Happy Thursday!
Why am I sending this on Thursday instead of Friday? Why do I assume that anyone would even notice the difference? I don’t know. I’m playing around with productivity schedules (including a return to time-block planning, Cal Newport-style) so I’ll be experimenting with different formats and schedules for blog posts and this newsletter.
One thing that’s consistent is viewSource: the new podcast from myself and Aurooba Ahmed. We’re releasing a new episode every Monday (as a podcast AND on YouTube). The first one is out and it’s all about Github Copilot. (You can read my original announcement post with the background story here.)
Are you trying Copilot? I clearly have been, because this week I wrote up a few tips and tricks for using Github Copilot with WordPress development. I promise the Copilot content will be coming down for a landing and parked in the hangar soon.
✏️ Copilot + WordPress: A Few Tips
The other big thing I’m focusing on is ACF Blocks. I’m working on some training materials for developers migrating from classic theme development, and I wrote about how I made a pretty basic mistake and got lost in their documentation. Some ACF team members even responded on Twitter because they’re just great peeps.
✏️ Documentation for Dummies (like me)
Finally, a few thoughts on all the new Mastodon clients (and my willingness to hand over authentication tokens like they’re going out of style). If you’re in the fediverse, let’s connect because I really need more fun people to follow.
✏️ It’s all on Mastodon now
A few links before I go:
- Spotify is moving out of the high-end podcast game. Let’s hope they move out of the “corrupting music and RSS with surveillance advertising” game next.
- This episode of WP Watercoolor covers the new(ly resurrected) WordPress Fields API project with lead Scott Kingsley Clark.
- I’ve had this weird feeling recently that every TV show I watch looks like it’s fully computer generated- even the human actors look… off somehow. I thought it was just my “special” gummies but this essay covers the whole weird ugliness of modern TV so well.
- Fascinating interview with music producer Rick Rubin about music in general but also how modern tech has changed the industry.
- I’ve been dabbling in Laravel/Livewire so I found this Syntax.fm interview with Livewire/Alpine.js creator Caleb Porzio fascinating. Really the whole conversation comparing PHP vs JS frameworks was insightful.
- Matt Medeiros at The WP Minute has a new podcast out: The WP Minute+. I consider this to be Medeiros doing what he does best- having interesting conversations with smart people in WordPress.
- Joost de Valk is 100% right: WordPress’ admin UI needs to be better. I touched on this last year for MasterWP as well.
- My mom just called me last week because this happened to her: they paused an ink cartridge subscription on their crappy little HP printer for a month and it was remotely deactivated.
That’s everything this week. If I missed anything exciting on the interwebs, reply or find me online!
