Some shots I took of the various booths my colleagues set up at WordCamp US. I love the creativity on display here.
WordCamp US has been great.
Galleries
We took the family to the Missouri Botanical Gardens this evening for the yearly Garden Glow, where the front half of the grounds is lit up with various Christmas light displays.
I took a host of pics with my phone and didn’t do any editing on them—just posting them up now because if I wait much longer, I won’t make the post. :)
If you are in the St. Louis area, I highly recommend the walk; it’s quite nice and it’s very different being in the gardens at night, which you normally cannot do.
I find myself hitting the screen capture button fairly often in this game, which is kind of nice. It gives me a record of what I’ve been doing and the things I’ve been messing with in the game.
My son and I are still playing together almost nightly, and it’s been a lot of fun. And we recently joined SafeGamers, giving us some groups we can play with who are respectful of our time and of us—a welcome change from a lot of online gaming experiences.
I’ve managed my first Destiny series raid, and cleared it a few times since then. I expect fewer screenshots next month, if only because I’m exhausting a lot of the content in the game prior to the first DLC release coming this December. (And I included the Legacy screenshots, which showcase some pretty neat art from various experiences I completed in the first game. I’m hoping my next Legacy is much more complete.)
Also, I’m aware there are some resolution problems with the carousel for these images; if you want to see the (much sharper) originals, use the button that appears when you are browsing the images in carousel.
baddest of the bad
I have a lot to say about Destiny 2, and keep meaning to write about it, but for now, I thought I would post a little gallery of the screenshots I’ve taken over the first month of the game, especially as I’ve been playing through it with my son and it’s become family time. :)
Last weekend, we took the family to see the annual Orchid Show at the Botanical Gardens. The interior arrangements were quite lovely and there was a fantastic variety of orchids on display.
My children (with some help from their mother) pooled together some of their savings to buy me a LEGO set for Father’s Day, and today we spent some time together and assembled it.
It’s no surprise or secret that I really do love The LEGO Movie, and Benny is basically what I was like as a child: somewhat manic, space obsessed, and ready to build a ship at a moment’s notice.
This past week, I was happy to attend the WordPress.com VIP Intensive Workshop with my colleagues and some of our clients, spend time with them chatting about all things WordPress and VIP (and even some things not), and learn a ton of things myself—including attending a security workshop taught by my colleague Mike Adams.
The last dinner we had as a big group (both the VIP team and our clients) was a fantastic time and we had some great conversation. (Special guest photographer on some of these shots is the one, the only Peter Slutsky.)
As you can see, the grounds where we stayed, learned, and worked for three nights are just fantastic. It rained a bit much in the early going, but once the sun came out it was beautiful and just a great place to retreat and spend time building relationships with the people who make WordPress.com VIP what it is.
Some shout-outs are due post-event:
- Scott Taylor for, when I asked him about the groovy new MCE Views that are coming in WordPress 3.9, didn’t even blink but launched into an explanation and then thirty minutes later had produced a plugin example and put it on GitHub. I don’t understand half of it but it’s super-cool. And also for chatting about music tons.
- Konstantin Kovshenin and Corey Gilmore for having the patience to sit with me and help me understand regular expressions. I’m now at a point where I think I can use them and have some additional resources to help me the rest of the way.
- Samantha Geitz and Adam Tow (among others) for chatting with me probably way too much about Mass Effect. Rinat Khaziev for putting up with us always talking about it whenever he was around.
- Matthew Boynes for, after we had a conversation about the likely best way to go about it, whipping up a cool plugin for migrating option data from one WordPress installation to another.
All these people (and more) had a bigger impact on me than they probably think. I saw—time and time again—people talking about problems and then going and starting to solve them, collaborating on the potential solutions, and walking away having learned something.
It was the first time it struck me how much of a community WordPress developers (and really, developers of all stripes) tend to be. And it was about fixing real problems not just for themselves, but for other people who would run in to those same things down the line.
This is why I’m renewing my effort at upping my game, engineer-wise. This is something I want to be a part of and contribute to. I want to have these conversations more often.
Now, if I can just clone myself so I have enough time to get everything done…
We took the kids out to the ballpark last Saturday in a bit of spontaneous action. I didn’t get as many shots as I normally do, but a few of these do a great job of showcasing what an amazing ballpark we have here in St. Louis.