Hi there, I’m Adrian Unger, a software developer who prefers to be outdoors.
I've reached a point where my comfort level with Linux and my annoyance level with MacOS have both reached their tipping points. I even went so far as to build my first PC! Suprisingly, it was all pretty easy and the end result is lovely! Here's a rough overview of the whole process, from PC build to choosing and installing a Linux Distro. Note: I originally penned this back in '23 but never…
I'm something like 3 years now on my Sabbatical . Which, of course, is an extremely privileged place to be and I am filled with gratitude. At the same time, I really need to start getting clear on what I want to do for money. So, it's time to reflect on why I quit in the first place. There's no denying I had a natural affinity for computers. As a child, I recall playing on my dad's old suitcase…
Many moons ago, there was a lovely service called OhLife which has been shutdown for some time now. Recently, I've been missing it as a simple way to journal and relive past entries. So, I recreated it in two days using AI—and what do the kids call it... Vibe coding? When I say two days, I really mean two sessions of sitting down at my computer for maybe an hour or two. Which is quite remarkable.…
The sun was out. This may sound like a mundane statement—I assure you— it is not. The sun was out! By the glory of God, the Sun had broken through the clouds and reached my dull, damp skin. You see, I live in what they (ecologists?) call a coastal temperate rainforest. What you need to know about this is that it rains (shocker) and even when it’s not raining, it’s damp. When the clouds take form…
The other day I was walking and chatting with my partner Angela—as we so often do—and realized what made me good at my software development job despite having no formal education: I hate work. I’ve known from a young age that I didn’t want to work. Office Space felt like movie made for me. I worked at a Sport Chek for 3 months. It felt like hell. My entire being was changed. It was depressive and…
Friction is an undeniable aspect of our reality. And like any aspect of reality, balance is key. Too much friction is, well, too much. And, too little is, you guessed it, too little. Profound, I know. But, could the web use more? We can see the negative side of too little friction playing out right now on the web. Never before have we had such easy access to information, news, media, art and…
Or, the year of the sabbatical. What did I even do for my sabbatical? Well I quit my job for one—well that was in 2023. Then I didn’t really do anything. Of course, I could have gone on some grand adventure. Travelled the world. Gone on a pilgrimage. But I did not. Previous Years in Review: 2023 , 2022 , 2021 I think that was the point. Not doing anything. It was in the not-doing that my body,…
My photography is about capturing the beauty of existence as it unfolds, naturally in every moment, rather than a planned creation. As such, film is the ideal medium for my intention. Well, no. It's the ideal outcome. The friction of actually shooting film, without a local lab, is too tedious for me. Thus, my Digital Film Camera. The Fujifilm X-Pro 3 . It is by no means a perfect camera--I disable…
From the most benign self-help books to ancient philosophy and spiritual texts, the goal is awareness. Every bit of advice for improving your business, or your relationships acts as a tool to help you be more aware. Some of these tools offer specific awareness such as how to listen, or work smarter not harder. While others offer general tools to increase awareness. Most notably, meditation. So,…
Beat my record set last year and didn't blog even once this year! I'm writing this and it's already 2024. Well, I have no idea what's going to come out for this review, so let's find out together. It's been a weird year. At times, I've felt I've had the most clarity and other times, complete confusion. Pondering how to encapsulate the year, I keep coming back to how grateful I am to live every day…
Well, I didn't blog for a whole year. My last post was a reflection on 2021 where I left off saying "For now, I’m still feeling introspective and perhaps in waiting. For what, I can’t say—though I have some ideas. Yet, I sense a new beginning in 2022." So, let's start there! Indeed, that introspection continued in what I guess I would call my path towards spirituality. It's really quite liberating…
It was a year of quiet introspection and growth. In the Pacific Northwest, we experienced record heat , flooding , and snow . The garden has come into its own, supporting a budding ecosystem that invites ever more bees, birds, rabbits, deer and snakes. As for the pandemic, it was if anything enlightening. It seems no lessons were learned along the way and public policy embodied the sunk-cost…
I struggle to understand the messaging around the vaccines and what they are purported to do, and how mask mandates seem contrary to a vaccine mandate, especially when it results in firing healthcare workers. First, I think it will be helpful to understand my current conclusion as I will likely, unintentionally, view the following studies and sources with this bias. Knowing my bias, I hope people…
Recently, Alberta Health attributed their youngest COVID-19 related death to a 14-year old boy. This triggered the family of the 14-year old to criticize the reporting , calling it "fake news." Days later, Alberta's Chief Medical Officer, retracted the death from their covid count making a half-apology . What's concerning here, is that in the aftermath we aren't seeing a push for more data or even…
