Nicola Mustone

Design vs. Performance: Balance for Your WordPress Site Learn how to balance speed and design on your WordPress site, improve Core Web Vitals, and know when visuals are worth the performance cost.

Design doesn’t matter if your site is slow.

A beautiful site that takes 5 seconds to load quietly kills trust, conversions, and search visibility.

Performance isn’t anti-design. It’s what makes design work.

buthonestly.io/web/wordpres...

#WordPress #WebPerformance #WebDesign #SEO #CoreWebVitals

What’s new for developers? (February 2026) WordPress 7.0 Beta 1 is on the way and introduces major developer-focused updates, including the always-iframed post editor, viewport-based block visibility, per-block custom CSS, expanded Gutenberg UI components, and new AI and CLI tools. Explore what’s coming.

WordPress 7.0 Beta 1 approaches. With a host of new features rolling out in Gutenberg and Core, it's a crucial time for developers. Check out all the upcoming features and updates here: developer.wordpress.org/news/...

Using AI To Choose What To Play With ADHD Using AI with ADHD to reduce decision friction when choosing games, focusing on mood, cognitive load, and fit instead of recommendations.

Choosing what to play is harder than playing.

ADHD + large library = scrolling instead of gaming.

The real problem isn’t taste. It’s context.

I started using AI to structure my mood and cognitive load.

buthonestly.io/web/choosing...

#ADHD #GameDev #Gaming #AI #ExecutiveFunction

My Mental ADHD Planner: How I Blog Without Burning Out How I built a simple mental ADHD planner to manage focus, avoid burnout, and blog in a way that fits my brain.

I used to blog in furious bursts, then disappear for months. Turns out it wasn’t laziness, it was ADHD cycles.

My ADHD planner is set of self-made rules that work with my rhythm, not against it. 

buthonestly.io/web/adhd-pla...

#ADHD #Creativity #Writing #Neurodiversity #MentalHealth

AI Is Not an Oracle: The Limits of Machine Learning Machine-learning curves look confident until speedrunners change the game underneath them. MediEvil shows why “AI as oracle” fails.

Machine learning isn’t an oracle.
It recognizes patterns, but it can’t predict real breakthroughs.

This essay shows why ML fails at novelty, using speedrunning data as a concrete example.

#MachineLearning #AI #DataScience #TechReality #Programming #CriticalThinking #IndieWeb

What Is a Web Developer? How I Became One Before AI What is a web developer? A pre-AI learning story with honest advice on skills, timelines, jobs, and using AI without skipping real understanding.

I didn’t become a web developer by following a roadmap.

I learned from browser games, forums, “View Source,” broken CSS, and PHP files that made no sense at first.

#WebDev #Programming #IndieWeb #TechWriting #LearningInPublic

Team Building Activities That Upskill Without Forced Fun Team building activities that actually upskill: three funny games that build communication, listening, and calm teamwork—without forced fun.

Team building that actually works isn’t about cheesy games or awkward moments — it’s about play with purpose. Check out my latest on activities that build real skills and connection.

#Leadership #TeamBuilding #PsychologicalSafety #WorkplaceCulture #Upskilling

buthonestly.io/leadership/t...

The Internet’s Landlord: Where Does Your Website Actually Sleep at Night? – Iterative Wonders Demystify web hosting with a fun landlord-and-apartment analogy: domains, DNS, shared hosting vs VPS vs dedicated, and managed WordPress hosting - so you finally understand where your website “lives” ...

The Internet’s Landlord: Where Does Your Website Actually Sleep at Night? iterativewonders.com/2025/12/26/t...

It’s almost the EOY! A good time to share feedback with your peers, even if it’s only informal kudos of appreciation!

Time Off for Leaders: Can You Really Step Away? Learn how time off for leaders can be planned, handed over, and used as a stress test for trust, ownership, and culture — without everything falling apart.

Leaders who never disconnect aren’t being responsible. They’re hiding weak systems. Time off is a stress test for trust, ownership, and decision making. Your absence is data.

buthonestly.io/leadership/t...

#Leadership #Management #WorkLifeBalance #TeamCulture #RemoteWork

10 Types of Websites and What I'd Use to Build Them Wondering what to use for different website ideas? I walk through 10 types of websites and share the tools I’d pick for each.

I wrote about the 10 types of websites and how to choose the right platform for each. WordPress covers a wide range of cases, but some projects stay cleaner with a focused tool.

#webdev #WordPress #IndieWeb #webdesign

buthonestly.io/web/10-types...

How I Built a 3D Print Cost Calculator with a Neural Network Learn how I built a 3D printing cost calculator with a tiny neural network to predict resin consumption and automate my resin business.

I updated my essay and released the libraries and models for MiniRes, my tiny 3D printing cost calculator.

Read the essay here (downloads at the end of the essay): buthonestly.io/programming/...

#3dprinting #keras #automation #neuralnetworks #businessai #freedownload #engineering

Lol I paid way less for 128gb. That price is ridiculous

I built a free WooCommerce plugin about 10y ago. I stopped updating it 7y ago. I opened its page yesterday to find out that 50k sites are actively using it!

I am not sure how, it probably doesn’t work, but they have it active! It even has several daily downloads! I guess it’s time to update it.

