Questions to Get to Know Yourself
The words “Know Thyself” were inscribed long ago in the Greek Temple of Apollo. I consider those wise words. The problem is, it’s tricky to…
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Latest posts
Thinkertoys - Generate Art and Business Ideas
I’ve been on a quest to be more creative, to understand the creative process more deeply. I wrote about the difference between concrete…
Multimodal Learning - Unleashing the human memory
Below is the blog version of a talk I gave on memorization techniques. Other formats: See the talk on YouTube PDF Powerpoint Contents Why…
Notes on Karabiner-elements and karabiner-ts-multi-profile
I’ve been on a quest to make typing more ergonomic and functional. I want to minimize chording (simultaneous keypresses) and mouse use to…
How I'm Building My Second Brain
Slides + Video “How I’m building my second brain” video (2022) (YouTube) “How I’m building my second brain” slides (2022) (PDF) Intro…
Random Music Generators is now hosted on render.com
Random Music Generators is now hosted on render.com. Please update your bookmarks! https://random-music-generators.onrender.com
TypeScript-lite: JSDoc for type-checking js files
Overview Did you know that you can use TypeScript features in JavaScript projects? When I discovered this and tried it out, I really enjoyed…
Programming with more ease
As professional programmers, the bulk of what we do is solving problems. A lot of the time, I’m motivated by problem-solving challenges. But…
How to Learn Design Patterns
I’ve long been intrigued by design patterns, but when I started learning them, I realized quickly that I didn’t have a clear learning path…
Introduction to Design Patterns: Why they're worth learning
As developers, we’re constantly learning - and there’s a lot to learn in general because the tech industry is broad and fast-paced. We want…
Random Music Generators News 2021-01-30
New in 1.3.1 This month, I released a big new feature that’s been requested often. You can now specify a custom note collection to create…
Are You Ready to be a Professional Software Engineer?
Updated March 21, 2021 Did you just graduate from a coding bootcamp, obtain a CS degree, or built an involved side project? How do you know…
My love hate relationship with ImmerJS
After having used immutable js for a while, discovering ImmerJS was a breath of fresh air. Where immutable js forces you to learn its…
Tech Talk - How I'd Improve My Capstone Project
In February 2020, I returned to my bootcamp to give a tech talk on what I’d do to improve my Capstone project. (I also answer career and…
Using question-prompter for study, self-reflection, and more
I recently created a node command line app called question-prompter. It prompts you at your terminal to answer questions that you come up…
Meta Ideas - Generating Creative Content
I’ve been writing down small music (and other) ideas for over 20 years. I’ve generally struggled to store, organize, and retrieve them…
Comparing JavaScript Test Runners
This post is a pointer to an article I completed recently - a comprehensive comparison of the AVA, Jest, Mocha, and JavaScript test runners…
Contributing a New Feature to Open Source: @sindresorhus/is
This post is a recount of my recent experience contributing to is, a JavaScript open source type checking library. https://github.com…
Testing immutable js with sinon custom matchers
Problems with unexpected assertion failures can arise while testing with . This post is a brief guide on how to create a custom matcher…
Random Music Generators News 2020-01-27
New in 1.1.0 Yesterday, I released a feature that’s been in the works for over 6 months. You can now create melody presets. Check it out…
Website Makeover: Moving from Jekyll to Gatsby
Happy 2020! One of my new year’s resolutions is to redo my website with a lot of new things in mind. Here I’ll outline the changes I’m in…
2020 Resolutions and Reviewing the Decade
I really enjoy reflecting on the past year during the holidays. If I get a chance to do this, I come up with New Years resolutions…
How to Squash All Commits Related to a Single Issue into a Single Commit
Updated Sep 3, 2020 This article outlines how to use the “squash” feature of an interactive . What does “squashing” do? It allows you to…
About Songmind Studios
In 2016, I decided to start my own brand of music education. I took the role of music coach, agent, and collaborator. The student and I…
How to ace your initial programming job screen
Your resume and cover letter surely made a positive impact, but the most important evaluation has yet to come. If you’re searching for your…
Catching and handling different types of errors in promise chains
When you need to make sequential API calls, promise chains are a reliable way to go. It gets a little tricky when you need to throw and…
Using a filter function recursively
The problem Given our array data structure, we only want to include items that have an ‘age’ property and the age is greater than 17. If the…
How to format and edit your git commit messages
When writing commit messages, it’s ideal to make them easy for another developer to read and understand exactly what’s in the commit…
How to prevent circular dependencies
Some errors are kind of mysterious. The first time I got “‘myFunction’ is not a function” type errors, I was at a loss for a few hours…
Custom type checking - isNaN vs Number.isNaN
Javascript is infamous for being “loose” and misleading with its typing. gives you , gives you , etc. So instead of writing conditionals…
Using a Code Style Guide to Enforce Team Best Practices
We all have opinions on what what coding best practices are and how code should be formatted. Recently, one of the teams I’ve been working…
Should junior developers work with recruiters?
This is the first of a handful of posts about the 3-month search for my first full-time developer job. I graduated from a coding bootcamp in…
Debugging Strategies Checklist
Tracking down bugs in the software you’re working on can be tricky. Debugging is a massive topic and there are so many places bugs can show…
Reflections From a Coding Bootcamp Graduate
I was ready for a career change. It was October of 2017. The more time I spent coding and learning computer science fundamentals, the more I…
Tackling Hash Table Problems in JavaScript
Algorithms and data structures can be intimidating. The goal of this post is to explain some approaches to solving hash table algorithm…
Now Attending: Fullstack Academy
Why I’m attending Fullstack Academy Since discovering a love for guitar and composition in my teens, I decided to pursue a career as a…
Intro to JavaScript Frameworks Part 1: The Vanilla JavaScript Version of TodoMVC
The goal of this blog-series is to explain what frameworks do, why they’re used, and demonstrate with examples across many different…
Marketable Programming Skills
If you’ve been learning programming on your own, you may have made worked through some books, followed some online tutorials, and made a…
Using a Class in Python as a Code Wrapper for a Simple Game
Object-oriented design is a powerful programming paradigm that can be intimidating to anyone trying to learn how to use it. I worked through…
Honing Musical Strengths with a Student Evaluation
From time to time, we can find ourselves stagnating when studying music (or any other topic). To help become immune to this, it’s useful to…
10 Issues Songwriters Face
It’s common for songwriters to feel overwhelmed when finishing their songs and getting them ready for their audience. There can be…
The Five Dysfunctions of a Band
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team (by Patrick Lencioni) is a highly recommended book for anyone that works with other people. (So - almost…
A Guide to Practicing and Overcoming Plateaus
A long time student of mine recently began learning classical guitar. He had been studying jazz and blues for a number of years. He has a…
Preparing Your Song Demo for the Studio
We songwriters put a lot of work into our songs. Putting together interesting chord voicings, refining our lyrics to perfection, and getting…
A 3 Step Process to Organizing Creativity
It’s difficult to keep track of everything that needs to be done with your musical ideas. If you write with any frequency, these ideas can…
Songwriting Tutorial: Snippet Challenge
Have lots of unfinished ideas? Learn how to take a short instrumental idea and finish writing your song in one day. Over the years, I’ve…
Songwriting and Serendipity
Why start a composition with a blank slate? Jam on a cover tune then take it in a different direction. Sometimes, the less experience you…
Songwriting Tutorial: Simplicity and Complexity
How to begin writing a song by choosing a lyrical theme and a musical mood. The Keys to Simplicity Selecting a mood / topic for the song The…