In July I ran a fundraising campaign for Black Python Devs with a deliberately small ask: $7, from 7 different people, every day, for 31 days. The goal was $1,519 which would be about 3x our monthly average. We finished the month with 83 donations and 6,253.43 raised. That's 12% of the money that we've ever raised from individual contributions EVER (up to that point). Safe to say that, aside from…
So one of the things that I'm really interested in is the idea of having a daily record that I keep for myself. I've made some versions of a bookmarking site ([All My Favs] or 'amf' for short) and an alternative YouTube video manager, [wytchr], that are tightly connected in the data ecosystem that I'm creating. I then added webhook support to so that [wytchr] sends videos that I mark as a favorite…
[Render Engine] is now testing against 3.15. Our testing philosophy with render-engine is that we give people the ability to test as much as they can locally that will be tested on CI/CD. Our way of doing this is via [nox] and [uv]. Nox supports UV natively Nox makes it extremely easy to use uv. You can set it at runtime with the -fg uv flag. You can also use the venv_backend="uv" on your…
it is a personal problem but I struggle with writing things down that I don't find to be important to remember. I watched this video on a commonplace journal. I really resonated with the idea of tattoos being a commonplace journal. Many talk about the sacredness and permanence of a tattoo but I also know (and I more closely align) with the notion that tattoos and piercings are a way to remember a…
I use AI (I apologize if you saw this as a raw AI post that was a mistake that AI created). Ultimately I'm trying to find the balance of using AI to help me do things faster while keeping understanding of the project and issue (which is what I think is the optimal spot of AI usage). There was a recent problem with dependabot highlighting a circular import and then leading me astray, ultimately…
Before I say this: I'm writing it because I care about the people of these communities and of the Open Source Software (OSS) world more than I do their projects. Also, I debated writing this because I don't think it will help my chances of staying gainfully employed or seeking new employment. Know that I'm trying my best to be realistic and speak to folks that need bluntness more than anything as…
I've been avoiding writing this because it feels incredibly personal to be talking about. That being said, it's Black History Month and things like this have often not been included in the discussion and left for others to speak on our behalf. At 28, due to a breakdown at work, I made the decision to seek help from a mental health professional for the first time. In that meeting, I was diagnosed…
On Conduit, we recently talked about networking . I'm a firm believer in networking. 100% of my jobs (from high school to tech) came through networking (aka someone reached out to me or I asked someone for help). The transition into tech was truly network driven. I had been a member of the San Diego Python and Operation Code communities for a couple years at this point and I asked a few friends to…
It's the end of another year in BPD and I wanted to check in with those that follow and support our work. How much did we raise? In 2025, we raised $15,717.02! This was lead primarily by fundraising at PyCon US and the outreach from amazing folks in the community. We supported a total of 24 events this year. This almost doubled the number of events in 2024. We also had a few events that we…
5 years of Jaysies In 2020, I made up an award that I give to folks. It is part of giving people their flowers, and a way to time-capsule the some of the highlights of the year (and those that made it great). The only change this year is I'm lifting the work requirement this year because much of my time this year was spent travelling for work. Before we jump in, let me say. 5 Years of Jaysies is…
T'was the week before Christmas (Don't worry the rest of the blog post won't rhyme). And the game night group hadn't done their Secret Santa yet. I brought it up in the group chat and the excuses started to come in on why we couldn't meet to exchange names for a secret santa. That's when I decided to look at the services that already existed and then decide to build by my own secret santa app. The…
Finishing Carol Willing's keynote from PyBeach. An emotional moment for me was of her showing the juxtaposition of how AI can create bias by asking for a image of a person with late stage Alzheimers vs a picture of her own mother in the same stage and how polarizingly different these things are. It reminded me that the internet and AI in many ways, want to generate the most "whatever emotion"…
