Recent content on Daniel Bachhuber
If you’ve already lost your mind about AI, you don’t have to read this. I’m mostly collecting a set of thoughts to have them articulated, and for my future self. Many are vague and hand-wavy, and would benefit from their own blog posts. 
 
 If technology is generally deflationary, then AI might be massively deflationary? A big question seems to be: where does the value…

 After over fifteen years as a faithful travel companion, I’m retiring my beloved 28L Patagonia Refugio backpack. The shoulder strap started tearing off and I’m too embarrassed to take it to the dry cleaner for another repair. 
 The 20L Evergoods Civic Travel Bag is its replacement. Interestingly, it seems to have a very similar functional volume to the Patagonia bag. I am…
With the rise of the “warm embrace of collectivism” in the United States, Vietnam is a great place to visit if you’d like to see communism in action. Red posters line the highways with slogans like “Build our Party to be truly ethical and civilized!” Ho Chi Minh statues feature prominently in parks, and hammer and sickle flags wave in many shop fronts. The Ministry of Public Safety buildings are…
Some people are natural storytellers. They immediately captivate their audience and pull them through laughter, anticipation, and joy. 
 Other people read books about storytelling. Spoiler alert! Here are my notes on everything I found interesting in The Science of Storytelling . 
 
 Many stories begin with unexpected change and then continue with that. Change is endlessly fascinating…

 
 
 Resetting takes more than a one night backpacking trip. 
 
 
 Sometimes you need to put a fork in the electrical socket. Please don’t, though. It’s a metaphor. 
 I’ve eaten a lot of humble pie over the last 18 months. Here are some of the lessons I’ve learned the hard way. 
 People and vision matter more than process 
 While I was on winter break in…

 I had little expectations and I’m genuinely surprised by how much I enjoy this device. 
 To set some context: I’ve had pretty bad insomnia over the last year. Both the “wake up at midnight and can’t fall back asleep” and “wake up at 2 am and can’t fall back asleep” kinds. Meds get me back to sleep, but they also make me groggy during the…
Shape Up is the key manual for building software for the web. It offers a specific set of tactics that turn traditional planning on its head, greatly removes the agony from product definition, and ensures you ship on-time, every time. 
 I love “shaping” so much that David Calhoun and I ran an entire “Better Project Planning in 90 Minutes” workshop on it at the Dotcom…
I thought our road trip would be filled with hours of idle time, lazily wasting the day away and then comfortably continuing our journey onward. Instead, I learned that driving from point A to point B can easily take up the entire day. 
 For example: 
 
 Portland to Coeur d’Alene should’ve taken six hours, but we detoured through Walla Walla to get burritos with Andrew and Charlotte.…
Making pizza is one of my great joys in life. With WordCamp US in Portland this past week, I decided to invite some of my fellow WordPress.com (“Dotcom”) Automatticians over for a home-cooked meal. 
 If you need inspiration for your next pizza party, here are the topping combos we enjoyed, ordered by my current preference: 
 
 Tomato sauce, mozzarella, pepperoni, sausage,…
I tried my best, but I just can’t handle the bugs anymore. After seven years as a loyal Overcast user, I switched to Pocket Casts today. 
 Some initial first impressions: 
 
 
 It was pretty easy to import my OPML file into Pocket Casts to migrate all of my podcast subscriptions. Overcast lost the OPML export button in the redesign, but I was able to download it from the website.…
“70% confident” is one of my favorite concepts. I think it’s been kicking around for a while, but Jeff Bezos articulates it well (emphasis mine): 
 
 First, never use a one-size-fits-all decision-making process. Many decisions are reversible, two-way doors. Those decisions can use a light-weight process. For those, so what if you’re wrong? I wrote about this in more…
Matt started his sabbatical on Thursday , so today marks the third day that I’m in charge of WordPress.com. It’s also a Saturday, and my first day off in the past thirty. 
 Being in charge is a lot of work! Fortunately, my leadership team is growing stronger by the day, and we have clear metrics and objectives in place. Here are two aspects of the role I’m discovering quite…
Soccer is a big part of my life. When I play soccer, I know I can’t win the game myself; I need to pass, defend, and play effectively with the entire team. When I coach soccer, I certainly can’t win the game myself; I need to encourage, provide feedback, and play people to their strengths. 
 My leadership style emulates how I think about soccer. A soccer match has a team, a ball,…

