Eric Binnion

Eric Binnion

a8cgm Austin automattic bowen island cloudfest development do_action git github harley davidson hero instagram iOS javascript jetpack kareless latergram lonestardrift meetup mercury officetoday photo101 photos php phptek pistol pokemongo Programming react rome scm ted travelmattic vancouver video wcbos wcdfw wcokc wcus whistler wichita falls woocommerce wooconf wordcamp WordPress

  • At the #a8cgm selfie station with Javi and Miguel. #mercury

    At the #a8cgm selfie station with Javi and Miguel. #mercury

    At the #a8cgm selfie station with Javi and Miguel. #mercury

  • Automattic GM 2015 Party

    While there’s a party every night of the grand meetup, the last night has been a special night the past couple of years that I have attended.

    But, this year being the 10th anniversary of Automattic, the party definitely raised the bar for future grand meetups.

    The best part of the night had to be the amazing performances by our Automatticans bands! With just a week of practice, they were able to put on a stellar performance. The Jane Doze followed our Automatticians bands and kept the party going until midnight when the party continued in the party suites for several more hours.

    In close second, the photo booth was also amazing! I got several great pictures with friends, including our CEO, Matt Mullenweg

    Want to work with an amazingly talented group of people that are helping to impact 24% of the web? Come work with us!

  • #a8cgm

    #a8cgm

    #a8cgm

  • Mercury at GM 2015

  • Alpine Slide at GM 2015

  • Washington, DC Trip and White House Tour

    At the end of August, I had the opportunity to get together with some coworkers in Washington, D.C. so that we could collaborate on a project.

    While it’s always nice to get together with coworkers, the highlight of the trip was definitely getting a tour of the West Wing of the White House.

    Unfortunately, no photography is allowed in the West Wing, but I did get a few shots from the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, the White House Press Room, and a few memorials around the city.

  • Grocery Shopping with a Kid

      

  • The Death Of Expertise

    But democracy … means that we enjoy equal rights versus the government, and in relation to each other. Having equal rights does not mean having equal talents, equal abilities, or equal knowledge.  It assuredly does not mean that “everyone’s opinion about anything is as good as anyone else’s.” And yet, this is now enshrined as the credo of a fair number of people despite being obvious nonsense.

    Source: The Death Of Expertise

  • Nana’s 70th Birthday

    Today was Nana’s 70th birthday party at Uncle Kevin’s house. As part of the party, we had a bit of a photo booth setup and each of us had pictures taken with Nana.

    Mom also got a good picture of Sara and I.

    nana-70-1

    And one of Hero.

    nana-70-4

  • Hack Day: WebdriverIO and Mocha

    June 23rd was the second hack day that has occurred since I joined Automattic in July 2014, and the first hack day that I participated in.

    For this hack day, I chose to figure out something for functional testing since it’s 1) so far been a bit over my head and 2) could prove useful in my work at Automattic.

    What is a hack day?

    In the hack day announcement post, one of my coworkers described the hack day as:

    The Hack Day is an opportunity to work on anything and everything around Automattic’s services and/or WordPress.

    Personally, I looked at the hack day as an opportunity to learn a new technology that I’d been interested in but hadn’t had the chance to learn yet.

    A new functional testing framework

    A few weeks ago, I spent a full day trying to figure out why a functional test was no longer working on WordPress. Long story short, I was able to narrow down the issue to a conflict with PhantomJS and React, the latter of which now powers a large part of WordPress.com.

    After figuring this out, I began to look into different testing frameworks that would allow us to test React, and eventually settled on WebdriverIO for the browser automation. This seemed to be a fairly easy choice because WebdriverIO:

    • supports multiple browsers (including Chrome which works with React)
    • is built with JavaScript
    • is able to be deployed on hosted testing services like SauceLabs or Browserstack
    • has a plugin for visual regression testing

    The end result

    While I’m not sure I can call what I ended up with a “framework”, I am happy with what I was able to do in just one day.

    I was able to get tests written for logging in and out of WordPress.com as well as testing deactivation/activation plugins through Jetpack Manage functioned as expected.

    You can find the source code at: https://github.com/ebinnion/WordPress.com-Functional-Tests

  • WordCamp Philly 2015 Recap

    I went to WordCamp Philly this past weekend and worked the Jetpack booth. While I didn’t get a chance to visit any presentations, I did get to meet several people.

    Here are some pictures from Saturday.

    Contributor Day

    Sunday was contributor day, which saw a few dozen people get together to give back to the WordPress project.

    It’s always great to be reminded of how many ways there are to contribute to the WordPress project.

    I stuck to development, and decided that I would contribute by writing some tests. So, I joined a group of other developers and we worked on writing some tests for the dbDelta function.

  • Packing Light for WordCamp Philly

    I tend to overpack for trips.

    Hell, when I went to Rome last December, I took 2 carry ons and a rolling bag that was checked. After having to deal with all of that luggage while in Rome, I decided I’d never pack that much.

    So, this last April when I went to San Diego for a team meetup, I only took two checked bags. This still ended up being a bit much since the bags were strapped and not rolling.

    Tonight, as I packed for my 4-day trip to Philly tomorrow, I decided I’d try to take as little as possible.

