Morning View
Not a bad view with your morning coffee.
The Journeyman – Brandon Kraft
Musings from Brandon Kraft
Latest posts
Remembering Loss
Today is the 5th anniversary of losing a friend and mentor. Toward the end of her life, we interacted far less than when we shared a wall in the office. When we worked together, it was a quiet joy of the job to share our morning coffee and catch up, touch base on the day [ ]
Press This 2.0.2: Major Bug Fixes and Improvements
A bug fix release for Press This went out and I forgot to post about it The biggest fix: saving posts that contained external images was throwing a critical error through the REST API. That s gone now. Also fixed is an annoying one where scraped media was getting inserted at the bottom of the post [ ]
Introducing FediBoost
A few months ago, I turned on the ActivityPub plugin for this site. I loved it—my blog became followable from Mastodon, posts federated out automatically, and people could reply to my posts from their own instances. This is what indieweb is all about. But something bugged me. My posts were federating from my site s identity—@kraft@kraft.blog—which [ ]
Press This + Gutenberg = ❤️
Almost a decade ago, I helped rebuild Press This for WordPress 4.2. It was one of my favorite contributions—a tool that embodied what I love about WordPress: making publishing frictionless. Select some text, click a bookmarklet, and you re blogging. I even wrote Press This Extended to add the customization options that the Decisions, Not Options [ ]
Unexcused Absences
My therapist and I are working on the premise that the things that trigger us are rooted in childhood in some way. My mom passed away earlier this month, and my children attended the funeral. She died on Wednesday evening, and we had her funeral on Monday. They missed school from Friday through Tuesday. We re [ ]
Bobbie Kraft, 1944-2025
My mom passed away almost two weeks ago. The obituary I wrote for her can be read online. Relationships with Moms are complicated, each of us for our own reasons. Mine was wrapped in trauma. Looking at pictures, the younger years of my childhood seemed pretty normal. As I approached a decade of life, my [ ]
Understanding the Liturgies to Begin Pope Leo XIV’s Ministry
Starting this Sunday, you ll hear about a few liturgies to formally begin Pope Leo XIV s ministry. Leo XIV is the Pope, with full authority, when he accepts his election without needing any additional liturgy or ritual. Similarly, the King of England became the king immediately upon the death of his mother, yet, in both cases, [ ]
Pope Leo XIV
Many blessings to our new Holy Father Leo XIV! With all new popes, we don t really know how the Spirit will lead them to lead the Church. I remember when Pope Benedict XVI was elected. Local news interviewed me on the narrative that Cardinal Ratzinger was God s German Shepherd —a hardass conservative. As I said then, [ ]
Conclave Time!
Tomorrow afternoon for those in Rome or tomorrow morning for those in the U.S. (), the Cardinals will take the short trip from their temporary housing at Casa Santa Marta to the Sistine Chapel of the Apostolic Palace to begin the conclave to elect the 267th Supreme Pontiff of the Catholic Church. While I m sure [ ]
Apostolica Sedes Vacans: Day 2
As the second day in Rome—and the first full day—without a Pope comes to a close, a few things have happened or been announced since yesterday s message. Confirmation of Death and Transfer The Camerlengo, per the rite of papal funerals that Pope Francis revised last year (Ordo Exsequiarum Romani Pontificis), confirmed his death. Pope Francis [ ]
Apostolica Sedes Vacans
The Apostolic See is Vacant. In other words, the Pope is dead. Cardinal Farrell, the Camerlengo, announced that Pope Francis died this morning at 7:35 a.m. local time in Rome. The Camerlengo is a position appointed by the Pope (during his life) whose responsibilities include confirming the death of the Pope, sealing the Apostolic Palace [ ]
Still at Automattic
Last week, my employer, Automattic, announced a restructuring. Restructuring at Automattic isn t terribly unusual. Team structures change regularly. This one, though, included a layoff or reduction in force in today s jargon, which is the first for Automattic. We ve had pushes for improving performance management, which has led to an increase in departures, including sometimes a [ ]
No Hot Dogs For Me
I ve been on a quest for over 20 years now (what‽) to eat a hot dog in every state. I visited DC in 2006, when I scored a DC hotdog at Ben s Chili Bowl. When flying out of IAD (in Virginia), one sports bar sold hot dogs, so I was set. Except they ran out [ ]
American Solidarity Party
I submitted my resignation as the Travis County Chair of the American Solidarity Party today. Or, well, I think my term officially ended in May 2024, but we never elected someone to succeed. In either case, I m moving aside to let someone else who can dedicate real energy be involved. The American Solidarity Party isn t [ ]
No Bishop In Austin
At Roman Noon today, Pope Frances named Austin s Bishop Joe Vasquez as the Archbishop-Elect of Galveston-Houston. What does this mean for Austin? It s about the same as 2009 when I last wrote about this. Correction from last time, effective immediately, Bishop Vasquez is still the bishop of Austin, but, he is limited to acts of [ ]
Short-Form Communication
Short-form communication hurts. The Texas Tribune published an article about Gov. Greg Abbott s outrage about Texas A M s sponsoring a trip to a DEI conference . Taking five minutes, this is just the same stupid political noise that is hurting far more than it is helping. The outrage comes in response to a message on X from [ ]