 
 
 VIP on a boat, February 2012 
 
 
 Happy birthday, Matt ! Thank you for your dedication to WordPress over the years. It has enabled my entire career, allowed me to raise a family I love, and connected me to people all around the globe. 
 WordPress helped Andrew Witherspoon and I launch a website for the Whitman Pioneer: 
 
 … In the meantime,…
A reflection on business, family, and my quantified self. See also: 2022 , 2020 , 2019 , 2018 , 2015 , 2014 , 2013 . 
 Highlights 
 It’s hard to pick highlights from the year when the entire year was a highlight. My kids are the perfect age, and we make the most of every day. 
 
 Leah and I organized a Newspaper Club at Bridgeport this fall. Over several Wednesday afternoons, the…
We’re a family of four, love good food, and pretty regularly go over our $1400/month grocery budget. 
 
 I’ve always been curious as to why we go over budget. “Overspending” is an obvious answer, but not particularly helpful. Has food gotten more expensive over time? Do we have certain indulgences that are major contributors? Is $1400/month simply a fantasy? 
…
Costa Rica was one of my favorite childhood vacations. I loved hearing Arenal erupt, driving around without seat belts (not sure what my parents were thinking), and boogie boarding at the beach. This spring break, after years of waiting for the right age, we took Ava and Charlie to experience my memories. 
 For Ava, ziplining was the highlight of the trip. She asked about it repeatedly until I…
I decided to start committing to WordPress core again: r55278 . 
 In classic fashion, I broke trunk tests because I missed a test file: r55280 . 
 I ran npm run grunt patch:https://github.com/WordPress/wordpress-develop/pull/3796 but I guess the binary isn’t included. 
 Looking forward to helping with some bug fixing!

 Earlier this week, the WSJ included my story in an article about noncompetes : 
 
 Daniel Bachhuber had worked as a software consultant for years when he decided to take an in-house job in the fall of 2018. His new employer required that he sign a one-year noncompete agreement, which he said was so broad it would have prevented him from practicing his core skills if he were to leave…
A reflection on business, family, and my quantified self. See also: 2020 , 2019 , 2018 , 2015 , 2014 , 2013 . 
 These days, I optimize for making the most of every day. Did I squeeze the juice out of every moment? 
 My kids are the perfect age, which makes life seem even more precious and fleeting. 
 Highlights 
 
 As we walked up to Baby Beach in June, I saw a dad shouting to…
A while back, Leah and I had an idea for an affiliate site: product reviews of things we’ve used for at least a year. 
 In that spirit, here are a few good things I can heartily recommend: 
 
 
 prAna Vaha shorts ($69 $40). More comfortable than sweatpants, and somewhat stylish to boot. Also on sale at REI . 
 
 
 Blue Lotus chai ($19). Spicy deliciousness. Pairs…
I joined Automattic in May to work on the WordPress.com product team. It’s pretty great! 
 Someone on Twitter asked about what it’s like, so I thought I’d answer their questions in a blog post. 
 How did you get into tech? 
 My freshman year (2006) was a big turning point when I: 
 
 
 Applied to six unpaid photojournalism internships and didn’t hear…
With Leah in school full-time, any moment of free time means maximum fun. 
 While visiting our good friends Shane and Angela in Boston, this meant… 
 
 
 
 Taking a moment to watch planes take off before we took off… 
 
 
 
 
 
 Playing Codenames until 11 pm… 
 
 
 
 
 
 Learning Sushi Go! and a half dozen…

 
 
 Strava-official. 
 
 
 As I learned the hard way, running the Timberline Trail is really hard. I’m proud to report I completed all 41 miles with 9k feet of elevation gain in 14 hours 33 minutes. Plus, I was fortunate to do it with a great crew (Nick, Michael, Jordan) on an absolutely gorgeous day. 
 For the unacquainted, the Timberline Trail is a big ol’ loop…

 
 
 A birthday morning trail run up Fall River Trail . 
 