A few weeks ago, I spent my days with the wonderful attendees of PGConf NYC 2025 . This was my second PG event of the year. This conference had me feeling as if this was the making of a home away from home. Events I've been to this year and why was PGConf the Best One Okay so this has been a big year for travel but not for conferences. This year I only have gone to 2 Python Conferences (PyCon US,…
I do my best to go watch the Atlanta Braves on every #LosBravosNight and have done so three out of the last four years. In today's divided world we MUST remember America's beauty comes from a multitude of cultures bringing the best of that culture and sharing it with us. These players bring their own style, and heritage and are proud of represent their countries while playing at the highest level.…
On September 9th, I spoke (virtually) at the San Francisco Bay Area PostgreSQL User Group . My presentation was packed with a lot of history for me. Trying to learn more about PostgreSQL has been challenging and here's why. I'm not a software engineer I'm not a DBA These two things mean that if I'm learning about something, I'm likely building it. For good reason, I can't just poke around the…
Because I looked online for a list of project ideas and couldn't find one. I made one myself. While I don't have examples for all of these. I'm sure that people that find this post can submit a PR with theirs if one doesn't exist. Perhaps instead of that, an awesome list can be started (Just not by me). Asset Inventory (CCG Enthusiasts) Plant Monitoring (Plant Heads) Maintenance Tracker Personal…
While working on my plant-tracker , I wanted to learn more about what was available in my grow sensors... Good thing they did documentation. Using help(Moisture) . I learned that I was looking at data backwards (Lower moisture settings are better, not higher). Using vars I was able to learn about all the data that I had in my >>> from grow.moisture import Moisture >>> vars(Moisture(1)) {…
Working with beginning contributors (and their AI tools), I notice they are eager to do the task and not eager to question should the task even be done. I have this issue that I'm considering that brings up the question of should we move some tests into their own file. I don't know if this is the right move or not. Someone may have a valid reason why we shouldn't do it. I'm sure more folks would…
I've been working on making my content more accessible by people and large language models alike. This started with chunking and embedding my content so that I can search against it using vector search and some basic hybrid search. Tags and no tags During the work leading up to my presentation at PGDay Chicago, I learned that a lot of my blog posts were inconsistent. I had recently played with…
NOTE My title was recently changed AGAIN to Staff Product Advocate which only strengthens the argument that these titles don't matter. I'm not a Developer Advocate any more... This is a small career update. This week, I started my new role as a Product Evangelist. I had my reservations, but I want to share with you why I think this is actually a positive move for my career. Advocates and…
I was surprised how easy it was to include pgvectorscale to your instance. In order to add to my multi-collection AI app. It was three lines. CREATE EXTENSION IF NOT EXISTS vectorscale CASCADE; CREATE INDEX document_embedding_idx ON document_embedding USING diskann (embedding vector_cosine_ops); That is unless you do what I did and didn't hard specify your embedding limit in your vector data type.…
I finally fixed a very annoying issue with frontmatter-check . The problem frontmatter-check currently has two levels: WARN - generates a warning if a frontmatter key is missing ERROR - generates an error instead To break in this we actually have a few logging handlers: stdout - Pass Warnings to stdout stderr - Pass Errors to stderr MemoryHandler - pass Errors to MemoryHandler so that those errors…
I started wanting to ingest more and more content for AI (because I do like using it to learn things from and about myself). One of the things I mentioned during my talk at PGDay Chi was that I wanted to start storing more and more information. That's why I'm creating the Notes to Self posts. This is similar to Simon Willison's today I learned . My goal is to keep track of things that I'm learning…
I finished reading Ashley's Post on What is DevRel (2025 Edition) . There is a reason that Ashley is my skip for life 1 . Her insight is one that leads with empathy, but doesn't shy away from reality. I think she did a wonderful job. I only want to add some thoughts as an IC that sheds a little light in the day-to-day worries. Of course this is my personal experience and I have share these…
Earlier today, the 100th Episode of Conduit came out. This episode came with the amazing bonus of some amazing messages from our super conductors who have been on this journey with us and helped to support it. I wanted to collect some quick thoughts of what this podcast means to me. The power of accountability When I'm explaining to folks what Conduit is, I love calling it an accountability…
