Beau Lebens

Building the web, enjoying the wild.

  • Keyring v1.9

    I just released version 1.9 of the Keyring plugin for WordPress. This version includes a few pretty cool updates and additions, as described in the changelog: Added a Google Analytics Service definition. Added a Strava Service definition. Added a “Settings” link to the plugin listing if you’re using the bundled Admin UI. Fitbit tokens now refresh properly. Tumblr now requires HTTPS, so updated all request URLs to use HTTPS. My favorite part of this release is that I didn’t personally do most of the things in there. Two of my colleagues did some of it (Strava service and Tumblr fixes),…

  • Working Out While Traveling

    I travel a fair bit for work, and have historically let it affect (read: completely stop) any sort of fitness routine I might have going at home. Normally I try to get to the gym 2-3 times a week, and do whatever is the WOD at my CrossFit (Sprint) gym. When traveling, I just let it slide normally, and then try to get back into a routine when I get home. This last week, I was in Florida for the week and decided to try to get in a bit of a workout. I made up my own minimal CrossFit-ish…

  • iPhone X / High Sierra Update

    Yesterday, I received my new iPhone X. I thought I’d post some notes on the painful process that has been switching over to it. Might be time to start experimenting with a Pixel.

  • Ted Rheingold

    I’m sad to hear that Ted Rheingold has lost his fight with cancer, and died on Monday. Through a pretty random turn of events, Ted was one of the very first people I met in the SF technology “scene”, back in 2005, after I moved to San Francisco. I attended the first BarCamp, and didn’t have a good way to get there. In amongst the communications about attending, Ted volunteered to give anyone a lift from SF down to the South Bay, so I accepted graciously, and grabbed a ride with him. We chatted all the way there and back,…

  • Canoeing the Colorado

    A few weeks ago, Erika and I joined some friends on the Colorado River for a repeat of a trip we took last year. I got all my gear sorted out on Thursday afternoon/evening, then drove out to Fruita (our put-in point) on Friday morning. By noon we were all loaded up in our canoes and ready to hit the water.

  • Fjällräven Classic USA, 2017

    This week, I’ve been roaming the Colorado wilderness with 250 of my closest/unknown friends, participating in the second annual Fjällräven Classic, USA. I participated in the inaugural event last year, which conveniently fell during my 3-month sabbatical from work. At the time, I said that no matter what else was going on, I would definitely be attending again in 2017. As promised, when the 2017 Classic was announced, I immediately grabbed tickets, and this time even talked Erika into going. Even though I’m stubborn, and had already committed to going, seeing that the trek would be somewhere in the range…

  • The Future of the Web

    I recently spoke at a small conference we put on in Detroit. I talked about The Future of the Web, in the context of data ownership, and proprietary vs open platforms. It was the first time I’ve done a talk like this without slides of any kind, so I actually wrote out the whole thing (below). The live version was a little different, as you can hear in the audio (sorry it’s a bit echo-y):

  • Classic Training Hike

    On Sunday, Erika and I went on a training hike, to start getting into shape for the Fjallraven Classic. This year it’s over 30 miles of backpacking within 3 days, and we’re both a bit nervous about being able to keep up the pace! We went up to White Ranch Park, and ended up hiking about 8 miles (Belcher Hill, Longhorn, Shorthorn, Longhorn, Whippletree, Belcher Hill), with roughly 20lb packs. We went pretty slow, but I think we did OK considering it was our first longer (and loaded) hike of the season. We’ll definitely need to get a few more in…

  • Dented Reality on New Dedicated Virtual at Media Temple

    I’ve completed the migration of dentedreality.com.au (along with all my other domains, excluding this one) to a new dedicated virtual server with Media Temple. Mad props to them, they’ve been great in helping me handle some pieces of the process, which has gone relatively smoothly. Things I’m looking forward to on the new host include: Working with Plesk Onyx Trying out Let’s Encrypt 🔐 PHP 7 😍 Hopefully consolidating and simplifying some things This site (beau.blog) is now my main blogging/writing space, with Dented Reality being more of a full archive of my digital footsteps.

  • Import posts from Jetpack/WordPress.com

    I’ve just released version 1.8 of both Keyring, and the Keyring Social Importers. This version includes a new service file, and an accompanying importer, which allows you to import content from a Jetpack-powered WordPress site, using the WordPress.com REST API. That means any site hosted on WordPress.com, or any self-hosted site with the Jetpack plugin installed. There are also a few key fixes for the Twitter and LinkedIn services/importers, so it’s a nice update. The new importer will pull across the entire content of posts, including tags. Similar to the Instapaper importer, it attempts to avoid duplicate content issues by…