Steve's writings about

Stuff & Things

“It’s not DNS

There’s no way it’s DNS

It was DNS”

“Much of the core code on the site dated back to 2009-2010 and was written by Past Me, a vindictive, inscrutable nemesis who devoted his life to sabotaging Present Me.

Doing this on a live system is like performing kidney transplants on a playing mariachi band. The best case is that no one notices a change in the music; you chloroform the players one at a time and try to keep a steady hand while the band plays on. The worst case scenario is that the music stops and there is no way to unfix what you broke, just an angry mob. It is very scary.”

–Maciej Cegłowski “Pinboard is Eleven

The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups.

All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality.

His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: 50 pounds of pots rated an “A”, 40 pounds a “B”, and so on.

Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot — albeit a perfect one — to get an “A”.

Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity.

It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work-and learning from their mistakes — the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.

—David Bayles “Art & Fear: Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking” [Kindle]

The first time you implement something, just do it.

The second time you implement the same thing, copy it.

The third time, refactor.

Add SKU to WP e-Commerce 3.8.9 Admin Reports

WP eCommerce offers a feature where an email is dispatched to the administrator when an order is completed. WP eCommerce calls this email an “Admin Report”. These emails are useful for order fulfilment, but they are lacking a key piece of data that you may need to fulfill an order: the product’s SKU. I’m offering a […]

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“When you hear hoofbeats behind you, don’t expect to see a zebra”

“You are responsible for the things you help put in the world. If you do not think something should exist in the world, do not participate in it.” —Mike Monteiro

WP Admin Toolbar Disappears After Changing URL

When changing your Site Address within WordPress, the Admin Toolbar on the front end of the site will disappear.  Your user profile has the Admin Toolbar turned on and your theme has wp_head() and wp_footer() in the correct places, but the Admin Toolbar is still gone. When you changed your WordPress Site Address, WordPress didn’t […]

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Entering 2012

“Engineers instinctively measure their days by what they built.” – Rands While I plan to continue full-time development and consulting, I will build and sell software as a service in 2012. “Real artists ship” – Steve Jobs

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Add SKU to WP e-Commerce 3.8.6 Admin Reports

WP eCommerce offers a feature where an email is dispatched to the administrator when an order is completed.  WP eCommerce calls this email an “Admin Report”. These emails are useful for order fulfilment, but they are lacking a key piece of data that you may need to fulfill an order: the product’s SKU. Fortunately, there’s a […]

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