Just want to take a moment to be and to feel grateful in where I am at this point of life. Since I joined 10up, days are always challenging and I even get to contribute to WordPress core. Nailing a milestone! I’ve been introduced to a bunch of tools and worked with talented folks that inspire me to thrive.

Looking ahead, I’d still seeking that environment where I can work and grow physically. Next year should be a level harder than this one.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Been bonding with family and extended families lately. Happy times indeed. Hope you’re celebrating it with someone.

Ever since I got familiar with how the WordPress maintain its codebase and the community behind that pushes fixes and features, I’d always imagine my self being a part of it. And the recent release, WordPress 4.4, is the start of the journey.

I didn’t do much but the simple act of updating a doc block is something could be truly appreciated by the community (core). Once you’re in there, you’ll know how they work hard and not thinking about how their efforts are being compensated. Some #10uppers are part of those who look into the platform very closely and I got in because of them as well. You just need to be in the right team to get you started 🙂

Now the plugin badge will never be alone.

I could remember I started blogging way back in 2008 when I got no other things to do aside from taking classes in college and playing online games (RAN is on top of my head). My aunt was and is always going to be my inspiration of why I got my self into this kind of stuff.

I started using blogspot. Then moved to self hosted WordPress with the help of such wonderful aunt, who used to be a web designer and developer that time! I remember it was around version 2.x (somewhere 2.6 or 2.8) of WordPress that time. The admin/dashboard and post editor were the best thing I’ve ever seen! And that feeling you had when you’re so excited about learning how these things work. But then, I’ve had this bipolarity when it comes to where I truly want to blog. Back to blogspot, moved to tumblr, then moved to WordPress.com after deducing that WordPress is the genuine way to blog. I’ve tried so different names/blog URL and tried blogging for different niches—hoping I could get advertisement earnings or sponsorship out of it. The online is a wild jungle where you can try to be anything it influences you to be. Me moving with different platforms and under different names suggested I underwent personal issue that time—I’ve been trying to find who I really was.

Until finally I bought my own domain and dropped the idea to blog for glamour and profit. But I didn’t settle with it as my domain for blogging yet. It was initially there to help me established my portfolio as a web developer. I’ve got so many things to say that I don’t want to limit it with just anything about my career, so I created a dedicated blog for anything under the sun on WordPress.com. That didn’t last for long though.

I don’t actually want to maintain more than one blog and I realized all I want to share pertaining to my self is always going to be who I am—as a whole—and this domain is going to be my persona in the online arena. So I’m back at blogging full time in this very place.

I secretly envy blogs that have archives way back from 2004 or older. Reading from those treasures make you to time travel (compressed in small bytes) and reminisce the moment. Ultimately, you see how you’ve grown since then.

It’s amazing how the platform you’ve been using grows with you, too. Now I can blog directly on my desktop just because WordPress.com released an app (which now an open source project!) that changed the direction of blogging. I know there are other innovative and modern tools to blog but when you stick with yours, and not leave it hanging when there’s new and hot out there, but instead help it grow with you—It’s a different feeling you get. It’s like family, no matter how you think you’re so fed up seeing their faces, there’s an intimate connection that makes you want to see them again and again. And like family, you don’t turn your back when time gets so difficult.

Blogging is always going to be different with WordPress—it’s about openness and community. I settled on this. I should’ve sticked with it.

As someone who helps make things (read: websites) on the web, the project they brought into this world spurs me to keep creating and venture to innovate with openness in mind.

If you haven’t started blogging yet, only God knows the reason why is that, but hopefully tools like this makes you to re-think about kickstarting a blogging journey. You don’t want to miss the chance to grin when you read your posts published from 5 or 10yrs ago.

I finally got to setup my custom email to work with gmail. Everyone can now send me email at [email protected]. I love random conversations so long as it won’t look like a spam and addresses my correct name in the salutation line. All good other than that, so fire it away 🙂

I’ve been wanting to attend conferences for developers and on November 13-14 the biggest developers in the Philipines held its second summit and it’s a plane ride away from home—I was on high again.

