She calls me Mr. Zeb – a name that I seemed to earn in the beginning of my service when I was teaching music class at the Accompong Junior High and Primary school. On the days that Jamaican culture seems to find every weak spot in my capacity for patience and understanding, when I begin [...]
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I try to look after myself the best that I can, but various adventures are never far away here and they always beckon me to do things that I have been told I couldn’t do. If you ever want me to do something that you think I wouldn’t approve of then just tell me that [...]
The distance from Waterhouse to Three-Mile is a lot shorter in a car. Dennis dropped us off at the gas station across from the taxi stand and we climbed out of his car in Three-Mile at about ten o’clock at night – a white guy walking through Kingston in the middle of the night draws [...]
I lost my supervisor sometime in the last few weeks and I didn’t even realize it until I read the newspaper today. According to this report the Colonel of the Accomong Maroons descended from his position in the recent past after being asked to stand down by a consortium of community members referring to themselves [...]
Sorry for not posting anything recently. This last one is about when my friend Dowdy got shot. Hope you enjoy it.
When I stepped through the double doors a nurse at a desk in the corner asked me for my name. “My name is Carlington Reese,” I said, trying to say it like I believed it. “Next time, only closest of kin, ok” the nurse replied. I was nervous and had never lied about my name [...]
We’ve got two Yahoo! related news items today.
The first is that we’ve launched a Yahoo! 360 importer (listed in your admin screens under Tools → Import) to make migration from 360 to WordPress.com super easy. Just upload the Yahoo! 360 export ZIP file, and we’ll do the rest. Yahoo! will be shutting down their [...]
We’ve been busy lately here at WordPress.com — we’ve had an announcement of a new or updated feature for you every day this week. Today, you’re getting a two-fer!
Earlier this week, we announced VideoPress, the great new video feature for WordPress.com. Now VideoPress has its own home on the web at VideoPress.com. We’ve also got [...]
Since opening up the comment reply via email feature to everyone last month we’ve been continuing to improve it. Here are some of changes that have gone in during the last few weeks:
Better detection of email auto responders / vacation messages
Added a reminder to the bottom of comment notification emails about the reply via [...]
You guys are generating an amazing amount of feedback on your blogs. Matt mentioned in the April Wrap-Up that there were 8.6 million comments! Comments are flying in every second of the day.
And have you ever had one of those blog posts that was good, but the real action was in the comments? [...]
If you’ve looked at your WordPress.com blog stats today, you might have noticed the charts look a little different. We’ve replaced the old proprietary chart object with Open Flash Chart, an open source alternative. Charts now look like this:
(Though I can’t guarantee you’ll see numbers like that).
All the old charts are still available in more or [...]
Have you ever wanted to fire off a post from your phone, Blackberry, Outlook at work…? Following on from Comment Reply Via Email we’re introducing our latest feature to make it even easier to publish to your blog: Post by Email.
Maybe you’re on holiday and want to show your journey. Maybe you’ve captured something [...]
You may have noticed that videos around here have been getting higher and higher quality.
I don’t just mean the cool content from WordPress.tv, but the video player and video/audio quality itself.
We’ve rewritten how videos work here on WordPress.com from the ground-up and taken inspiration from the great products at Vimeo and Smugmug, and are pleased [...]
In April we introduced Instant Findability, TED video embeds, a springtime theme, a cool new domain, and reply-by-email for comments, now open to all. A pretty busy month, with more awesome features on the way, plus WordCamp San Francisco, on May 30.
If you’re in town or want a reason to be, be sure [...]
When we sat down at an Austin cafe in 2005 and wrote the stats system, Matt and I had no idea what we were getting into. He created the databases and drew the little smiley face while I wrote the code. We had milk and cookies. It was really cute. We were naïve!
I swear it [...]
Some of you may have noticed we’ve been experimenting with a new feature in comments here on WordPress.com, namely that you can now embed YouTube videos and PollDaddy polls directly in a comment.
Although shortcodes are great and we’ll continue to support and encourage them for comments the simplest possible interface seemed to be just a [...]