 
 I turned 35 yesterday! In no particular order, here are 35 things I’m grateful for: 
 
 Good health, and good overall physical condition. 
 The opportunity to grow older each year with my amazing wife. 
 My kids’ bubbly spirits and zest for life. 
 The love of my parents and…
“Good outcome, bad outcome” is a great conversation framing magic trick. 
 For example, yesterday I discussed user research with Marko, my new lead. Here’s how I framed my perspective: 
 “ A good outcome would be: 
 
 We have just enough customer research to answer our product questions. 
 The team is fully aware of the “voice of the customer”, and uses…
Feel free to use, share, and adapt! A derivative of a Shape Up pitch . 
 Problem Statement 
 What problem are customers having? 
 
 What are customers doing to address this problem today? 
 
 What do customers dislike about their current solution to the problem? 
 
 Please include any supporting research (user interviews, cancellation feedback, etc.) 
 
…
Teaching coding club has been an unexpectedly rewarding experience. The kids are really into it, my role has been less terrifying than I thought it would be, and the available educational materials are quite good. Walking into my old elementary school, which my kids now attend, is quite a trip too. 
 Like coding, teaching is hard to do well. I’m still very much a newbie. For lack of a…
All too often, even when a task includes lots of detail, it’s unclear what it means for a task to be complete. 
 “Done is” bridges this gap by offering a lightweight style for explicitly defining acceptance criteria at the end of a task: 
 
 My awesome task 
 A ton of great detail about the task. 
 Done is: 
- Simple sentence describing the first acceptance criteria. 
-…
This post originally appeared on the TinyBit Blog . 
 WordPress tries to be helpful by automatically making your images responsive. It adds sizes and srcset attributes to each <img> to ensure a properly sized file is used at each screen width. Unfortunately, these values are almost always incorrect. 
 Even worse, there’s no easy fix. Responsive images are one of those historically complex,…
My aunt is getting into hiking and asked for recommendations. You, dear reader, might be interested in them too! 
 Relatively flat hikes 
 Warrior Point . 7 mile out and back on Sauvie Island. The destination is kinda meh but the view of the Columbia along the way is really cool. Stop by my other aunt’s for a glass of wine when you’re done :) 
 Wildwood trail between…
This post originally appeared on the TinyBit Blog . 
 
 One of Google Lighthouse’s peskiest problems is “Eliminate render-blocking resources.” Here’s the nut of it: 
 
 Your style.css file can easily end up as 100+ kilobytes. 
 Downloading this stylesheet blocks page render. 
 Because Google wants to display the page as quickly as possible,…

 On the left is my new Apple 13" MacBook Pro M1, with 16 GB RAM and 500 GB SSD. On the right is my old MBP, which conveniently started having battery issues in December. 
 M1 so fast ! I was very skeptical but now I’m a true believer. The keyboard is quality, too. Now that it has a dedicated ESC key, I’m beginning to think I could get used to the Touch Bar.
We’re getting close to the public launch for Upfocus . In order to accommodate (hopefully) growing usage, I really wanted to make sure we had scalable infrastructure in place: ability to add more server capacity, atomic deploys, etc. 
 After a bit of research and experimentation, I’m really happy with the Laravel Forge + Digital Ocean + DeployHQ solution I’ve put together. It…
A reflection on business, family, and my quantified self. See also: __ 2019 , 2018 , 2015 , 2014 , 2013 __. 
 Ugh. Pandemic. Didn’t see that one coming last year. 
 We’re fortunate to have found many silver linings in the experience. The pandemic has also been difficult, and some of the policy decisions still make my blood boil . 
 COVID-19 
 Overall, I think the last…
The FTC is soliciting public comment on non-compete clauses used in employment contracts (here’s some background from Matt Stoller ). Because I had some personal experience on the topic, I submitted a public comment: 
 
 I recently (fall 2018) declined a job opportunity because of an onerous non-complete. 
 I work in an industry (WordPress-related products and services) where…
I literally canceled my Economist subscription two weeks ago. They must’ve seen that and published this just for me. The Housing Special Report in this week’s paper is a total knockout. Go find yourself a print copy. 
 
