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This weekend, Labor Day in the US, me and my wife and kiddo went to Kalahari Water Park in the Poconos for one last gasp of the summer. The kid had a blast and did tons of water slides. We’re all so very sore. Come Tuesday, middle school!!!!!!! Eeeek! I…

Just got back from a 4-day family trip to Kent Island, Maryland. It was about 3 hours away and not to stressful a drive. Not only did we go with my in-laws, but we also went with my wife’s sister and brother-in-law and niece. I’m pleased with how much my…

Source: https://blog.google/products/search/ai-search-driving-more-queries-higher-quality-clicks Sure, Google. Of course they’re going to say this. Do I click on the source links? More than average people, but I’m not sure average person would. Do I think that if you want to read more you might click the citations? Sure. But, often if your question…

Just saw this great documentary (part one of two) on Billy Joel — Billy Joel: And So It Goes. He is such a talented guy and his music is amazing. I never knew how autobiographical his songs were. This documentary really makes me appreciate his music even more than I…

Intrigued by the LLMs.txt file spec. Though not completely supported, I see it as a way to get your site in the AI engines. I know many people feel that letting the AI engines have your content you’re aiding and abetting bad behavior on the part of these AI companies….

Google’s NotebookLM is letting people share their “podcasts” generated from their NotebookLM data with the world. First off, would you listen to an AI generated podcast more than a human-made one? Secondly, isn’t this just adding to the slop that humans have been putting out as podcasts anyway for years?…

Bluesky had a massive outage the other day, and people are wondering how could a “decentralized” social network go down like that? You know how? It’s not decentralized yet. Most of the users are still on the main server and that’s what went down. You don’t see stuff like this…

What are we doing here folks? We all flocked to Bluesky because it resembled what we used love — Twitter from the 2010s, but with the hope that it would in the end be different. The Bluesky team has promised to federate/decentralize for a while now, with nothing coming of…

I meant to write this suggestion out when I was told by my wife that we should do this. Lock your credit reports so that people can’t f- with it. This is more important now than ever with DOGE and the Muskrats rummaging through the federal government. I still can’t…

Recently I was sent the ALLCAST – Video Conference, Webinar and Podcast System from American Recording Technologies. Plain and simple — this system is sick. When the CEO of American Recording Technologies, Alan Adelstein, reached out to see if I wanted to try it out, I was excited to try…

So, I’ve wanted to figure out the best way to utilize both the AT-Protocol and the ActivityPub protocol and how they can talk to each other. There’s an app/service called Brid.gy on both ActivityPub (Mastodon/Fediverse) and on the AT-Protocol. What it does is nothing less than awesome. It creates accounts…

In a post from Search Engine Journal, Roger Montti reports that Matt Mullenweg, the co-founder of the WordPress open source content management system, says that the lawsuit with WP Engine could end WordPress. Honestly this has me fuming. Because WordPress is so much more than just Matt. It has a…

Happy Holidays everyone! It’s been a great holiday season so far here. Christmas Eve-Eve to Christmas Eve my wife, son, and I went on our annual trip to Hershey, PA to go to the Hershey Lodge for some swimming and some chocolate goodness. Now we’re in the in-between week. It’s…

Inc.com posted an article that their reporter did with Matt Mullenweg, the co-founder of WordPress. In the article the reporter, David H. Freedman, doesn’t paint a sunshine and rainbows picture of the whole fiasco between Matt (et. al) and WP Engine. Matt, in his right, responded calling the piece a…

There have been reports of drones over New Jersey quite a bit lately. The NJ governor has declared a limited state of emergency grounding drones and the FBI is involved. The military says it’s not them. And a congress-critter is saying they’re from Iran. 😵‍💫 It’s been all over the…

Sam Cole over at 404 Media wrote an article about a Hugging Face Machine Learning Librarian making a public data set of 1 million Bluesky posts available to everyone for Machine Learning. People were of course outraged. Afterall it’s the Internet. People thrive on being outraged, pissed off, and otherwise…