When you hear the words Peace Corps, what kind of picture comes to your mind? Some white suburban boy in the African bush drinking rain water and trying to light a fire with some sticks and stones, a young girl embracing a black, malnourished baby, or any instances of previously viewed Feed the Children infomercials [...]
It always requires an effort to push my gate open and step out on the road. It doesn’t matter how many times I do it, I will always feel like a guest in this town. After returning home for Christmas, I have begun to wonder if I will ever feel at home anywhere again, but [...]
The tapping of footsteps coming down the stairs to my door can be heard in a semi-conscious state, answering the question that I lay pondering over in my bed since the first cocka-doodle-do took me away from a good dream that morning. I was tired and didn’t want to get up just yet. I wanted [...]
He laughed when I told him that what Jamaica needed was a way to empower the entrepreneurship of her poor. The discussion was one-sided, just me looking for an affirmation from a perpetual grin with sunglasses, sunglasses that shaded any doubt or lack of confidence that his eyes could communicate. It still doesn’t change my [...]
It’s the time for which I have been waiting for almost two years. Last year everyone was saying that the election for Colonel was going to take place at this time last year, and I waited patiently only to find that their gossip was a small dose of the chat that would add up during [...]
I was sitting down in a seat on the right side of the front row watching, waiting for the first note from the guitar. I sat and waited with an audience full of guitarists, each of whom aspired to be a finalist, to be at center stage. My friend Rafael was sitting next to me [...]
It looked like a piece of junk and it had been sitting there in the lot behind my Grandmother’s home as far back as a mind can remember. I have faint memories of my Grandmother bathing me in her kitchen sink, and a little rubber ducky-like toy she used to entertain me, but this old [...]
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The tapping of footsteps coming down stairs can be heard in a semi-conscious state, answering the question that Zebulon lay pondering over in his bed since the first rooster took him away from a good dream that morning. He was tired and didn’t want to get up just yet. He wanted to go back to [...]
Jamaica is quite a religious place. Apparently, there are more different churches per square mile than any other place in the world, indicating a surplus of prophets that makes me think that God really loves Jamaicans’ dreams. Every new temple of worship represents a fresh revelation that God bestowed upon yet another sleepy Jamaican. I [...]
Sometimes I write things on this blog that I should probably just print out and stick under my pillow. That is how our Peace Corps Country Director addressed the risk of writing offensive material on blogs. For those of you who do not know me it makes little difference. In some ways I am writing [...]
Farming is one of the most pleasing things about life. I don’t understand why it is so neglected by the majority of Americans. I have a nice little plot of land that I farm on a hill outside of town that locals call Simon. It’s a long walk, but well worth the effort for the [...]
Dowdy has this little one-eyed, electric stove that he bought after selling a spoon a couple of months ago. I was naturally feeling pretty good about the situation, about myself, and now about the fact that there is kitchen I can bum off somebody when my gas runs out as it did this week. For [...]
Jamaica has indigenous parrots - the yellow and black billed parrot. As far as I know, the Black Billed Parrot can be found no where else is the world except Jamaica. Like most developing countries, Jamaica does a pretty good job of exploiting their wildlife, especially parrots. Thanks to their pretty feathers and uncanny ability [...]
After about 3 days of inviting myself into someone else’s space you would think that I would begin to be slightly unwelcome, but much to my surprise I have once again managed to stay far enough off the radar that even my presense carries little or no impact. Grace Titus is a Peace Corps Volunteer [...]
So I took off and got out of Accompong for a couple of days - just wanted to give the Colonel and Mr. Currie some time to whisper to each other under the shadow of a roadside almond tree, and give the townspeople an opportunity to gossip about everything except for the truth. Reader, if [...]
It was nine o’clock in the morning, and the mongooses peered through the edge of the grass across the road, waiting for the right moment to scurry across the roadway. I jumped into Tony’s van and we headed for a quick morning down in Treasure Beach. As we rolled the pot-holed Jamaican road, I wondered [...]
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