Guest Posts

I am not accepting any guest posts on this site. This is my personal blog, and therefore I write all its content.

Please don’t contact me to offer to write a guest post. I will ignore your request, and mark your email as spam.

I will also not be accepting requests to add links to your content, unless it matches the content of my post 100%, it’s on your personal blog, and it helps others first.

Latest Posts


  • Configuring Ubuntu in Multipass for Local Web Development on a MacBook

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    I’ve been using an Apple MacBook since June 2021. While I don’t totally hate it, I still prefer a LAMP or LEMP stack as my default local web development environment. The best alternative I’ve found on the Mac is Laravel Valet, but it’s not without some minor niggles, mostly the fact that the web server […]

  • I’ll Remember the Days Before I Knew Everything

    The first time I heard about the Automattic creed was on a plane flight from Cape Town to Johannesburg, sitting next to Hugh Lashbrooke, as we flew to attend the first WordCamp in Johannesburg in 2016. I’d met the Johannesburg organizing team at that year’s Cape Town WordCamp, where we were all speakers, and I […]

  • Coding Words

    The slides from my https://www.devconf.co.za/ 2022 talk. If you’d like to get early access to the book I’m writing on this topic, please fill in this Google form.

  • Screen Recording Options for Code Editors

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    In my Goals Setting post for 2022, I shared that I wanted to improve my blogging activity, and “try and expand into some online videos and possibly even do some live streaming.” One of the biggest hurdles with creating technical video content is making sure that any code in the code editor is readable when […]

  • The Slap That Changed My Life.

    woman with beaded necklace covering her mouth with her hand

    I don’t generally go into the personal details of my life in this blog, but this is one of those moments. Apologies if you are here for tech/WordPress-related stuff, and real-world stuff bums you out. I turn 45 this year, and that moment in my 16-year-old life is still as vivid to me today as […]

  • What Does a Better Notification System for WordPress Actually Look Like?

    beach bottle cold daylight

    Last week I had the opportunity to join some amazing WordPress folks to talk about WordPress notifications. In that chat I mentioned that one of my biggest “hurdles” is getting the word out about WP Notify, sharing what the team has been working on, and what we envision for notifications in WordPress. And then it […]

  • 2022 Office Update: Technical Writer Edition

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    It has been 2 years since I last posted a workstation/office update. If I am honest, posting regular updates about my “daily drivers” was not something I ever planned, but I am always trying to refine and improve my work tools. I find it interesting to take a look back at what has changed over […]

  • 2022 Goal Setting

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    I’ve never been one to set new years resolutions. I’m generally aware that most resolutions made on January 1st are never taken seriously, or only taken seriously for the first 2 weeks or so until one inevitably falls back on old habits. I also am not a solopreneur, business owner, or freelancer, so compiling a […]

  • Switch MySQL 8 Authentication Mode to native_password

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    This past weekend, I was fiddling with some “devopsy” things, and I had to figure out how to switch the default MySQL 8 authentication method from auth_socket to native_password. One of the big changes to MySQL in version 8 is the default authentication method. In older MySQL versions, when you installed the mysql-server package, it […]