Not a hugely searched term in Google, but I come up in multiple locations for the term Philly Startup Advisor. It’s a one-pager setup on Carrd.co and isn’t even a .com. It’s a freaking .us! What I find interesting is that so much emphasis is put on the .com domain…

There are two ways to ask for something to be done before a break where everyone in the country is pausing work for at least a day and possibly traveling. One way is to acknowledge that the holiday is coming up and ask for a rush to get it launched…

People say that Bluesky might turn into Twitter and be purchased by a billionaire I know Jay doesn’t want this to happen. And in theory it won’t due to the possibility of decentralization, but we’ve been burned multiple times. Shall we do it again? Sure, why not. 😵‍💫😜 I mean,…

Okay the acquisition of Harper by Automattic (the parent company of WordPress.com) makes actual sense. Harper, a grammar checking tool, will hopefully be integrated into all of the Automattic and .org (here’s hoping) properties.​ Unlike some of the other acquisitions that Matt Mullenweg and Automattic have purchased (ie. Simplenote, Pocket…

I think States Rights are going to be at the forefront of the national stage come Jan 20th when Trump 2.0 comes into office. The GOP has always said they are Pro-States Rights. But that’s only when it serves them. This should be interesting. To say the least. Republicans have…

I’m beside myself today. I pretty much cleared my day of meetings and just did what work I could muster. I can’t believe that Trump won. But then again, what’s with the Democrats going to the center? Obama won because he spoke to progressive causes. Our two party system is…

I’m so nervous about Tuesday. The 5th of November in America might be a triumph or a disaster. God, I hope Kamala Harris & Tim Walz win. If not I’m scared from the future of our country. It’s not just Trump, it’s Vance, it’s the power they have to shape…

I was lucky enough to be on William Attaway, Ph.D.’s podcast Catalytic Leadership. The episode aired yesterday. We had a great conversation and William is a great interviewer. He asked some really good questions. “As digital marketing challenges continue to evolve, entrepreneurs are faced with the daunting task of staying…

Matt Mullenweg recently posted on his blog that his freedom of speech has been hindered by a court injunction in the lawsuit brought by WP Engine against him et. al. https://ma.tt/2024/10/first-amendment/ Ummmm, I don’t think that the court telling you to STFU is a First Amendment issue. As I recall,…

I just found out that another contributor to the WordPress open source project has been kicked off of the WordPress.org repo and site. This has been a regular occurrence since the whole WordPress/WPE fiasco started. It’s almost like a badge of honor to be banned now. The problem is that…

I saw the Aurora Borealis from the front yard of my house last night in the northern suburbs of Philadelphia. It has happened before, but I missed it. I didn’t this time. It was faint by the naked-eye, but my iPhone camera caught it. Bucket list item checked off.

It’s not the same without my friend Reed Gustow, who passed at the end of August, but the show must go on. BarCamp Philly, which is happening today, has been going strong for 15 years. I love this unconference, because where else can you learn about knitting and AI at…

Today is when a bunch of us are saying goodbye to a good friend and pillar of the community today, who died suddenly at the end of August. It’s fitting that it’s raining and yuck out today. He will be missed terribly not just by me but by the community…

Not loving the fact that stuff said in my WP communities might get sucked into a lawsuit. I want this shit to end.

