I hit my goal weight recently. And since I had been slowly watching the number decrease for months, it wasn't the celebratory moment you might expect. It was just another morning on the scale. But it felt like a good time to write down what this past year actually looked …
Imagine you are on a week-long vacation at an all-you-can-eat resort. At each meal you are surprised at how good it is, so you take the extra couple of bites after being full. You are on vacation after all. Would you gain weight? Yes. There should be no surprise there …
I've had the Nomad (A6 X2) for about a month and I'm enjoying the experience. This is a quick review of the device (the bulk of the post is my list of requests). tl;dr: The Nomad is fun to use, but it lacks polish. Overall, the A6 X2 feels …
Why am I writing a blog post before I even received the device? I am fascinated with the visceral experience I've had so far and thought it would be fun to document my thoughts and a couple steps in my journey: before I receive the device (this post), initial experience …
Inspired by Marques Brownlee's recent video, Apple Vision Pro is Missing Something , I figured I should finally get around to publishing my wishlist for Obsidian. I've been using Obsidian personally since 2021 and at work since the beginning of 2023. It is the best markdown editor and personal knowledge management …
I put together an in-depth video around how I setup a new Mac and... there is a lot. Here is a recap of everything I covered: Dock Clean up apps to show only apps you use Position it on the left Make a little smaller Make sure downloads folder is …
What is the difference between Apple Sherlocking an app and Amazon Basics copying existing products? In this post we'll attempt to answer this question, and possibly draw conclusions for how large companies should handle this situation. Context In case you are unaware, Sherlocked refers to Apple making 3rd party apps …
Assuming I stick with making videos , I am sure I will add new gear to my setup eventually. Therefore, I thought it would be a good idea to list what I am currently using as of January 2021. Canon EOS R6 - I picked up the R6 last year, finally upgrading …
Whether you are working on a habit, goal, or developing a skill, you should always start small. It is hard to really get in shape by going to the gym 5x a week, especially if you have never gone before. Learning to develop small changes in your life that can …
In 2021, I have started a YouTube experiment. I am trying to upload 50 videos this year. Learn more about why here . Update: Clearly this experiment was... a learning experience. Lessons below. With each video, I am trying to learn at least one thing about making videos or improving my …
I've always enjoyed drawing but I never felt good at it. It was just "doodling" for me. But a couple months ago, I came to the conclusion that the only reason I wasn't good at drawing was because I never practiced. I'm not going to wake up one day being …
Pastries in France got me thinking about how we perceive the world. For example, if you only occasionally eat croissants, then most croissants will probably make you happy. But if you eat croissants semi-regularly and considered yourself a pastry connoisseur, then you'd know that most croissants suck. Especially in the …
Every couple of months I think about starting a YouTube channel and to start making videos regularly. I've created some videos in the past and have enjoyed the process. My main hangup has been that I don't have a topic I want to focus on. That shouldn't hold me back …
The TrueDepth Camera is being marketed about reading faces, but at the foundation, it is just checking the depth of anything in front of the camera. It would be awesome if developers get access to this raw data eventually or even get wrappers for some basic Leap Motion style gestures …
Every day we have a chance to do something different. To make something. However small. Thinking about something is different than doing something. I love this quote: "You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do." -- Henry Ford Today's door: creating a new post. Always a choice …
You only have 19.05 GB of storage. Save space by optimizing storage. After OSX's latest alert telling me that I'm running out of space, I finally decided to do something about it. (Though, honestly, why isn't 19 GB enough?) I already save the bulk of my image library on …
It's a cliche, but we know it's true. The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. -- Lao Tzu Building a habit to run starts with the first intentional walk. Creating something new starts with taking the first step towards completing it. Reading 5 minutes a day will get …
I heard everyone's enjoyment about standing desks. How it helped with various pains and made people feel healthier. I have an awesome IKEA desk which can be assembled in many ways, so when we moved back to Chicago I took the opportunity to assemble it into a standing desk. standing …
"Stop. You're speaking too quickly." Larry was helping me with my public speaking, and I really needed it. "Try this. As you speak, put a long pause between each word. It'll feel awkward, but just try it." At this point, I was thankful there were only two other teams in …