What I’ve learned from the conference (aside from handshaking and saying to speakers that they did a good job):

• thechangelog.com
• Prepare business cards (lotsa!)
• Constantly talk your ideas
• Why open source prevails? Because human is kind by nature; we’d rather contribute for the goodness than making the cause of someone’s downfall.
• “Great support, great communication that translates your knowledge to the clients.”
• Your dorm mate might be one of the speakers!
• Docker!
• Mantra in development: “Immutability, decomposability, distributed, continuous”

It was a nice experience overall despite that…

Why no WordPress in the dev community lists? We need to seriously step up the community of WordPress in the PH. We’re the 25% u know.

— Dreb Bits (@drebbits) November 13, 2015

Not quite recently my phone and photography buddy (in one) gave up on me and I am someone who doesn’t admire keeping credit cards and other cards are out of order, so there will be a delay before I can get another one. For the mean time, I am using Samsung S3 that originally a phone of my sister before I bought her a slightly used but smooth iPhone, as well. I’ve been meaning actually to buy the successor of iPhone 5 (perhaps the real meaning of ‘s’ in iPhones is truthfully ‘successor’) before it happened.

A technician initially diagnosed and said the battery seems to be bulging out. I’m not really the kind of person that charges phone while sleeping but I admit it fell quite many times—a lot of people can join me on that boat. If you could only see how the screen is terribly prolapsing out of it’s case and the flickering display like a television trying to get a better signal.

Until then, I am am trying to establish a good connection with this android device. So far, I have no idea how UX is being done here. It’s still on the version opposite iOS 6 so I could not generalize the overall performance of the OS but the learning curve i’ve had from Samsung to iPhone before was way smoother than the other way around. I feel in love right on with the simplicity of the latter. The list could go on and on…but using this device looks and feels exactly like an Android —gives you powerful utilities and customizations, but lacks of genuine experience on a personal level.

On July 27 I officially started working for 10up, a well-distributed digital and strategic consulting agency, and knowing that I am based and currently live in the Philippines proves that they(we) are truly expanding globally!

I’ve been a full time freelancer for almost 3 years and the feeling of getting lonely is inherent in the freelance world eventually, at least in my situation. Over the years, I enjoyed the love and hate relationship with the people that I always got to talk to almost everyday — the clients. They’ve given me the  challenges that brought new learnings and some of them bridged ways to creating plugins.

But ever since I started working as a freelancer or even during college times I knew I would like to be part of something great. In fact I feel grateful when I create websites or help businesses build their online home but the experience didn’t come close compared to sharing the challenges and fun if you are part of a team.

I yearn for that moment when, around making our capstone project during senior year, my team had been maximizing all the resources we could get and poured everything we have for a project. It’s inspiring to see all efforts coming together towards a common goal, and seeing them looking up to each other is another reason to be grateful at what we’re doing.

Working with a team, sharing the same passion, can be a far greater and fulfilling experience anyone can ever have in his lifetime. I truly can’t wait to share my life work with 10up, and to contribute in diversifying the team even more and learn from the talented individuals they already have.

On a usual Saturday, there’s an ongoing amazing talks happening and since Europe is something that I could not afford in many years to come or perpetually, internet saves my day as usual as I  live streaming WordCamp Europe 2015.

In the recent real estate project, I got to finally play with Genesis Framework and I can’t deny the newly embraced fact that it’s dang “sweet”. I always wanted to try out this framework ever since but clients are requesting to build their websites with other frameworks. So I always hit it in that direction. This time, I happened to suggest this tool to a client and had the chance to give direction on how to build the website that meets their business goals, timeframe and budget. The first time I felt like an engineer and manager in that process.

Well, I couldn’t get enough of the overwhelming hooks and filters around this framework. It’s like a bed of roses for child theme and some plugin developers. The lego of the WordPress frameworks world as it can be taken out part by part without even touching the core. The thought of it before that this might be another “everything but the kitchen sink” has been ruled out. The fat is there but it’s the good amount of fat that makes your website healthy.

I can see now why everyone is talking about it. I don’t even need to elaborate that as the summary of it’s superpower has been laid out here. There’s a huge number of developers that are into it as well becoming access to solutions to a probability that you may encounter issues even easier. So far the experience was superb but I can’t wait for the unimaginable hurdles that I may encounter along the way of using this sweet little thing.

Back in personal blogging with WordPress. I plan to migrate all personal rants to Tumblr butt this place is just to good and honestly I can’t think of any other place on the internet where I could blog rightfully.

This time it’s going to be a blog for whatever sense I could make out of this life.

Alright. Let’s get it on!