Sam Hotchkiss

Open Source Traveler, Automattician

Sam was the founder of BruteProtect, a distributed brute force attack protection tool which was acquired by Automattic in August 2014. Sam is now hard at work on integrating BruteProtect into Jetpack, and exploring the future as an Automattician.

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Recent posts from the blog

WordPress as an API

Aug 16, 2014 | Ramblings

I’m debuting my new “WordPress as an API” talk at WordCamp Maine, slides are available here

WordCamp St. Louis

Mar 1, 2014 | WordCamper

After 1,300 miles, I’m finally at our first WordCamp of this big adventure, WordCamp St. Louis! Looks like a great turn out– a lot of really smart developers here. I know where I’m coming for our next hiring binge…

When it rains…

Feb 28, 2014 | WordCamper

The last couple of days have been a series of challenges: When we hitched up to leave Albany, our trailer brake controller (the wireless Tekonsha Prodigy RF) couldn’t make a connection. Not wanting to hit the highway and hoping it would resolve itself after a few minutes, we spent 6 hours on side roads between Albany and Syracuse (only 144 miles apart), before pulling in to Burdick RV, where the extremely helpful service tech figured out that it was a blown fuse. We then hauled ass, hitting the highway and making it to Ashland, Ohio that night. We set up camp in the WalMart parking lot, got in to bed completely exhausted, turned on Seth Myers and started to relax. After about 20 minutes, the audio on the tv goes *POP* and starts smelling, we turn on the overhead lights, and everything gets very dim. So I break out the voltmeter and discover that our “house” batteries are almost completely dead, which is odd because your camper is supposed to trickle charge while you drive. We have just enough power to bring our slide in, and we pile back in the car and head to the Super 8 hotel. When we get to the hotel, I notice that our bikes (which are on a rack mounted to a receiver bolted to the rear bumper) are sagging nearly to the asphalt. Upon closer inspection, it turns out that the bumper has broken off of its welds, and is barely hanging on. Thankfully this happened in a hotel parking lot and not on the highway, throwing our bikes into traffic! The...

Good Morning, Albany

Feb 26, 2014 | WordCamper

We got out of Maine a few hours later than we’d hoped yesterday- a client emergency the night before cut into our prep time. With the amount of traveling we do, there’s nothing new or different about packing for a trip, but when you’re leaving home for 4 months, everything feels much more important. Once we hit the road, I immediately became sick to my stomach– the trailer was bucking and pulling and swaying, and I immediately reconsidered every decision we’ve made regarding this crazy adventure. When we made it to the rest stop in Kennebunk, Maine, I was sore and felt like I’d been beat up. It turns out that your trailer brake controller needs to be “tuned” to your vehicle– you can set the level of braking, and our had been turned up to max– so every time I would tap on the brakes in the car, it would slam on the brakes in the trailer. Whoops. Interesting fact: I’m pretty sure our that the designer of our trailer brake controller is a huge spinal tap fan, because the highest setting is 11! We ended up driving until about 9pm last night, started getting tired, used the Allstays iPad app to find a WalMart and within 5 minutes had set up camp for the night and we were in our “house” with slippers on watching TV and having a beer. Beats a hotel hands down! Average gas mileage for day one: 11mpg Lessons learned: Traffic is stressful Extended mirrors are lifesavers Set your brake controller level Take a deep breath or two Some truckers are assholes, and...
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