Jonathan Bossenger

Uses

I’ve been building PCs since high school, even though back then they were made up of whatever I could find in bargain bins or second-hand. Computers are the tools I use to earn a living, support my family and pay for my hobbies, two of which also involve computers. This page lists what my current setups are.

Laptop – 14-inch MacBook Pro (Apple M1 chip)

Since I joined Automattic, my new daily driver is a company-sponsored 14-inch MacBook Pro, with the new Apple M1 chip. This laptop is a beast, and while I still don’t like macOS, the new Apple hardware is impressive.

  • Apple M1 Pro chip with 10-core CPU & 16 core GPU
  • 32GB unified memory
  • 1TB SSD

Office Workstation

Custom-built as a new workstation in Dec 2020. I don’t use this as my daily driver anymore, but I still have it hooked up in my office if I ever need to access Ubuntu, Windows, or for gaming. During the course of 2022 I doubled the RAM to 32GB and in Jan 2023 I upgraded the graphics to an RTX 3060.

  • AMD Ryzen 5 3600 CPU
  • Asus TUF GAMING B550M-PLUS (WIFI) Motherboard
  • 32GB 16GB Corsair VENGEANCE LPX DDR 4 RAM
  • Palit GeForce RTX 3060 12GB Graphics Card Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1660 Ti OC 6GB
  • Samsung 970 EVO Plus 500GB NVMe SSD
  • 2 x WD Blue 1TB 3.5″ SATA Storage Drives
  • Cooler Master MWE GOLD 650W ATX PSU
  • Cooler Master Masterbox K500L ATX case

Home PC

Ex office workstation, this was a 2018 “workstation” upgrade for my previous PC, which I’d custom-built in 2010. Now that I have the MacBook Pro, I’m probably going to turn this into a media center for the home, to replace the old Lenovo I have for that purpose. I had originally planned to turn this into a media centre, but it doubles as an Ubuntu workstation when I need one at home, and for home gaming. In Jan 2023 I migrated the GTX 1660 Ti graphics card to this PC when I upgraded the office workstation.

  • AMD Ryzen 5 2600x CPU
  • MSI x470 Gaming Plus Motherboard
  • 16GB G.Skill Ripjaws DDR4 RAM
  • Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1660 Ti OC 6GB Zotac Geforce GTX 1060 3GB Graphics Card
  • 128 GB m.2 SSD – Ubuntu
  • 128 GB Transcend 2.5″ SSD – Windows
  • WD Blue 1TB 3.5″ SATA Storage Drive
  • Samsung 1TB 3.5″ SATA Storage Drive

Latest Posts

  • How I lost 12.5kgs in 2021 and kept it off in 2022

    Whenever I run into people who’ve not seen me in person since before the pandemic, they are surprised at how different I look today. Personally, I don’t see it, until I go looking for photos of myself before 2020, and then look at more recent photos. The differences are quite remarkable. For some context, here’s […]

  • Developing WordPress Blocks without React

    Code. Free public domain CC0

    One of the most common complaints I hear from long term WordPress developers boils down to the fact that to develop blocks for the WordPress Block Editor, you need to set up the JavaScript development environment (Node.js + npm + @wordpress/scripts) in order to start building blocks. This is not entirely true, as it is […]

  • Upgrades and benchmarks

    dark industry internet abstract

    It’s been just over 2 years since I last worked on building/upgrading a computer, in what was then my new office workstation. One of the main reasons for this is that I now have a company-sponsored MacBook Pro, and so my office and home computers are mostly used for gaming, or if I’m tinkering with […]

  • 2022 Year in Review

    white and brown sea dock

    Since 2016, I have tried to write either a year-in-review and/or goal-setting post, or a combination of the two. The idea behind these process is to try and set achievable goals for me for the year ahead, and then look at how close I’ve come to achieving them. Last year I set some very specific […]

  • I don’t understand computers

    Free computer chip image

    I’ve been building PCs for as long as I’ve been into computers (early nineties) and they still baffle me. Yesterday I installed a new graphics card on my office workstation, and the PC didn’t POST the first time. So I power cycle it, and it POSTs, but throws some “safe mode” BIOS error. So I […]

  • Tuesday Twitch Streams

    I’ve been toying with the idea of doing weekly development live streams for some time now. Fortunately, my work on the WordPress training team regularly requires me to do some R&D work on new topics, which are the perfect subjects for live streams. So if you want to watch me fumble my way through WordPress […]

  • Running Different PHP Versions with Apache on Ubuntu

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    I’ve been using Apache as my default local development web server since I started writing PHP code back in 2006. Back then, Nginx was barely 2 years old, and every web server was running Apache, so it just made sense. Over the years I’ve come to prefer Nginx on my web servers, but I still […]

  • Let’s code! Creating your first WordPress Plugin

    As part of my sponsored work for the WordPress Training Team, I’m hosting weekly “Let’s Code” Online Workshops for Learn WordPress. Each week I cover a WordPress development concept. I’m sharing them here as well so that if anyone has questions they can ask me here (in the comments) directly. Watch this video on WordPress.tv […]

  • Turning a shortcode into a block

    a laptop screen with text

    I’ve had a couple of folks either reach out to me or ask on Twitter if it’s easy to convert a shortcode into a block. The irony is that during my trial at Automattic, that’s exactly what I created, a tutorial on taking an existing shortcode plugin and adding it as a block. I am […]