Hard Refresh Podcast

Data is so fragile. Now that data has moved into the cloud, it’s more accessible, but also more ethereal. We love how easy it is to work with remote data, but we have to be even more careful about creating back up points and fail-safes. Today’s story highlights web-based sewing pattern business Colette Patterns, and what happened when they accidentally destroyed some of their customer data. About Our Guests: Kenn Wilson is the co-founder of Colette Media and oversees the backend technology operations of the company. Apart from a short stint dabbling in spirits and cocktail writing and events, he has worked in web development and systems administration since 2000 as an independent consultant and on the staff of internet companies both large and small. This Episode’s Music Lullatone make sweet, sleepy, sine-wave-riddled songs with whispered lyrics, poppy melodies, and sparse, carefully arranged beats. Lullatone creators Yoshimi Tomida and Shawn James Seymour utilize children’s instruments, splashing water, household sounds, keyboards, glockenspiel, melodica, and electronic sounds to craft their delightful songs for both young and old. This duo truly embody the child’s spirit reminding us all that our bodies may grow old but our souls can stay forever young. Please tell your friends about Hard Refresh, to help us grow. Thank you!

We’re working hard on several episodes coming next year, but we’re taking a month off of publishing, to do season human things. So grab some ‘nog, snuggle a robot, hug your humans, and enjoy this brief message from all of us here... Read More

The EMyth Incident Revisited This is the story of how a web development company was really excited to launch an updated version of its own website, and it went wrong in just about the worst way possible. So I was watching this torrent of matrix-like text just roll across my screen, thinking about rocketlift.com because we’re working on rocketlift.com, and my eyes caught emyth.com in there, and my brain went, “Oh, that’s wrong. That’s not the site that we’re working on right now! Something is terribly amiss.” – Matt Pearson Spoiler alert: this is the story of the Rocket Lift’s very first makeover to it’s own website, and the debacle that followed. That’s right. This is a story about us, and how we accidentally deployed code onto our client’s server. About Our Guests Matt Pearson is an avid supporter of open source, open data, open standards, and the indie-web. He also has something of an obsession with information security and the tension between publicness and privacy in our ever more interconnected world. Matt manages Rocket Lift’s server hosting infrastructure — the hard work you typically won’t see — and he consults with our clients on information architecture and critical systems for information security, backups, and off-site redundancy. Before co-founding Rocket Lift, Matt spent seven years in IT at Whitman College. Matt lives in beautiful Seattle, where he and his wife are owned by a couple of cats. For endless hilarity, follow Matt Pearson on Twitter: @matro_wtf. Jed Bickford is Director of Product Development at EMyth. His team is focused on building simple tools that use the EMyth Point of View to enable business owners to create stability, growth, and freedom through their work with EMyth Coaches. He’s an entrepreneur at heart and lives in Ashland, Oregon. Follow Jed on Twitter: @jedbickford. Bryan Teoh is a composer, instrumentalist, and new media artist working out of Brooklyn, NY. His work often explores the relationship between acoustic/synthetic soundscapes, composition/improvisation, and popular/academic music utilizing custom software as well as instrumental work on the viola da gamba, cello, guitar, and piano. He holds a degree in theory/composition from The Lawrence Conservatory of Music where his studies of jazz and classical music were intermittently interrupted to independently venture into electronic music and contemporary studio technique. When not wading into increasingly esoteric areas of musical ephemera, Bryan en

Richard Tape of the University of British Columbia runs a massive multi-site WordPress installation infrastructure with tens of thousands of individual websites. A change to the WordPress shortcodes API broke hundreds of them, and Richard had to get creative to fix it. The incident would keep him busy with hundreds of urgent support requests for days, and it shook his faith in the WordPress project. About Our Guests: Richard Tape is a WordPress core contributor originally from Manchester, England and now living and loving life in Vancouver, Canada. Checkout his “rant” he published days after his difficult WordPress update. Follow him on Twitter @RichAsInRichard. John James Jacoby is another WordPress core contributor who gave us an inside perspective on the WordPress core update that changed the shortcodes API. He is the founder of BuddyPress, loves puppies and currently resides in Wisconsin. Follow him on Twitter @jjj. The Hard Refresh theme is by The Brow, the latest in a long line of beat projects from genre-bending producer Marcus Williams. His ability to blend the visceral headnod qualities of golden era hip hop with dream pop and indie rock has captured fans across the world. He has been a steady fixture in the Portland scene through the years and continues to remain versatile – these tracks can be uptempo and playful one minute, then gritty and determined the next, but always confidently crafted with a unique penchant for sonic detail. Interstitial music was composed by Douglas Detrick and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and performed by Casey Bozell. The episode was recorded, edited, mixed and mastered by Douglas Detrick, and produced by Douglas Detrick and Catherine Bridge. Thanks to Richard for sharing his story, and to John James Jacoby for lending us his perspective. Transcript: Intro: [Catherine] More and more, our lives and businesses depend on internet technology. These are stories about the people who pick up the pieces when it all falls apart. Welcome to Hard Refresh. [Rich] My team and I checked it all through. Everything looked fine, so we put it into production. It took maybe seven minutes for the first ticket to come through! …my whole site’s broken, nothing works… Theme music drops [Catherine] Richard Tape of the University of British Columbia runs a massive WordPress installation with tens of thousands of individual websites. A change to the WordPress shortcodes API broke hundreds of them, and Richard had to get creative to make things right again. The incident would keep him busy with hundreds of urgent support requests for days, and challenged his faith in the WordPress project. [Douglas] Hard Refresh is a production of Rocket Lift, a web development company based in Portland, Oregon. I’m your host, Douglas Detrick, and I’m glad you’re with me. [music] Meet Richard Tape: What does he do? [Doug] Here’s Rich. [Rich] My name is Richard Tape and I am a WordPress developer for the University of British Columbia. [Doug] …which I’ll refer to as UBC. UBC’s website is filled with the usual information for prospective students and anyone else who wants to know more about the school.  He also runs several separate platforms dedicated to teaching and learning with many websites for faculty and students. [Rich] The biggest one we have unimaginatively titled “Blogs” which is blogs.ubc.ca and it has at the momen

Pippin Williamson had a big problem: thousands of business owners were using his software to take payments online, but the latest version was charging the wrong customers for subscriptions. Hear how a coding mistake with data from Paypal and Stripe platforms put businesses at risk, and how they repaired the damage. About our Guests Pippin Williamson is the founder of several widely-used WordPress plugins, including Easy Digital Downloads, and an avid teacher in the WordPress community. Learn more about his work and products at pippinsplugins.com. Chris Koslowski is the Co-Lead Developer of Easy Digital Downloads. Learn more about Chris at chrisk.io. @DouglasDetrick @hardrefreshshow @pippinsplugins thanks for having us on. Loved the episode and can't wait for the next! — Chris Klosowski (@cklosowski) September 17, 2016 Show Notes Find Easy Digital Downloads and the Recurring Payments Extension here. The episode of the Apply Filters Podcast where Pippin and Brad Touesnard first discussed this issue can be found here. The Hard Refresh theme is by The Brow, the latest in a long line of beat projects from genre-bending producer Marcus Williams. His ability to blend the visceral headnod qualities of golden era hip hop with dream pop and indie rock has captured fans across the world. He has been a steady fixture in the Portland scene through the years and continues to remain versatile – these tracks can be uptempo and playf