I spent the last week in Chicago ~watching the Cubs play~ participating in a week of PostgreSQL. I didn't have any expectations going in but I think the results were beyond any expectation that I would have expected. [!Acknowledgement] My company (at my request) sponsored the event at the Bronze level and paid for me to attend. Data Day helped leveled the playing field Before the big conference,…
[!WARNING] I'm writing about things happening with my personal career but don't read too deep into it. No racism or anything is happening. I'm simply thinking through things It's wild how "Metro, Shut yo ho ass up and make some drums" created the amazing meme that became BBL Drizzy . The phrase "Shut Up and Dribble" came from someone not worth telling Lebron James and Kevin Durant to stay out of…
I didn't want to write a break up letter with X.com (formerly Twitter). I hate these kinds of posts... But I was made aware that someone has created an account at @kjaymiller which was my old profile. They are also using my old profile photo. I don't promote crypto. It's not my thing. It also says in the profile that I'm affiliated with "VenomGuard" which is affiliated with Solana... Ain't Me.…
So my team is hiring a Developer Advocate and I want to share with you what I think we need for the role. NOTE This is not meant to be disqualifying... I genuinely believe that if you want to apply, you definitely should for a many reasons including letting us know you exist in case you don't fit here but fit somewhere better in the future. About Aiven and our team The Aiven team works to provide…
Unfortunately we had several things get in the way this quarter so we did a mini systems-check in our post show. If you want to get second topics with each conduit become a member of Conduit . This transcription was generated how I transcribe all episodes (Generated with whisper and not updated for correctness - though I will accept PRs to correct them). I then used Claude 3.5 sonnet passing in…
So happy to see Akamai posting roles on Black Tech Pipeline. Never heard of Black Tech Pipeline... from their about page: We partner with different companies, programs and initiatives to provide opportunities to the Black tech community and our allies. Some information - Black Americans make up an unproportionally small percentage by population of tech workers in the United States. Black Women are…
I recently made the decision to become better versed in PostgreSQL. A part of my growth in the Python community came from learning about reliable publications for content. This is extremely important where now AI can quickly generate inconsistent content for ad-farms. It's also important when a few companies dominate the landscape and explainers and much of the knowledge and trusted support often…
I'm spoiled... It's been 6 years since my first conference talk was accepted and North Bay Python took a chance on my goofy talk, "How I turned a podcast into a business with Python (and some Other Tools we won't talk about". In my earliest days it was actually the non-Python events that I would get my talks accepted. That said as I rushed to meet the deadlines for PGDay Chicago and DevOps Days…
Two of my colleagues convinced me to make the switch from Creality 1 to Bambu Lab. One of the big talking points was that the company had really invested in user experience. The setup was easy and I've had no problems with my A1 or the AMS since I got it in November. I was just telling a friend today that I was considering starting to save for the P1S. It wasn't until I went to look for some…
WARNING making excuses for myself I want to write this because I feel I need to write this. I am going to make excuses. I hope that you will still hold me accountable and also show me some empathy. Okay, buckle up... Earlier today I dropped my post sharing my thoughts about the PSF Grant changes. Let's talk about how things went wrong. I used AI to get my data points After scrubbing through the…
IMPORTANT Missing Data Added It appears that in trying to search for data in the resolutions page. I missed 4 events in 2024 and 4 in 2023. One of the events missing was in the United States. I also noticed that grants were issued to other US events that were near the capped amount. This brings the 4% saved closer to 10% which is an understandable amount to want to save. Only $1000 would be…
Wow 2024 was super busy. Whether it was my departure from Microsoft early in the year to join Aiven, or my exploration as an open source maintainer. What are the Jaysies? In 2020, I made up an award that I give to folks. It is part of giving people their flowers, and a way to time-capsule the some of the highlights of the year (and those that made it great). This year we have three categories…
