MarkMaunder dot com

Stille waters, diepe grond, onder draai die duiwel rond.

I was scrambling through a deep canyon on Sunday on Snoqualmie’s South Fork and ended up at this beautiful quiet pool that looked very deep and had a very nice brookie that grabbed my thin mint streamer after a few casts. I was reminded of an Afrikaans expression: “Stille waters, diepe grond, onder draai die […]

October 16, 2007 | Randomness | 2 comments

South Africa in the Rugby World Cup Final!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I paid my $30 bucks for pay per view and watched SA teach Argentina a lesson in Rugby respect yesterday beating them 37-13. Bryan Habana you are a God!! If anyone knows a good place to watch SA kick England’s arses next weekend let me know. [Preferably somewhere with more South African fans than English]

October 15, 2007 | Randomness | 1 comment

The scary history of Aspartame and the scary people behind it

I was driving from OC in California back to Seattle yesterday and was listening to NPR on Siruis which I’m completely addicted to. There was a brilliant interview with author and Professor Devra Davis who recently published The Secret History of the War on Cancer which I’m probably going to buy. The show was called […]

October 11, 2007 | Health | 4 comments

The story of the little bird

A little bird was flying along one day heading North. As he flew it started getting colder and colder. Soon it started raining. The rain turned into freezing hail.  His wings froze and he fell out of the sky like a stone. He thought to himself “Oh lordy I’m frozen stiff, I can’t move, I’m […]

October 8, 2007 | Business | 4 comments

I LOVE MONDAYS!!

Monday mornings are our busiest in terms of traffic. We also get a ton of new user signups over the weekend which means that our numbers get a huge bump every Monday. So I reeeeally look forward to Mondays.

October 8, 2007 | Randomness | 1 comment

Locomotive Breath

My Texan cousin-in-law and I were partying in SoCal recently and we got chatting about favorite songs. He mentioned Locomotive Breath by Jethro Tull was his favorite. I just heard it for the first time, and, um, wow! If you’re into hard charging gritty 70’s tube amp rock then you want to check this out. […]

October 7, 2007 | Randomness | No comments

More Facebook debate.

There’s an interesting conversation thread going on at publishing2 regarding Facebook apps. This quote from Dave McClure, who I know from the days when my job search engine used to compete with his job search engine [and who I have the greatest respect for]. Interesting use of one data point to provide the proof for […]

October 7, 2007 | Startups | No comments

Why you might not want to have a "Facebook strategy"

Tim Oreilly has done some data crunching and has a graph showing the distribution of Facebook application use. He describes it as a long tail which is misleading because there is no way for any one business/entity to aggregate the long-tail into something useful – besides Facebook themselves which illustrates how smart their platform play […]

October 6, 2007 | Startups | No comments

Jonathan Livingston Seagull – Inspiration for innovators

One of the first books I ever read and one that has had a profound impact on my life was Jonathan Livingston Seagull. If you recently left the flock or are planning on leaving, I recommend you find a quiet corner and draw strength from Jonathan. I think that this book should replace Sun Tzu’s […]

October 6, 2007 | Startups | No comments

How to stop a dog fight

I was on the dog beach just north of Huntington Beach in SoCal yesterday and my Aussie Cattle Dog got into it with a bullmastiff bitch. The way I saw it was the mastiff instigated the fight and went after Joey with a vengance. She really looked like she was in it for the kill. […]

October 4, 2007 | Aussie Cattle Dogs | 2 comments

My name is Mark Maunder. I've been blogging since around 2003 when I started on Movable Type and ended up on WordPress which is what I use to publish today. With my wife Kerry, I'm the co-founder of Wordfence which protects over 5 million WordPress sites from hackers and is run by a talented team of 36 people. I'm an instrument rated pilot and I fly a Cessna 206 along with a 1964 Cessna 172 in the Pacific Northwest and Colorado. I'm originally from Cape Town, South Africa but live in the US these days. I code in a bunch of languages and am quite excited about our emerging AI overlords and how they're going to be putting us to work for them.