A Week In The Life
Life flows through seasons, which feel completely normal while you re in the midst of them, but looking back, it s hard to remember what they were like. With that in mind, I wanted to outline the last week and detail the end of the week. Monday The schools were on holiday for Indigenous People s Day, but [ ]
Conflation Hurts
The last few weeks have been hard for those in the #WordPress community. I m trying my best to focus on the work ahead, but recent events have made that more challenging and complicated for folks on the ground. I have friends who work or have worked at WP Engine, and I obviously have friends at [ ]
Contributing to WordPress
I know the big dogs are fighting (and disclaimer I work for one of the big dogs and I used to make my living building websites using a theme framework the other one owns now), but a ton of contributors contribute because they want to help the community. Not because they were sponsored, though I [ ]
Fire and Bus
The first couple weeks of school have been an eventful one for our kiddos. On the first day of school, at 5:30 a.m., we received an automated call from the school district. There was a fire at the middle school—do not come to campus today. The night before, a microwave in a classroom caught fire [ ]
MBA
Recently graduated with an MBA in Business Analytics, I am continuing my shift from engineering to business leadership at Automattic. Despite personal challenges and a full schedule, I excelled academically, receiving numerous awards, and look forward to a sabbatical and a vacation.
Magellan: My Trip Around The World
I ve been with Automattic for nearly 11 years. The company is fully distributed, so there are no offices, but we have regular meetups and in-person events. I ve been to quite a few places worldwide, including across the US, Canada, Italy, Spain, Ireland, the Dominican Republic, Belize, Montenegro, The Netherlands, and so forth. This month, I [ ]
Personal Web Presence
I m in the midst of an identity crisis. Regarding Internet identity and community, my presence on Twitter felt most interconnected. I ve had my website(s) longer, and they mean more to me than Twitter. But with the changes over there and the disruption to much of my community, coupled with a general dislike for Musk s governance [ ]
ADHD
I don t post on here as often as I used to. In the early days of the site (like 20 years ago? What the hell?), I would post just random things all the time. Twitter, I think, gave me a different place to scratch that itch coupled with the movement that everyone needed their own [ ]
Joining the Student Advisory Board
In addition to my full-time work at Automattic and the family, I am also a MBA student at Midwestern State University. I m proud to share that I m joining the Student Advisory Board for the Dilliard College of Business Administration. MSU is primarily a traditional campus-based university, but their MBA program does offer all courses required [ ]
Statement on Frank Pavone
News broke that that Vatican has removed from the clerical state (e.g. defroked) Frank Pavone. Pavone is most known for founding Priests for Life as a pro-life group, which has been extreme in some tactics—including a video with an aborted child on a table that is sometimes used for Mass , the explanation he gave when [ ]
Now Using 2023
I switched the site over to using Twenty Twenty Three yesterday with my first real experience with the Site Editor. I ve created some small single-page sites with the Block Editor, but hadn t spent real time with it. It ll take me a little bit to get used to it, but this is overall a positive move [ ]
ActivityPub
What the hell—added ActivityPub support to the site so you can follow the site via @kraft via Mastodon or your favorite ActivityPub-powered social site.
Finally Caught It
After avoiding for two years, I could avoid it no more. Symptomatic but mild. Bleh.
Incident at the Elementary School
At my kids elementary at dismissal time, there was an incident of someone approaching the gate where walkers are dismissed to their parents. The individual seemed to be under the influence of something, and when a teacher asked him to leave, the individual struck a couple of teachers. Parents acted quickly to subdue the individual, [ ]
Uvalde
Today s horrific shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde is a tragedy beyond words. First, for the murdered, I pray that they re in the Kingdom now in a place without pain or sadness. For the families and loved ones of the ones we lost, I hope and pray that they can process this surrounded by [ ]
Getting Started with Matrix
When a small organization that I m involved with wanted to move from text messages or Telegram to a more robust real-time chat platform, we had a few options. There s Slack, of course, and Discord, but we re geeks and wanted to look to open-source solutions. The open-source aspect was appealing for a few reasons—no corporate overloads [ ]
History Repeats
I m sadden by the developments in Ukraine. History does repeat itself. My ancestors were Black Sea Germans—Germans who migrated to modern-day Ukraine at the invitation of Catherine the Great and Alexander I. My ancestors were promised peace, ability to worship and speak German freely, and exempt from military service. It began to change in the [ ]
One Year Later
One year ago today, I was watching a livestream of the U.S. Presidential Election Certification while at work. I didn t pay attention leading up to January 6, 2021 to know about President Trump s rally that morning and, since I was watching only what was happening in the chamber, I was overall ignorant of what was [ ]