    It took a little bit of forethought, but I decided I’d only take the following:

    • 4 pairs of underwear
    • 4 shirts
    • 2 pairs of khaki shorts
    • Miscellaneous bathroom stuff
    • MacBook Pro
    • MacBook charger
    • Hotspot
    • Beats earbuds
    • iPhone and micro usb cords
    • Eye glasses
    • Notebook
    • Eye mask and earbuds
    • Wall adapter

    I got all of the above into the bag below.

  • Stop Looking for Opportunities

    Last night Sara and I were watching “Switched at Birth”, and I heard a quote that stuck with me.

    Stop looking for opportunities and make your own. You’re an artist. Create.

    Photo Credit: Miguel Vera

  • Misled Reader in “The Road Not Taken”

    The following is an essay I wrote for an American Literature class at Midwestern State University in the Fall semester of 2015.

    “The Road Not Taken” is a poem that explores the difficulty in making decisions as well as the future impact of those decisions. Often misunderstood as a metaphor that it is best to not follow the mainstream path, the speaker in “The Road Not Taken” misleads the reader for the purpose of creating an elaborate metaphor.

    The source of the confusion is that with a quick read, the simple conclusion would be that the speaker chose the path less travelled, which he only understands in the end. A reader can come to that conclusion after reading the last stanza where the speaker remarks, “I took the one less travelled by, / And that has made all the difference” (19-20). In these lines, the speaker very clearly says that he took the path “less travelled” (19) and he believes that “made all the difference” (20). Only looking at that remark, and taking the speaker’s remark at face value, it is understandable to conclude that the message of “The Road Not Taken” is for the reader to be original, strike out on his or her own path, and to reject that which is mainstream. But, a closer look at “The Road Not Taken” will show that the entire poem is truly a metaphor with a different message.

    While the speaker does remark that he took the path less travelled in the last stanza, more importantly, the speaker also had previously said that the paths were “just as fair ” (6), “really about the same” (10), and “equally lay” (11). Why then would the speaker contradict himself at the end of the poem? The key to understanding this is realizing that the last stanza is set “ages and ages hence” (17) in the future, and the speaker is “telling [the story] with a sigh” (16). The fact that the speaker sighs in the future suggests that the speaker realizes that he will never stop thinking about the other path he could have followed. With that in mind, the speaker changing the story over time can be understood to be a method of coping, a way for the speaker to reassure himself that he took the correct path.

    “The Road Not Taken” is a poem that is easily misunderstood as advice to take the road less travelled. This misunderstanding is a result of the speaker misleading the reader for the purpose of creating an elaborate metaphor, one that explores curiosity and regret in later life over one’s earlier choices.

  • “Just Do It” – Shia LaBeouf 

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jvV9K4RpAg

    I’m not sure if I would label this as a “motivational speech”. But, it sure does get to the point.

  • Blank Web Page with PhantomJS and CasperJS

    Today, I was attempting to debug an issue where some of our functional tests were not running with the new React powered parts of WordPress.com.

    As part of the debugging process, I decided to see if the tests would pass when run from my local machine instead of our test server. But, any time I ran a test, the test would fail.

    madComputer

    An Example Test

    Here is part of the test that we use to test the log-in/log-out functionality on WordPress.com

    [javascript]
    casper.test.begin( ‘Can log in to WordPress’, function suite( test ) {
    casper.start( ‘https://wordpress.com/’, function() {
    test.assertExists( ‘.click-wpcom-login’, ‘Login link exists on front page when logged out’ );
    } );

    casper.run ( function() {
    test.done();
    } );
    } );
    [/javascript]

    But, when I run this test, this is the output that I get:

    [code]
    # Can log in to WordPress
    FAIL Login link exists on front page when logged out
    # type: assertExists
    # file: logging-in-out.js:3
    # code: test.assertExists( ‘.click-wpcom-login’, ‘Login link exists on front page when logged out’ );
    # subject: false
    # selector: ".click-wpcom-login"
    [/code]

    To debug this test, I dumped the HTML to my terminal and got this: <html><head></head><body></body></html>

    The Fix?

    After searching a bit, I found this answer.

    It seems that there was a mismatch between the version of TLS that WordPress.com uses and the version that PhantomJS uses.

    I was able to get my test to work by changing the command to: casperjs test --ssl-protocol=any logging-in-out.js

  • Canvas Stretching

    We recently bought a few prints from Afremov. After getting what we thought was a super high quote to stretch the prints, I decided I’d give it a shot myself.

    Definitely didn’t turn out perfect, but not bad for a first shot

     

  • Bye La Jolla

    I consider the Mercury meetup in La Jolla to be a success! I got to meet half of my team for the first time and I learned several things while there.

    Here are some pictures which I haven’t previously posted.

    Credit to Beau Lebens for the featured image.

  • WordPress 4.2 “Powell” Is Out!

    WordPress 4.2 was released today, which I was a core contributor to 

    You can get the details of 4.2 by reading the announcement post.

    A couple of my favorite updates are Emoji (    ) and the new Press This editor.

    Source: WordPress › WordPress 4.2 “Powell”