Ross's Micro Blog

I’m now so old I’m watching the generation below me despair that the generation below them thinks they are uncool.

Lol!

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/may/08/cringe-how-millennials-became-uncool

I’ve recently been mentoring someone towards being a software developer. It FASCINATING going right back to the roots of solving problems with code. I remember this from classes I took a whole 30 years ago:

– Abstraction
– Encapsulation
– Decomposition

These are still the core principles behind any language or programming paradigm.

Separation of concerns. Good naming & APIs. All the key things are wrapped up in these ideas.

You should learn and practice these as much as the coding bit.

So, @tnash and I moved to a private Mastodon instance on @mastohost

Despite following all the instructions, trying reboots
and re-running dead jobs, we are both WAY down on followers that haven’t redirected.

I’m at about 25% of my old followers from ross@fosstodon.org !!!

Is this normal? Did we do something wrong? Are they dead accounts? Do we need to just wait? Tips for fixing?

NOW!

You judge. Grey, almost bald, giant eared elephant?

Or shaggy-haired, small-eared, admittedly tusk-less terrier.

The future of mammoth comparisons is yours.

Do the right thing.

Elephant
Yorkie

#introduction

I'm Ross!

I code with PHP, Javascript, WordPress and Laravel.

I work at Delicious Brains/WP Engine.

I have too many side projects including Turbo Admin, my magical command palette for #WordPress.

I'm a dad of two. I care about sustainability. I ride bikes. And my boss says I "bring lots of questions and energy".

Server move imminent!

I’d always wondered about self-hosting Mastodon. But was happy where I was.

And then stuff happened. And I became wary of the sustainability of big instances.

And I found a friend willing to share the costs. So it became very viable!

So you may see a new me shortly.

Huh. So. Birdsong in general, and the call of the Great Tit in particular, make an excellent accompaniment to Belle and Sebastian’s “The Boy with the Arab Strap” 😃

Up late preparing for a talk I’m giving soon.

It’s so great to have some creative energy flowing.

Talk prep is fun and exciting!!!

(No I can’t tell you what it is yet. Soon!!!)

This episode of The Vergecast contains the most hilarious segment on party speakers. It’s slightly in-joke for listeners, but I think it stands alone too.

I’ve laughed along to it twice now.

https://pca.st/episode/d8f931f4-a786-4f07-8361-25183aee25ba?t=212.0

Oh this is good. My friend Keith made

http://offline.kids/

A site full of simple, low-effort activities for parents who want to spend more real-world time with their kids (without screens).

He says:

“As a tired dad and a web developer, I needed this myself. Now I’m sharing it with you.

If you’re a parent, I’d love you to check it out — and if you know one, maybe pass it along.”

Tim is knowledgable and eloquent and just such a great teacher. He's a friend, so I'm biased. But this is likely to be amazing and if you need to know about WordPress Security you should get on his list.
https://fosstodon.org/@tnash/114414938157889292

Actually got to solving this one!

Hooray! I solved today's #WordlePress in 11 guesses! 🎉🎉🎉

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️
⬜️🟧⬜️⬜️
🟩⬜️⬜️⬜️ x 7
🟩🟧🟧🟧
🟩🟩🟩🟩

Test your #WordPress dev knowledge at https://wordlepress.com/