Last week I received an email that I had hoped to one day receive. The Python Software Foundation (PSF) had given me Fellowship status . I'm a PSF Fellow. Hmm... Time for the thank you's I've said this many times, I would not be a Python Developer if it weren't for a handful of people that made up my first Python Community. The first person to have an actual (we won't talk about the very first)…
A conversation with a Django Software Foundation (DSF) member led to the question: "How long do you need to be in the community to benefit from it?" and the more relevant question: "How long do leaders need to stick around before you're actively preventing progress?" - Me (Yeah, I said it!) This isn't an attack on the "old guard" I love my friends who were sitting in the Kansas Newspaper building…
So at work I'm on this amazing project and one of the things that I'm learning in the process is the idea of validation and pre-validation. Here are my basics of validation and pre-validation: There are things that you should do manually (test) and things that should be automated (markdownlint, prettier, etc) For that second group, pre-commit is fine and honestly makes things easier to maintain…
I'm on a new team at work temporarily and I this was something that I was so excited about. I've never had an opportunity to work on a larger team with so many different experts. The biggest thing I'm noticing with this new assignment is that while everyone has their expertise, constant communication has been the most important trait for all us as Software Engineers, SREs, Security Specialist,…
All the videos for DjangoCon US 2024 Perspectives are now live. This year, we had a dedicated space and a small team to help with the interviews. I even had Kudzayi Bamhare help out and do one of the interviews. Thank you for the DCUS team to ask me to get involved with this and I'm excited that we have a process that will to make things better in 2025 at the next DCUS.
I have a feeling that I won't be able to attend as many Python events on behalf of my employer next year so I am throwing out there a list of talks that I'm planning on submitting. I'm going to break them down into 2 categories: Keynote Level and Standard Talk. I'm happy to talk more about each of these on in detail on social media perhaps. Keynote No role modelz The full title is No Role Modelz:…
Another Layoff! I wasn't impacted but since 2023 this is my 4th layoff/restructuring event. Usually my team is not impacted, but the last two have seen more team members gone than before. I am trying to think about this from a professional perspective, but I'm writing this to collect my thoughts and regroup. Plans change and you must be flexible When I think about AI (drink), one thing I see a…
Someone in the BPD Open Source Program mentioned that they were "tired" of doing things like documentation and test updates. I'm petty and still kinda upset with this mentality but my adventures the last few days really helped me rationalize my frustration and bring out some really important learnings. Boring is good Your project should be boring most of the time. Professional code is often boring…
I'm a big fan of giving people easy tasks to entice them into contributing. In fact, many of my most regular contributors to projects that I work on have been from issues labeled good first issue . Most of these issues are ones that I bump into while working on another issue and thing "I could fix this really quick...". That said, sometimes I think the problem is quick but turns out it's more…
Any maintainers in the past post issues that they don’t like purely to see if someone has a good reason that it should implemented? Thinking about creating issues in render-engine around: flag to teardown output when the server is stopped flag to dry run and print output The ideas aren’t bad. I just don't know the why this should exist . In my head I was thinking it would be great for development…
We've all been there. You o have a problem with a package so you head over to GitHub to file an issue. Then you see the "Please tell us about your environment". Finding your system information (MacOS) the slow way Traditionally, I would get my system information with Using system_profiler Open your terminal (if it isn't already open) and type system_profiler . This will give you a lot of…
My keynote for PyCon US around Black Python Devs is now available on Youtube! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYZBpoYjxLo
I published a 3d print design to Printables and it once again tells me what some of the best 3d prints are. The Problem Lighting with lights such as the Elgato Key Light can be tricky to balance on white backgrounds, especially with darker skin. I think that's why every video I watched of people explaining what honeycomb grids did always showed them with subjects of darker complexion. Sadly Elgato…