Shakespeare and Large Language Models
I have, from time to time, joked that I stopped enjoying Shakespeare when asked to compare characters from disparate works and brocolli. My most recent was in September, when I…
Eric Poe
A monument to a self-inflated ego
Latest posts
Now Using Astro
In 2023, GatsbyJS was purchased by Netlify. I think this was a great acquisition by Netlify; however, most of the Gatsby updates since the have been automated patches from gatsbybot.…
A Month of Hamlet
I have been studying Hamlet for almost a month and have enjoyed the experience. In total, I have been studying for nearly 21 hours (1,243 minutes), not counting the time…
Studying Hamlet and remembering
Damn. Damn. Damn. ("Good Times", Season 4, ep 1) Studying Hamlet made me think of my old professor, who wasn't that old when he was mine. I wanted to reach…
Shakespeare in Planning
Background I am a recovering English Lit major. I graduated with a degree in information technology, not with a liberal arts degree in English literature. However, one of the classes…
Announcing the Return of the Half-Wit
After a break of ... (checks notes... that can't be right...) ... a long time, I am returning to updating this thing. Really, it's not my fault. Well, it is.…
Keeping Open-Source Branches in Sync
When working with contributing to open-source software, one typically works from a forked repository of the original repository. Depending on the frequency of updates to the original repository, it is…
Docker and Selenium
Yesterday, we started our second "hackathon" at work. We divided up into teams of 3 of various skill sets with the goal of building something that would benefit the organization,…
Hacktoberfest Prep
The time of Hacktoberfest is upon us! For the entire month of October, every pull request against an open-source repository on Github will count towards one's Hactoberfest rank. Submit at…
Rails Girls KC
I'm very excited. I will be mentoring now- and future- lady devs at Rails Girls KC in early November. My 14-year old daughter will be one of the participants, too!…
Learning JSX: React-Fragment
As I build this site using gatsbyjs, I find myself learning new things every day. Today, I learned that, much like siblings on a road-trip, React components hate sitting next…
Git-stash Magic
On July 2nd of this year, I discovered an amazing git-stash option that lets me see the git-diff between what I currently have and what is in the stash: git…
Seeing Something I Created Get Used
A coworker sent me a screen-grab of a forum post where someone stated that they used an experimental Docker image that I had built to help them with their local…
GatsbyJS: Using a New Static Site-Builder
I had been searching for a new static-site generator for some time. I was delving into Grav, which is more of a flat-file CMS than a static-site generator and is…
Last Month in PHP: 2016 March
From a KCPHPUG lightning talk being given on 06 Apr 2016. BASH COMING TO WINDOWS! Yes, Microsoft is adding the linux Bash shell to Windows. - Uses Ubuntu user mode…
Last Month in PHP: 2016 February
From a KCPUG lightning talk given on 02 Mar 2016 PHP Updates Security and bugfix updates to PHP were released in February. Upgrade if you have a version less than:…
Last Month in PHP: 2016 January
From a KCPUG lightning talk given on 03 Feb 2016 January was a relatively light month in PHP. Yet, we saw an exciting new microframework get its first non-beta release.…
Playing with Docker and Linked Containers
In my current job, I am starting the process to upgrade our PHP 5.4 application to a PHP 5.6 application (PHP 7 is not yet support by the majority of…
Last Month in PHP: 2015 December
From a KCPUG lightning talk given on 06 Jan 2016 December was a busy month in PHP. A major update to PHP was released, PHP-FIG approved a new PSR, major…
Expectation vs Reality: my first 1.5 years of professional programming
I have been a professional developer for over a year and a half now. About a year ago, my friend and mentor, John Kary, asked me how the job measured…
My Year of Code
2015 was my year to really dive into PHP. Up until this year, PHP was hobby language for me -- much as Python, Haskell, C++, Dart, JavaScript, and Java have…
Don Quijote - a brief synopsis
My 6th grader asked me this evening about the classic novel, Don Quixote. "Like, what's it about, Dad?" I gave her a synopsis she could identify: Miguel Cervantes wrote Don…
Bite of PHP: Switch Statement
The "switch" statement within various languages, contains a similar structure. This makes the PHP switch statement familiar. A failing example of PHP's switch statement was brought up yesterday at work.…
so much depends upon a fresh doughnut
so much depends upon a fresh dough nut glazed with maple icing beside the black coffee. — Based on The Red Wheelbarrow by William Carlos Williams…
Number System: Time for a change?
