Posts tagged with Automattic
14 August 2008 - It even rains in Arizona
If you’re living in Ireland, you’ve no doubt noticed that this summer hasn’t been great. Actually, I haven’t. I work at home and looking out my little window at the rest of the world is some days the closest I get to the outside world (almost!)
Well anyway, this is to console you if you’re suffering through yet another flood, or a downpour. It even rains in the desert. Of course, it was late January, and the shower was a light one that lasted about 20 minutes but it’s the thought that counts, right?
In other news, I’ve just released Tweet Tweet, a plugin for WordPress that archives Twitter conversations. It’s been a nerve wracking experience as I’m using a few technologies that I haven’t had much call for before.
10 July 2008 - Biosphere 2 Lung
As Biosphere 2 is a self contained and airtight structure the air inside would expand and contract on warm and cold days which could cause the building to explode or implode!
Two lungs were built to cope with this effect. One of them is pictured above. As the air in the building warmed up the black lung would expand and the roof of this room lowered. When we were there they opened an outside door to ventilate the room and the roof slowly fell. It was quite a sight to see and the draught out the door was enough to make it hard to be heard over the whine.
More on the Biosphere 2 lungs here and here.
Biosphere 2 needed something like a bellows, a lung!7 July 2008 - Biosphere 2
Biosphere 2 would heat up like a greenhouse and cool during the night and during cold, cloudy days. The expansion and contraction would subject the rigid steel and glass structure to enormous pressures as the air inside expanded and contracted. On a hot day, pressure would push out. On a really cold day, Biosphere 2 might implode.Bill Dempster, Director of Engineering Systems, had an inspired solution, and in time Biosphere 2 got a pair of lungs, or “variable expansion chambers”. The two lungs took the form of graceful hemispheric white domes which protected the liner from wear and tear of the Sun. Both domes, 150 feet away from Biosphere 2 had underground air tunnels connecting them to the main structure. Inside each tank and connected to each tunnel, a gargantuan synthetic rubber membrane with a circular metal top moved freely up and down on a cushion of air.
As air inside Biosphere 2 expanded from the Sun’s heat, it flowed through the tunnels and into the lung, raising its top. As air cooled, the lungs deflated.
Biosphere 2 lies in the dusty hot desert in Arizona. It was originally designed as a self contained “world” where scientists stayed for an extended period of time. After going through the tour, there’s no way I’d volunteer to spend my time inside. It must have been very difficult being cooped up in one building. The Wikipedia page on the project has a lot more detail about what went on there.
Anyway, the building is very striking to look at, especially as the day was fine and interesting clouds added to the scene.
12 June 2008 - Monotone: WordPress Photoblog ThemeMonotone is a pretty cool photoblog theme for WordPress that’s been around for a few months now. Unfortunately it was only available on WordPress.com, and through the Automattic Subversion repository as reported by Jeff on Weblog Tools Collection.
Noel Jackson, the author of the theme, recently revealed that Monotone is now available as a .zip download on the Monotone demo page above. Now it’s easier for self hosted WordPress blogs to try it!
What’s so great about Monotone? It displays a large image in each post like Pixelpost and other photoblog themes, but it does it in a neat way. WordPress allows the blog author to upload and attach images to their posts. It’s then up to the author to insert the image into the post and tidy up the html. Monotone takes this one step further. There’s no need to insert the image into the post at all. The theme takes the first attachment and displays it at the top of the post, with the post content below.
I’d love to use it, but unfortunately I have several years worth of posts that would need to be modified because I used Flickr to host my images until recently. Then I used my own site, but inserted the right html into each post, so they’d all have to be modified unless I hacked the theme to ignore old posts.
RSS feeds display the image too, although I discovered that the feed for the demo site includes some huge images. Probably just an oversight when Noel was uploading images.
Judging by Noel’s comment here, it probably isn’t completely straight forward to install. You probably need the GD library and a hefty server with enough RAM to load and manipulate your images. Anyone tried it? Use my theme tester plugin if you want to test it on your blog without upsetting your visitors!
9 April 2008 - How very phallic of you
A desert plant growing near the ranch we stayed at in Arizona.
I only thought of the title after seeing this image in b/w, but err, it suits doesn’t it?
1 April 2008 - Desert Tree
One of the many trees growing in the arid desert surrounding the ranch Automattic stayed in while in Arizona.
2 February 2008 - The City of San Francisco
San Francisco as seen from the hills surrounding the City. I took this back in August 2006.
Can you tell yet that I merged a few of my work directories after doing some house keeping work on my photo archive?
Thanks to Niall Kennedy for driving us up there!
20 January 2008 - Big brother is watching you
Big brother is watching you, wherever you go! CC TV cameras are sprouting up everywhere.
This one is just outside the AIB in Blarney. I happened to go to the AIB in Blackpool and counted at least 3 cameras near the entrance.
If you happen to use WordPress to power your blog, then grab Blog Voyeur and keep a seedy eye on your visitors.
18 December 2007 - Turquoise Acid
A water main on the street in San Francisco while Automattic waited to go into a restaurant.
I think that’s Matt in the background, but it might have been Alex too.
Urban Acid applied to this image 
Yum! Yum! Alex cuts the delicious chocolate birthday cake in Herbivore, San Francisco! That crazy Matt Mullenweg fella can’t resist helping him with the cake. Come to think of it, did anyone not eat the cake? It was so nice!