Naoko Takano

May 17 2013

Photos from Automattic Happiness Team Meetup in Santa Fe

I spent last week in Santa Fe, New Mexico for a company team meetup. I work for a distributed company with coworkers all around the world – we meet in person a few times a year to hang out with & learn from each other. This time, 36 people (= about 20% of 164 employees) including most of the Happiness team, HR Lead, and CEO met in a resort called La Posada de Santa Fe.

La Posada de Santa Fe

Americano at Chez Mamou

First breakfast at Chez Mamou

Andrew and group

The Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi

Happy wine :)

Happiness Hour

Core Happiness T-shirt

Many mornings and afternoons, we all gathered in a meeting room for a town hall / Q&A session, presentations and discussions. There were also smaller group sessions to learn tools and processes that we use to help users.

On Wednesday, the whole team got on a tour bus and went to Madrid & Albuquerque. We explored Old Town and met local WordPress Meetup Group users at Wesst Enterprise Center.

Team Lunch in Madrid

With Karim in Madrid Jail

Happiness Engineers, troubleshooting

Old Town Albuquerque

KiMo Theatre Albuquerque

Albuquerque WordPress Meetup

Seven of us took a day trip to Bandelier National Monument on Saturday. Hiking around the park was a great way to see more of beautiful New Mexico landscape. On the way back, we visited Don Quixote Distillery & Winery and had fun tasting some local wine and spirits.

Bandelier National Monument

Naoko in New Mexico

New Mexico Sky

Alcove House in Bandelier National Monument

Tasting at Don Quixote Distillery & Winery

More photos from the meetup is on Flickr.

Tagged Automattic, Meetup, New Mexico, Santa Fe, Travel, WordPress

Apr 28 2013

Post Gallery

El Dorado Building, Seoul Coffe Shop, Shinjuku Gyoen Park

Another photo updates for the past 2 weeks!

I went to Waseda University for a meeting and saw this really unique and beautiful building. For more photos of El Dorado Building, check out Poppytalk’s 2012 post.

Faces and polka dots

Lovely red door

Mixture of patterns

Face on ground

Body on a wall

El Dorado Building

Last weekend I took a trip to Seoul for WordCamp. Here is just one photo from the trip (the coffee shop) and some other food photos

Seoul Coffee Shop

Pizza at a going away party

Ramen at Tabushi, Koenji

Limited time offer mint ice cream

Learning bread making

Today I went to Shinjuku Goyen Park for outdoor yoga and picnic. I can’t believe it was my first time this year going there. Gorgeous day!

White birch trees

Azalea at Shinjuku Gyoen

Shinjuku Gyoen Park

Tagged Japan, Park, Photo, Photography, Shinjuku Gyoen, Tokyo, Waseda

Apr 15 2013

4 Comments

Post Gallery

Photo Summary of My Past Weeks

Following up on my last photo sets, here are some more I took in the past few weeks.

Tulips at Yoyogi Park

Scone Breakfast

“Human Relationship” Cafe

Yoyogi Park in the morning

Rows of scones

Krorma Yamato Party

Sakura at night

Cherry flowers

Sweets tower @ Ohanami

Soda Sparkle

Little Nap Coffee Stand

Latte at OSS Cafe

The Cream of the Crop

Unfortunately the weather in Tokyo this spring didn’t really make a great ohanami season this year. It got warm too early and then rained a lot — but I enjoyed the last bit of cherry blossoms in Yoyogi Koen and Inokashira Koen.

Intriaix Team @ OSS Cafe

Nakahata-san & Bryan

Last Tuesday, Bryan Lee (whom I first met in WordPress Meetup in Singapore last year) and his coworkers from Intraix visited OSS Cafe. Very coincidental thing happened then – another friend of mine, Nakahata-san happened to stop by and start chatting with them and he realized he blogged about Intraix just a month ago (his blog post about the encounter – with our photo)! It was so random. There’s something about OSS Cafe that makes these things possible and I am grateful for the place being what it is.

Tagged Flower, Japan, Photo, Spring, Tokyo

Apr 09 2013

Post

WordPress Typing Game

A good friend of mine Miya-san (@miya0001) made a simple yet addictive typing game using WordPress functions: WordPress Typing Game.

WordPress Typing Game Screen

You can practice typing (especially those underscores and dollar signs…) while getting to know Template Tags, Hooks and Actions.

Once you finish typing 10 functions, you get your score and a list of those you completed with links to Codex.

My best score so far

I’m sure you can beat my score. give it a try.

Tagged Game, Typing, Typing Game, WordPress

Mar 29 2013

1 Comment

Post

My Articles in a Japanese WordPress Plugin Book

I’ve contributed 3 articles to a recent Japanese publication (プロが選ぶ WordPress 優良プラグイン事典) on WordPress Plugins.

It lists useful Plugins in 7 different categories such as image, mobile, social, editor helper, etc. There are surprising many WordPress books in Japan but I often hear from readers of them (especially from beginners) that they wish the Plugins recommendation section was longer. Since majorities of Plugins only have their official documentation in English and many Plugins are not (yet) localized, Japanese users often get lost in choosing safe and reliable ones that match their needs.

This book was made possible with hard work of the author team lead Hajime Ogushi and MdN Corp. Publishing staff. Thanks!

The team of 17 coauthors teamed up because of a WordPress news/tutorial blog WP-D, which launched with Hajime’s lead after WordVolcano Kagoshima event in July 2012. It was nice to work with other WordPress enthusiasts for this book.

Here are some shots of pages I wrote:

Jetpack by WordPress.com

WP Multibyte Patch

WP Multibyte Patch is a ,ust-have Plugin for Japanese users, developed by Seisuke Kuraishi of Japanese WordPress Package team.

Akismet

This book is available in Japanese Amazon.co.jp. There is a Kindle edition as well (you will need an Amazon.co.jp account instead of Amazon.com).

Tagged book, Japan, WordPress, WordPress Plugin, writing