Testing the latest update to the plugin that @alexstandiford@fosstodon.social pointed out. Last time I tried this. It worked but broke my blog post on certain sites. I noticed that the first sentence will be the title, so keep it short, hit enter, and the write more. Check the plugin out…

It works!!!!! Holy shit! Added a random photo of my Dog Olive to show that it can post an image as well! Olive is a curly black-haired Airdoodle. Update: Apparently it breaks the blog. Bah

Updated (at bottom) 9/25/2024 This is going to be a post that will grow and be added to as my thoughts come together around what happened at the Q&A with Matt Mullenweg, the co-founder of the WordPress project and CEO of Automattic. I can say one thing for certain it…

So I completely forgot to post about the last day of FediForum. What a great group of people, both organizers and attendees. I feel like I’ve made some decent connections and fediverse friends. The last day was great and full of geeky knowledge. I can’t wait until the next one!…

FediForum is on it’s fourth iteration and is a 3 day unconference (like Barcamp) that is completely online. Today was chock full of great demos, Meta’s Threads released a new feature live during the demos at the start and the talks were fantastic. The unconference runs through Saturday and there…

Olive the Airedoodle is still not eating consistently. Getting her on more meds to get her appetite stimulated. Ugh, this poor pooch and her belly issues. Then if that wasn’t enough, I found out that a friend of mine for the Philadelphia tech community, who I’ve known for more than…

I love a few shows on YouTube that I can’t explain it, but I enjoy so much. Ame in a Van, Nikki Delventhal, Tory Delury are three gals who live in vans and travel around. Yes they’re cute, but that’s not why I watch. It’s their personalities and the adventures…

Taking the prompt from Emily, a friend I have on Mastodon. So what are the gadgets that I can’t live without? Well my dual 27″ monitors, to start. I was working on a 27″, a 16″ laptop screen, and a 20″ monitor. Yuck. I sucked it up and got a…

Last night was the graduation for the 4th cohort of the Founder Institute Keystone Chapter Accelerator. This was my 3rd cohort I was a part of as a mentor and the graduates are all top notch. I’m lucky to have become an advisor to two of them Swiftlane.ai and Myna,…

For the love of God use two factor authentication when ever you can! So many sites not just WordPress are getting hacked. With this in mind, change your passwords, get a password manager, and randomize your passwords for every service. I know Passkeys are the latest hotness, but I still…

In three weeks my wife, son, and I embark on an adventure to Niagara Falls. We’re doing both the USA/New York side and the Canada/Ontario side. The kiddo has no interest in doing the boats, but surprisingly wants to see both falls up close. I’m excited, because it’s been a…

Though predictable, Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F was so much fun and so needed! Well done Netflix, you managed to pull off a movie off an old classic without messing it up. It’s not gonna win any awards, but it was fun, action-packed, and funny. Not gonna ruin the plot,…

Two advisory meetings with two of the 3 startups that I officially advise. There is a 4th, but I’m not really an official advisor per se. Today my call with Myna Insights was exciting. Myna is going to turn the SEO industry for the SMB arena on its head. I…

I’m so glad I chose to take Don Samoil up on being a mentor in the Founder Institute Keystone cohort accelerator program. I’ve learned so much more about not only the startup ecosystem in Philadelphia and beyond, but I learned so much more about myself and how I can help…

The above graphic is absolute gold. It’s laid out perfectly. Good job Kristi. Go follow her over on LinkedIn.

So for the past few cohorts of the Founder Institute Keystone accelerator sessions, I’ve been mentoring some pretty cool startups. Of them, three I’m getting more involved post-FI. The big one is Public Assembly, which is morphing and pivoting into something great. More on that in a later post. The…

Yea, I guess I’m middle aged. Good grief. So far just been relaxing and enjoying my day. Sushi for dinner and some beer. Tomorrow is Mother’s Day, so Mere will have a chance to relax and kickback some. Being middle aged doesn’t feel that bad, besides the joints aren’t what…

I think this is a good thing. Either they are a non-profit in Germany or in the U.S., but their mission stays the same. People like to make a big fucking deal out of nothing. The new board of directors includes Biz Stone, of Twitter-fame. Just because he’s on the…

Went to USPS in Dublin, PA to get passports all squared away. We were going to do a passport cards, then heard that it’s better to do a passport book because it’s good for longer and if we came back later to do a booklet it’ll cost more money, be…