A review of the Writing in the Sciences online course that I recently finished. The course is taught by Dr. Kristin Sainania a Professor of Health Research and Policy at Stanford University. It is a free 8-week series of canned videos, online quizzes, and homework assignments designed to improve your writing. Course Structure Each week […]
Category: Misc
Async is the Key to Distributed Work
I wrote A Year Working Remotely after my first year at Automattic — a company now at 1,000 fully distributed employees across 76 countries. This is a 6-year follow on sharing additional learning on work and productivity. A colleague Alister wrote a great post, Three Years of Working from Home, that covers personal care tips, […]
Lessons from Walt Disney
On a sunny day, my family and I went up to San Francisco to visit the Walt Disney Museum. The museum is located in the beautiful Presidio near the Golden Gate Bridge. I simply hoped to enjoy a nice day out of the house, maybe something the kids would like–I didn’t expect to be inspired […]
Using the Pomodoro Technique
I recently started using the Pomodoro Technique to help me focus. I find it a useful productivity tool to fight distractions. The technique is a rather simple process: Set a timer for 25 minutes, Work focused on your task, When the timer goes off, take a short break (5min) Repeat After completing a few sets, […]
Notes on Technical Writing
Over the past year, I’ve worked on and off documentation for WordPress. I started contributing during a freeze around launch to help developers transition to the new platform. I found writing documentation is something I enjoy, plus rewarding to help and educate people. Though it’s not a primary part of my job, I’ve continued to […]
Bauhaus Centenary Block
To celebrate the 100-year anniversary of the Bauhaus design house, our team created a celebratory block for the WordPress editor, see our announcement post on Automattic.design. The Bauhaus Centenary block is available as a plugin with three styles – basic forms, year, and ribbon – that embraces the character, variety, and edge of the Bauhaus […]
On Fruit Trees and Code Bases
A fruit tree planted in a nice sunny spot, given water and time will grow. It may not grow how you want or expect it to, but grow it will. Each branch of the tree does it’s job and sprouts new branches. All of them competing for sun, getting in each others way, and shooting […]
Switching from Ubuntu to Manjaro
I surprised myself switching off of Ubuntu to Manjaro for my primary computers. UPDATE: I switched back after 4 months. I’ve been a user of Ubuntu for many years. It is a wonderful desktop platform. Ubuntu made Linux on the desktop easier by having a straight-forward installation, including necessary drivers, and creating an OS to […]
The Story of the Laggy Mouse
A story as old as time, not all the stories involve computers and peripherals, but the tale is known by all do-it-your-selfers, home-depot-excursioners, and other fixers-of-small-things. It is a story told around camp fires, in fact one version of the story starts “So we were out of firewood…” My version starts with “So my mouse […]
Using Firefox user.js settings file
The Firefox user.js file stores user settings, the file is loaded each time Firefox starts. This a convenient way to save your browser customizations and apply them on different machines. The prefs.js file already exists in your Firefox profile directory, find the location using about:support in the top bar. The prefs.js file looks like it […]
Summer Sabbatical
My company, Automattic, has the wonderful perk of a 3-month sabbatical every 5 years. Amazingly enough, I’m already an old-timer and been there over 5-years, so this summer I took my sabbatical. I timed it to be off the same time as the kids for summer, so I didn’t work for June, July, and August. […]
Ethernet, FTW!
I’ve been interested in running a caching DNS server off my Raspberry Pi for awhile, and with the recent Cloudflare announcement of their new DNS service and discussion around it, seemed like a good time to set it up. Pi-hole I setup my device with Pi-hole a great bit of software which was easy to […]
Hi, I’m Marcus Kazmierczak
I'm an engineer trying to do my small part to make the web a little better. I believe open source can help empower people, and grow our collective knowledge; moving the world forward. I hope this site is a small contribution to that collective.