Wanted a break from work so went and sat in a field with D. It’s cool that we can do that.
Eating like a cave woman
For the past ten days I’ve been eating like a cave woman. Plenty of WordPress people stick to the paleo diet and I’ve turned my nose up at it because I really hate fad diets. There always seems to be a new way to lose weight – I remember my mum doing different diets when I was young. The worst was the Cabbage Soup Diet – she stank for weeks.
Like most faddish diets, the paleo seems to work. And it seems to make sense – eat no processed food and cook everything yourself. For me, it has the added bonus of being a meat-based diet. As a voracious meat eater, this makes it a great option.
It’s been going well but there have been a few stumbling blocks:
1) The paleo diet could be renamed “shop like a well-off-middle-class-person-at-an-overpriced-farmer’s-market”. Everything is supposed to be grain fed and organic and blah blah blah. Basically, spend more of your money. When I’m shopping I feel like I’m being scammed. So I tend to not stick to the grain-fed, organic food.
2) I’m having problems with breakfast. If anyone has any suggestions for breakfast I would love to hear them. One proviso: I don’t eat fruit. I never have – I hate it. This reduces breakfast to bacon and eggs, boiled eggs with asparagus, and omelettes. I also made some paleo breakfast bars, but they’re a bit dry. I missing eating a quick bowl of Weetabix in ten seconds and getting on with my day.
Apart from that, I’ve been enjoying eating paleo. I love to cook and having certain restrictions means that I am forced to think about what I eat and to plan my meals.
Here are some of the things I’ve been making:
- Steak Tartare (3 times!)
- Courgette and leek soup
- Smoked duck, roast beetroot, walnut, and ricotta salad
- Trout with Mediterranean roast veg
- Aubergine Caviar
- Roast chicken with vegetables
- Globe artichoke with paleo mayo
- Home-made trail mix
If you eat paleo and you have any staples I’d love to hear about them. I’m looking for things that I can add to my growing cave woman repertoire.
First Ever Steak Tartare
Made my first ever steak tartare. I did it with sweet potato fries (which were slightly burnt). Followed Nigel Slater’s recipe (though removed capers because I hate them). It was totally delicious and easy to do. Added to my list of things that are quick and easy and taste fantastic. Next time I’m going to try with the addition of anchovies.
My Interview on Women in WordPress
I was interviewed for Raelene Wilson’s recent article on women in WordPress on WPMU.org. As an ex-WPMU.org writer, I was happy to answer all of the questions. Just one small quote made it into the article, and since I wrote a lot (I’m an expansive interviewee 
) I thought I’d post the interview in its entirety. The final article didn’t reflect my personal experience of the WordPress community, and I wanted to share that.
Note: I’m keeping the comments closed because I don’t want to get into a debate. I just wanted to share. Continue reading
Speaking About the GPL at WordCamp Miami
I’m speaking at WordCamp Miami on Saturday 6th April. I had originally planned to talk about contributing to WordPress, but I’ve been doing a load of research on the GPL recently so figured it would be a cool thing to speak on. I had a look through previous WordCamp presentations (those on WordPress.tv anyway) and couldn’t find much on the GPL. It seems a little remiss to me, since it’s pretty important. I’ll also be turning it into an article for Smashing Magazine, so if you aren’t at my presentation you’ll get to see an extended version of it on there.
What I will be looking at is the history of the GPL, what it is, what it means for WordPress, and how it became part of the project. There are some fun factoids from WordPress’s history that I plan to share. My research into this side of WordPress is by no means complete, but there’s still some cool stuff that I hope people will find interesting.
An interesting piece of WordPress history for those of you who like trivia. As I’ve been archiving WordPress history, I came across an interesting series of posts on Mike Little’s blog. In April 2003 (about a month before the launch of WordPress 0.7), Mike was issued with a cease and desist notice from a company called LinksManager.com. The company owns the trademarked name “LinksManager” and wasn’t too happy about Mike’s b2 Links Manager add-on. A back and forth ensued, in which the LinksManager.com guy lawyered up, and Mike changed the name of his add-on to b2Links. This solved the problem and everyone was happy.
Today I did an interview with Mike about the early days of WordPress and I asked him about the Cease and Desist. He pointed out that 10 years on and LinksManager.com not only runs its website on WordPress, but has a WordPress plugin
Minimum Hourly Rate Calculator
Brian has made a minimum hourly rate calculator. It showed me that up until the start of February I was really charging too little for my work. I was never very good at figuring out paid time off, national holidays, sick leave etc etc. I just brought in clients, made money, spent money, and overall had good time. Now that I’m employed I don’t need to think about calculating hourly rates anymore, so I wish Brian had come up with this thing a few months earlier.
A New Chapter
This is my first week at a brand new job – working at Audrey Capital. If you don’t know what Audrey is, it’s Matt Mullenweg’s angel investment and research company. This means I’ll be working full-time on WordPress, with the awesome team of Nacin, Otto, Scott, Rose, & Matt. This is a huge change for me and I’m a little bit stunned that everything’s happened so very quickly. However, I am immensely excited about the challenges ahead, both in terms of WordPress.org and other projects that I’ll be working on at Audrey. But first… Continue reading
Happy clients = happy me
WooThemes have completely overhauled their documentation based on a report that I did for them late last year. I’m really excited to see it implemented. When I started out with Words for WP 18 months ago, WooThemes was one of the companies I had in mind as potential clients. I knew that if I snagged them it’d be an indication of the impact I’ve made. It was fantastic to work with them and to help them build a documentation section that will work for their customers.
Also, WooThemes was set up by three of the most charming and lovely founders in WordPress (and I’m not saying that just because all of the dinners and drinks they’ve spoiled me with 
.
Click the link above to read all the nice things they said about me or head to their documentation section to see my work in action.
Infinite Adventure: The Year of Infinite Jest
This year will be the year that I read Infinite Jest. I’ve been planning to do this on and off for ages, but now it finally feels like the right time. Normally I read a lot – I’ve always got a book on the go, but for the past 3-4 weeks I’ve been finding it very difficult to get anywhere with a book. I’ve started a few, got a few chapters in, and given up, lost interest. I’m not sure why, but I can’t seem to engage. So why turn to a book that is notoriously difficult to read? Am’t I just setting myself up for failure? Continue reading