Tools for ADHD: Systems That Work When You’re Leading a Team Leading with ADHD means building systems you can trust. Here’s how I use simple tools for ADHD, from calendars to AI notes, to stay reliable at work.

Most ADHD challenges in leadership aren’t about discipline.
They’re about friction. Reduce the friction, and the work becomes workable.

I wrote about the tools that make leadership sustainable for me:
buthonestly.io/leadership/t...

#ADHD #LeadershipTools #NeurodiversityAtWork #WorkSmarter

10 Types of Websites and What I'd Use to Build Them Wondering what to use for different website ideas? I walk through 10 types of websites and share the tools I’d pick for each.

I wrote about the 10 types of websites and how to choose the right platform for each. WordPress covers a wide range of cases, but some projects stay cleaner with a focused tool.

#webdev #WordPress #IndieWeb #webdesign

buthonestly.io/web/10-types...

Have you ever tried reading a RAM memory dump and trying to make sense of it? It’s. So. Much. Fun! /* cries in hexadecimal */

Mastering Effective Feedback: Facts, Feelings, and Curiosity Master effective feedback with a simple framework of facts, feelings, and curiosity that reduces defensiveness and builds psychologically safe, high trust teams.

Everyday you share feedback. With your family, friends, coworkers, strangers. You don’t need 300 different ways to do it, one is enough!

I shared my model that’s been working very well both at work and in life: buthonestly.io/leadership/m...

#feedback #leadership #coaching #sbimodel #selfhelp

Have you ever seen the first version of WordPress? I certainly didn’t, and I honestly didn’t think it looked like this!

“Say It!”

How Gaming Made Me a Better Leader From Dungeons & Dragons to Dead by Daylight, discover how games quietly build real leadership skills in communication, empathy, trust, and teamwork.

Gaming goes hand in hand with leadership! I learned a lot about coaching and growing teams from games like Dungeons & Dragons, Dead by Daylight, Chained Together, and more.

buthonestly.io/leadership/g...

#leadership #gaming #coaching #techteams #teambuilding #dnd

Near-perfect website performance The mobile performance score for this website is 99, my desktop performance score is 100. Nearly perfect. So how did this happen? My website has always been quite smoothly running. A big part of th…

There’s lots of hate around Jetpack, but, all in all, it does its job and it does it well!

job.blog/2025/12/03/n...

#jetpack #wordpress #performance #openweb

Record image with Gene Harris. On the sleeve is an image of Gene with a stylized GENE font.

Meet WordPress 6.9 “Gene”.

This release delivers collaboration with soul. Notes in the editor, smooth drag and drop, new creative blocks, and faster performance across your site.

Discover what is new and upgrade today: wordpress.org/download/releas...

#WordPress

How I Built a 3D Print Cost Calculator with a Neural Network Learn how I built a 3D printing cost calculator with a tiny neural network to predict resin consumption and automate my resin business.

I updated my essay and released the libraries and models for MiniRes, my tiny 3D printing cost calculator.

Read the essay here (downloads at the end of the essay): buthonestly.io/programming/...

#3dprinting #keras #automation #neuralnetworks #businessai #freedownload #engineering

Aren’t Christmas cookie for every day consumption? I don’t know why shops stop selling them and people stop making them.

Vibe Coding WordPress Blocks with Telex Discover how Telex uses vibe coding to turn plain-English prompts into custom WordPress blocks, from quick prototypes to production-ready plugins.

Vibe coding WordPress blocks is now a thing.

Telex turns one prompt into a working block, and the whole process feels… lighter.

I wrote about about it, and why it might change how we build in WordPress.

buthonestly.io/web/wordpres...

#WordPress #Gutenberg #Telex #Blocks #WebDev #VibeCoding

The ensemble model is ready at huggingface.co/nicolamuston...

It comes pretrained and with an helper script to prepare your own STL files for the model!

I’ll update the blog tomorrow with more details!

#3dprinting #regression #neuralnetworks #ai #automation #indie #dndminiatures

The Code We All Share: A Love Letter to Open Source – Iterative Wonders Imagine you go to a famous burger joint. You love the special sauce. You ask the chef for the recipe, and he looks at you like you just asked for his social sec

Chef 1: "My special sauce is a trade secret."

Chef 2: “Here’s the recipe. If you make it better, you can share your version so everyone can enjoy it.”

That’s the spirit of Open Source.

I wrote a love letter to it here: iterativewonders.com/2025/11/29/t...

#OpenSource #Tech #Developer

Resources & Assets – BUT. Honestly Free resources, tools, and assets for you to download and use for leadership, engineering, programming, and fun.

Are you into NLP and ML? I release datasets and notebooks at buthonestly.io/resources/ free to use and explore in your own projects!

Check them out. Available also on Kaggle.

#nlp #engineering #machinelearning #mldataset #kaggle #freeresources

The Clock of the Long Now is a 10,000-year-long timepiece backed by Jeff Bezos Deep inside a Texas mountain, a vast mechanical clock tries to make humanity measure time on the scale of civilisation itself

A giant clock to keep time for the next ten millennia is moving towards completion in a western US desert cavern.

It's meant to promote long-term thinking in an age of short termism. The project, backed by Jeff Bezos, has been a suitably drawn out and enigmatic affair.

www.ft.com/content/22c0...