code Wrangler. NUX standing for new user experience (or as Matt once put it, the opposite of SUX).
User eXperience (UX) is about how a person feels about using a system. User experience highlights the experiential, affective, meaningful and valuable aspects of human-computer interaction (HCI) and product ownership, but it also covers a person’s perceptions of the practical aspects such as utility, ease of use and efficiency of the system. User experience is subjective in nature, because it is about an individual’s performance, feelings and thoughts about the system. User experience is dynamic, because it changes over time as the circumstances change.
Our team’s primary focus therefore revolves around making sure that our users have the best experience conceivable when using our products, but as every one of our teams, we have a hand in every aspects of the Automattic empire.
Variety is the spice of life and I like it hot. I cannot fathom being any happier!
One of my roles at Automattic is to maintain Plinky, now that we’ve acquired the service from Thing Labs. I’m a techy on this project, so I still find myself being exited about the prompts our editors come up with. Here’s me trying to answer one of them: “Name three songs you never get sick of“.
This song struck a particular chord in me when I listened to it the first time. I was seventeen years old and had just moved from Martinique (Caribbean) to Montreal (Canada), only starting to truly learn spoken day-to-day English. This is the first English song I truly understood from start to finish and could relate to at the same time.
Despite living a rather typical modern North-American existence, full of affluence and superficiality, this song still embodies some of the core values I cherish in life: the importance of love and family above all.
We, at Automattic, have talked a lot about the challenges telecommuters can face when it comes to health, sanity and sedentism while at our annual meetup. Working from home has a lot of advantages, but it’s sometimes difficult to make a clear transition between work and personal life when it comes to schedule, habits and so on.
Here is what I’ll be experimenting with this week: working from the comfort of my home office in the morning, then take advantage of my lunch break to relocate for the afternoon.
High-speed iPhone/3G tethering, full-featured laptops and long-lasting batteries make these kind of things easily achievable nowadays, without compromising on performance nor productivity. Since I am lucky enough to be provided with all of the tools and flexibility I could potentially need to do so, not taking advantage of them would simply be silly.
The expected work and lifestyle improvements I’m aiming for are:
Making the most of my actual in-house environment in the morning as I flow into my day.
Adding daily exercise to my lunch routine, since I mostly walk/skateboard/bike everywhere.
Avoiding the common telecommuting pitfall of leading a quasi-hermit-like lifestyle (ie: remember to work from home, not live at the office).
A better socio-professional life as this practice will undoubtedly lead me to work from co-working spaces, especially in the Winter when the weather gets harsh.
Having a clear cut-off time, personally driven by having to pickup my kids at school (bonus: more exercise too). The latter doesn’t stop me from working longer hours by coming back online during the evening when needed or when I feel like doing so, but having to physically leave my seat is the perfect way to remind me I also have a personal life.
So here’s to committing to and iterating towards a better lifestyle, and thanks Automattic for not only affording me everything I need to do so but for proactively encouraging the entire workforce to find the right work/life balance.
Now, if only those darn bees would stop buzzing around my head… Working outdoors is a risky business, I want danger pay! 😉
Asides:
When it comes to focusing, no matter your location, nothing beats a good pair of headphones.
When working outdoors, do not compromise on comforts like immediate access to snacks, thirst-quenchers, even bathrooms or you’ll pay for it by having to relocate constantly and your productivity will take a hit.
The photo, title and initial location were all inspired by a photo my friend Javier posted on Facebook.
The time had to come eventually. My kids are now one of my most effective means of discovering new music, which is absolutely awesome as far as I’m concerned. It’s about time actually!
Saving the occasional Bieber-slips (…), they have pretty good and eclectic tastes, ranging from electronica to alternative, old classics to experimental. This makes me quite proud since I perceive enjoying a wide range of musical genres as a good path to a multicultural vision of the World.
Never fear, I still have a few tricks up my sleeve and being an avid music listener myself, I’m sure to enlighten their repertoire with other musical treasures of my own for a long time to come.
But it sure feels great to now have a reciprocal relationship with them on the music front! 😀
Being a distributed company, the entire Automattic crew meets once a year so that we have an opportunity to interact with all of our peers (20+ new ones since last year) in person. This year’s meetup took place in Seaside, Florida.
As a quick anecdote, Seaside is where the 1998 movie “The Truman Show” was filmed. Stunning location. Great movie, by the way.
As per usual, we had a fantastic time together. Those events are always a wonderful reminder of how Automattic is THE best company in the World!
Our days were filled with socializing, individual flash talks on any subject (mine was “How Woodworking Made me a Better Programmer”), team projects/presentations and other activities.
All fantastic means of not only capturing the pulse of the company, its founders and employees, but also to learn so many things in such a fitting environment. I savored every minute of the trip, both from the personal as well as professional development perspectives.
To all my Automattician brother-in-arms, thank you for the time we shared, and looking forward to the upcoming year. Special props to Rose for having done such a bang-up job organizing the whole thing!
And to those who might be reading this and think how wonderful working with us would be: Think you have what it takes to join the team? Drop by our jobs page. The more, the merrier!