 The soaring cost of housing has created gaping inequalities and inflamed both generational and geographical divides. In 1990 a generation of baby-boomers, with…
A reflection on business, family, and my quantified self. See also: 2018 , 2015 , 2014 , 2013 . 
 This year cemented my transition into adulthood. Sure, I’ve had kids for several years but those were awkward years like being a teenager is awkward. It’s only after you’ve sent your first off to kindergarten, coached her soccer team, and sat on a city advisory committee that you…
In response to Rosie Sherry’s question on Indie Hackers : 
 
 There are always people here on IH looking to partner up as co-founders. Perhaps some stories would be useful to others who are currently looking. 
 For those with co-founders, how did you find yours? 
 I’m working with a co-founder right now and I highly, highly recommend it. 
 I’ve done a few solo…
I’m starting a company with a business partner right now. It’s going pretty well! Hopefully I’ll have more to share soon. 
 Before we started, I identified my three personal goals for starting a company: 
 
 Have more fun than I’m having right now. 
 Work with people I enjoy. 
 Create opportunities to learn and grow. 
 
 These goals have been…
Sometimes, all you need to do is track how often an event occurs. But, Google Analytics returns this data too slowly and Mixpanel is too expensive. 
 Simple Event Tracking is a new, easy-to-deploy Laravel application that lets you log events and then query how often they occur (in real-time). 
 Once you’ve deployed the application, simply POST to the /api/write endpoint: 
 $ http…
Personal email newsletters are a trend in the right direction. They’re often the right combination of content (summarized update) and frequency (once/week). But, email doesn’t scale, in as so far as I can’t imagine subscribing to hundreds of personal newsletters. 
 It would be neat if there was an app where you could see summarized updates from all of the people you want to…
Open source anthropology, HB 2001 progress, free-lancing advice, dirt removal coaching. 
 
 The Hard Parts of Open Source (Evan Czaplicki) — Identifies a strong set of specific anti-patterns present in open source (e.g. “why don’t you just” and “all discussion is constructive”) and then goes into a major history deep dive on why they might be present. 
…

 Awesome upgrade for my shedquarters . Far superior to the transom windows.
Images are a total bottleneck when importing a site into WordPress. 
 Your script’s execution time can easily double if your migration script fetches images over HTTP or generates multiple thumbnail sizes. Because you’ll likely need to test your script multiple times, these inefficiencies can cause substantial delays in your project. 
 Fortunately, two simple tricks will save…
Oregon’s House Bill 2001 would re-legalize “missing middle” housing across the state ( previously ). It’s in committee right now, and they’re accepting testimony on the bill. Here’s what others have said . And, after the break, here’s what I just submitted!
I take a ton of notes in Notes.app (and previously Simplenote). My preferred workflow is to keep a note in Notes.app until I’m “done” with it. At the point of done, I save the note as PDF to a local folder. 
 This distinction between active notes and completed notes is key for how my mind works. Something about reducing mental clutter, or insert your diagnosis here. I want to keep the notes…
Update 2/11: I’m off for 12 days now, woo hoo 
 On Sunday, I survived my first day without coffee. Then yesterday, I survived a second day without coffee. 
 Pros of coffee abstinence include: 
 
 Better sleep. 
 Generally feeling a ton healthier. 
 
 Cons of coffee abstinence include: 
 
 Low-grade headache and other withdrawal symptoms. 
 Leah questioning…
Events are great because they bring people together. 
 In scenarios where there isn’t already a cohesive group, organizing an event has two risks: 
 
 Will enough people sign up to make the planning effort worthwhile? 
 Will the people who signed up actually show up? 
 
 A Kickstarter for events could solve these two problems. 
 First, the event would have some minimum…
Reality of open source businesses, marketing ideas, income equality debate, and organizational alignment. 
 
 AWS, MongoDB, and the Economic Realities of Open Source (Stratechery) — How and why MongoDB is getting massively pinched by AWS. 
 Ideas for promoting your software product (Justin Jackson) — Good list of marketing ideas to test. 
 Noah Smith on Worker Compensation,…