Despite all of my joking, I did actually see a kangaroo in Austria.—
James Huff (@MacManXcom) February 22, 2011
Unfortunately, pictures will have to wait until I get back, unless I can find a place nearby that sells SD card readers.
Category Archives: General
Off to Vienna
I’m off to spend a week with the rest of the Happiness Engineers in Vienna, as we work together to improve your WordPress.com experience.
If you’re curious about why we travel to work together, check out this great article about what goes on behind the scenes.
Clean Desk
Today marks the first day that my desk has been clean since the day we moved, so I figured I’d share a photo of this monumental occasion.
To the left is the Automattic holiday card that serves as inspiration through the work day, my iMac obviously dominates the center of the desk, and my trusty sonic screwdriver is to the right should I find myself in any impossible situations.
New Car
After six years of loyal service, my 2005 Toyota Prius began to show signs of transmission failure. Considering the car was over six years old and had about 75,000 miles with a failing transmission, I figured that it was time to take Toyota up on their 0.9% promotional APR on a new 2010 Prius.
The new Prius has tons of cool features, and the most advanced hybrid system yet. I’ve already improved my fuel economy over the old Prius by at least 5 MPG, which is great for the environment and my wallet. Of course, the coolest thing about the new car is that it’s “almost-WordPress” blue!
Welcome to WordPress.com
Those of you who are kind enough to have subscribed to this humble blog may have noticed a few new posts suddenly appear. That’s because I have officially merged MacManX.com with my very short-lived MacManX on Music blog. After all, there really was no reason to divide my efforts like that. But, the merger wasn’t the big change.
MacManX.com is no longer a self-hosted WordPress blog under A Small Orange. It is now officially a WordPress.com blog. Don’t get me wrong, A Small Orange has been a terrific host, and I still have quite a few sites hosted with them. The decision to move was made for a few reasons:
- Having my blog on WordPress.com shows that I have entrusted my own blog to the very system that I support.
- Blogging on WordPress.com allows me to get a better feel for what I’m supporting every day.
- I was growing tired of updating plugins and finding replacements for abandoned plugins. WordPress.com has all the features that I need, and they are maintained on a constant basis.
- A Small Orange was a wonderful host, and the server that I was on was no exception, but it pales in comparison to WordPress.com’s multiple datacenters, could-powered system, multi-layer caching, and the fact that I know everyone here by name.
The only notable loss was my custom theme, courtesy of fellow Automattician Joen, but I’ll be leveraging our available themes and Custom CSS to make something truly unique over the next few months. If you’re curious, feel free to browse the gallery of past MacManX.com themes.
Thanks to the wonders of domain mapping, everything should be exactly as it was, which means you won’t need to resubscribe, but I do have a handy email subscription button in the sidebar now if that’s your thing.
So, how did I move? Well, it was a lot easier than I thought. The hardest part was editing all of my video posts to use our quick embed technique for YouTube and Vimeo, rather than their native embed codes, before exporting. After that, I simply exported MacManX.com, imported it to the former MacManX on Music, changed the name, deleted a few obsolete pages, and mapped my domain. Domain changes can take up to 72 hours (though usually much less) to propagate to your ISP, but thanks to OpenDNS, I was up in a matter of minutes.
I’ve been through big moves like this before, so I’m sure there may be a few broken links hiding in the corners. If you find any, please let me know!
P.S. With this blog post, I have now officially entered the Post a Day challenge. Let’s see how long that lasts. 
MacManX on Music
It’s a new year, which means that it’s time for new things!
As part of my own “Eat Your Own Dog Food” initiative and WordPress.com’s Daily Post initiative, I have dusted the 3-year-old cobwebs off of my own WordPress.com blog to launch MacManX on Music, where I will be blogging at least once a week on the music that keeps me focused whenever I’m on duty as a Happiness Engineer.
Stay tuned to MacManX on Music for the first “official” post, which could appear as early as tomorrow!
Welcome!
Well, it’s a new year, and as part of my own personal “Eat Your Own Dog Food” initiative and our Daily Post initiative, I’ll be making regular posts about the music that keeps me focused when I’m on duty here as a Happiness Engineer.
Of course, I’m cheating just a little bit by joining the “Post a Week 2011″ crew, but it’s better than the cobwebs that this blog has been growing over the past three years.
Stay tuned for the first “official” post later this week (or tomorrow if I can get my act together), and don’t forget to tune in to MacManX.com for other blog postings.
I'm a Happiness Engineer
I am proud to announce that, as of yesterday, I am officially a full-time Happiness Engineer for Automattic.
I have spent the last month working for Automattic on a trial basis, and I must say that this is quite simply the best job ever I have ever had. Not only am I working for a company that I have always admired, but I’m also working alongside several people who I have always admired.
I am currently focussing most of my happiness efforts on WordPress.com, so please feel free to contact us if you have any problems with your WordPress.com blog. I might just be the person lucky enough to bring some happiness to your day.
This is going to be one heck of a ride, and I can’t wait to see where the company takes me next!
No More www on MacManX.com
After much thought, I have finally removed all traces of www from MacManX.com. Why? Aesthetics, really. There’s really no reason to have www preceding your domain, an ever-increasing number of sites are beginning to turn away from it, and it saves four characters when linking to MacManX.com in a tweet.
Removing www from your domain in WordPress is as easy as removing it from the two URL values at Settings/General, but I wanted to be as thorough as possible and remove all traces of it. Since the overall process involved a few steps, I figured that I’d share it with you if you ever decided to do the same.
The following instructions are Mac-specific using the plain text editor Fraise, but they can be easily reinterpreted using any Windows or Linux-based plain text editor and FTP or SFTP client.
MacManX.com v2.0
MacManX.com v2.0 is finally here thanks to a new theme courtesy of Joen Asmussen. A while ago, I began to realize that MacManX.com was suffering from the very same thing that I often criticize other websites for: link overload with a lack of focus on the content. I’m proud to report that sidebar links have now been reduced by over 90% and the content is clearer than ever.
If you’re curious about how much the look of MacManX.com has changed over the ages, check out the new MacManX.com Themes gallery.