Matt pointed me to a great slide share called 26 Time Management Hacks I Wish I'd Known at 20 . I think it is a great list of reminders and some of them really stood out to me. "Work more when you're in the zone. Relax when you're not." Work iteratively …
When developing in Rails, I preferred TDD and wanted to apply the same approach to an Ember.js project. Although Ember uses QUnit, initial setup proved challenging. After discovering Jo Liss's presentation on testing Ember apps, I adopted Konacha, a testing framework built for Rails that combines Mocha and Chai …
Maybe I'm just easily impressed, but I really like Robin Ward's Ember Press . It isn't really my kind of game, but it is a great example of a well written Ember application. Robin even wrote up documentation for the Ember code (which looks amazing thanks to Docco ). If you are …
Ember makes it easy to add an action to a button or an anchor tag with the {{action}} helper, but sometimes you need more control. Delegation works out really well. You create a view, specify the delegate, and the function(s) you want called. The nice thing is you can …
I had a hard time with nested routes the first time, so I hope to clear it up for others. Let's start with the following router: App . Router . map ( function (){ this . resource ( 'posts' , function (){ this . route ( 'hello' ); }); }); In order to get to the root path we need to go to …
I've been exploring Ember for several months and recently committed to a deeper investigation. After navigating through initial hurdles, I'm documenting the fundamentals to help others and reinforce my own comprehension. New App Ember requires two key dependencies: jQuery and handlebars.js . With dependencies included, you can establish your application …
One of the big time savers I loved in TextMate was the ability to copy and paste multiple things at a time. In TextMate, if you will Cmd+C multiple items of text, you can paste them out doing Cmd+V, Cmd+Shift+V, and then repeating Cmd+Shift+V …
After realizing I had 400 unread articles in Instapaper (dating all the way back to 2009), I've declared bankruptcy by moving them into their own folder. I'll go through them slowly over the next year, and every week or two I'll post some of the best articles that I've come …
Terminal I've recently picked up an amazing Terminal shortcut: Ctrl + R . Gone are the days of hitting up arrow a bunch of times to get to a previous command. This little shortcut will let you search through your recent commands. Just start typing what you want and it pop it …
I've been working on redoing the OrangeQC website the past couple weeks and it was good to put into practice some of the stuff I was learning at the end of my time at Nelson Cash. In my quest for css best practices I came across OOCSS and SMACSS . Both …
Here are some of the great articles I've come across this week. You Should Probably Send More Email Than You Do Patrick McKenzie explores the value of reaching users through their inboxes. Though lengthy, the piece contains sufficient insights to justify the investment of time. What I Learned From Increasing …
Scott Porad writes about why software is hard: "First, name one other thing in the world, he said, that is used by so many people and which is created entirely by hand? Stuff that is made by hand is hard to make, and even more hard to make well, and …
Last week was the end of my position at Nelson Cash. After working with the team there for a year, I was able to see them grow from 4 people meeting up in coffee shops, to 10 people moving into a new studio with custom desks. It was a privilege …
This past week I was working on a Ruby on Rails project where I needed to list out a lot of attributes of an object. The difficult part came in the fact that I didn't want to display the attribute if it wasn't set or was 0 . Originally I had …
My mindset on how to use and develop in jQuery has just changed dramatically. I watched Yehuda Katz's video on Evented Programming . Basically the idea he presents boils down to asking: If this was natively supported, what would it look like? Then writing the code to get the functionality you …
I don't have much to add to this discussion right now, but I just wanting to point out that the next two years is going to be pretty exciting for the web development community. I think some great frameworks and design patterns will be built around CSS, JS, and API's …
Cringely raises an important point regarding student motivation and its effect on learning. He quotes a reader: "...I'm finding that the real key to student success is not so much how you teach but how you go about motivating students to want to learn..." This consideration carries significant weight in …
From an article about David Oglivy and his habits as a copywriter. I spend a long time studying the precedents. I look at every advertisement which has appeared for competing products during the past 20 years. In development I know it is important to plan, but this puts a whole …