Introduction I have been thinking about numbers for most of my life. It wasn't until I helped my oldest child learn to count to 20 that I thought that the…
PHP's Array_Filter Oddity
I was studying the arrayfilter in PHP and was enjoying coming up with a test that could help me learn better arrayfilter magic. For instance, to filter all words whose…
Low Carb High Fat Diet
The LCHF diet can be summarized as follows: "The fat you eat flows through; the fat you make sticks to you."
Leveled Up: PHP Certified
On Wednesday, I took an extended lunch break in order to take the Zend PHP Certification test at a local Pearson VUE Testing Center. After a few years of using…
Revenge of the Fifth
Today is the unofficial Star-Wars-fan holiday known as the Revenge of the Fifth. Last year, I noticed that 5/5 (numerical representation of 5 May, or is that May 5?) can…
Lone Star PHP 2015
I attended Lone Star PHP last year with much hope and even more trepidation as to my abilities to hold my own with other members of the PHP community. I…
Lone Star PHP 2015: Day 0
The first day of Lone Star 2015 was devoted to training. The workshop track I took was geared towards unit testing. Getting Started with PHPUnit - Matt Frost - Twitter:…
Bite of PHP: Heredoc vs. Nowdoc
Heredoc Heredoc will define a string of text in a what-you-see-is-what-you-mean type of format. So, if you want to echo out structured text, like so: text I think that I…
Bite of PHP: Double vs Single Quote Echo
In PHP, we have two ways of formatting an echo statement: we can choose to use single-quotes or double-quotes. The choice is less dependent upon which side of the Atlantic…
Now with Sculpin
I have moved my site from one domain to another. I was using Wordpress on my old site and was happy. Adding pages was a thing of beauty. Configuring was…
A TDD FizzBuzz Kata
Kata Kata are a series of movements which, when repeated, migrate mindful action into muscle memory. An example kata is performed by Rika Usami of Japan during the 2012 World…
Programming As Story-Telling
I was recently talking with a non-programmer friend of mine about teaching our kids how to code. I told him about my long and winding road to loving programming. He…
Power of RDD
We hired a new guy at work. I was officially the new guy for 2 months, now we have someone new. I was given the task to get him up…
New Job
I recently had the opportunity to take my love of programming from being a hobby to being a career. I jumped at the chance. I am now in my 3rd…
Lone Star PHP Conference 2014
I was fortunate to receive a scholarship to attend the 2014 Lone Star PHP Conference in Addison, TX (Dallas metro area) over the April last weekend in April. I just…
atom.io - A PHP-Oriented Review
Last week, I gave a short demo of the Atom.io text editor to the Kansas City PHP User Group. I realized after-the-fact that I had presented the early-release as an…
LEMP noob, no more!
For years, I have prided myself on knowing how to set up a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Perl/Python) server in linux OSes based on Debian, RedHat, and SuSE. Today, I…
A Fresh Look At Javascript
After studying Dart for a month, I wondered which problems Dart was attempting to resolve. I then realized that my knowledge of JavaScript was not good enough to know why…
Decisions, Decisions
I am currently feeling a bit of push and pull between at least two different decisions. I have a “when you have time for it” project that I am thinking…
Dart Flight School
This evening, I attended the Dart Flight School at the Google Fiber Space in Kansas City. Dart Flight School is a global event occurring throughout February. I treated this event…
Code Like You Need Protection
Background I was recently tasked with programming a connecty-bit between a Google Drive Form and our instance of SolarWinds Web Help Desk. Both are great products. Both offer fabulous APIs.…
Python Timing Comparison
On page 7 of Learning Python (4th ed), Mark Lutz briefly discusses the speed differences between Python and compiled languages like C++. I was curious as to how much slower…