Our response to the Covid-19 pandemic has shifted hospitalizations and mortality from the over-65 to the under-65 age group. Social distancing, lockdowns, and masking are contributing to mental health epidemics, and affecting the immune systems of children. Under-65 excess mortality exceeds under-65 Covid-19 deaths in Canada . Approximately 90% of Covid-19 deaths are in the over-65 group , yet…
Early on in the Pandemic, it was all "we're in this together!" "two weeks to flatten the curve!" "We love our frontline workers!". That message of unity and positivity has declined. Shifting, instead, to "anti-vaxx" vs "pro-vaxx". Moreover, our government is infringing on our Charter Rights and Freedoms in order to manage the ongoing pandemic. Why is that? I hope sharing my personal experience…
At first, the secularisation of the capitalist world during the 19th century elided the judgment of God into the judgement of History in the name of Progress. Democracy and Science became the agents of such a judgement. — John Berger Democracy and Science are amoral. So morality is left to the people. In liberal democracy, it's left to the individual. Without a higher source of morality (God), do…
Massive energy use and the creation of e-waste have been talked about rather extensively in regards to BTC -- Still waiting on a decent rebuttal to those points -- but I haven't seen much said about the inherent inequities of BTC. So, I thought I'd share some thoughts on this. Information asymmetry The adoption of BTC results in inequities from day one. Over the last decade, BTC has only been…
It seems proponents of BTC think that it actually has a net positive on the environment. Which is absurd to me, especially when the arguments are rather weak, and lack sources. Update Feb 15, 2021: Here's a much better written analysis of Bitcoin energy use: Bitcoin and other PoW coins are an ESG nightmare Perhaps, one could argue that the energy consumption of BTC is lower than what deterrents…
Alberta's United Conservative government recently announced they are investing $1.5 billion directly into the Keystone XL pipeline, plus a $6 billion loan guarantee. They must feel quite confident that oil prices will go back to historic highs? The loan guarantee means Alberta is on the hook for $6 billion, even if the project never completes. What's to prevent Saudi Arabia from starting another…
Lately there's been some " discussion " about the boilerplate around using Redux for application state. It's easy to look at Redux and think it's just an over-complicated global state. You could strip away much of the API and just implement an immutable object state, even mimicking the React state API of just setState and getState . For a Global Store that supports getState , setState and Redux…
Recently, at work , we were coming up with our React Style Guide (based on AirBnBs ). One of the "rules" is to avoid binding methods within the render method (as this creates a new function each render), and a teammate mentioned, "why not just use static arrow functions?" While both solutions were practically equivalent, I worried about the technical differences. Static methods are defined on the…
This past winter, I was tasked with figuring out why certain views on a Rails app were slowing to a crawl. While this was my first foray into Ruby/Rails debugging and performance tuning, I had decent experience with JavaScript and SQL query optimizing. Now, the notes I made are rough, and it's been about 6 months since the work was performed, so I may miss some details. But, I wanted to share my…
I've been getting more and more into shooting 35mm film these past few months. So much so, that I'm starting to head out and only bring my film SLR, leaving my Sony NEX 6 behind. Recently, Angela found a bunch of rolls she bought maybe 15 years ago. I've now shot two of them, compensating for their expiration by dropping the ISO on the camera down a stop. For this roll of Kodak BWC, I could have…
Keeping API calls decoupled from React components keeps your views pure and without side-effects! This makes it easier to test your views without having to worry about API calls. Your API and views can be tested separately. I no longer agree with any of this! It was a nice thought experiment but, it's downfall is that Components become less encapsulated. I'd advocate that if you want to test a…
This past weekend we hiked a similar route that we did about the same time last year. Only, we found one of our favourite sections had changed. Last year: This year:
Almost exactly 2 years ago today, I bought a OnePlus One. It was (and is) my first real smartphone after spending $100 on the Geeksphone Peak . And, I have next to no qualms with it. I don't know the specs off the top of my head, but it's more than capable for my needs. I watch videos, edit photos (even raw), read, and play Sodoku. I don't need it to be thinner, or lighter. The battery easily…
View components are all the rage in the frontend JavaScript world, with React popularizing their usage. Many other frameworks have added APIs to support this pattern as well. I've been pretty happy to adopt view components for web developement, so when I started learning Android, I quickly found myself wanting to breakdown my UI into components. Android/Java is full-OOP so it really just comes…
Recently, I was added to a couple of existing AngularJS projects to implement new features and refactor some existing ones. Specifically, the goal of refactoring was to move logic from places where it was not needed and to ensure everything was DRY . After reading through much of the official documentation and discussing with the original developers who started these projects, it was still not…
I am currently working on writing an API backend with LoopBack . This API is a rewrite of an older Python codebase which has an AngularJS client. While the backend needs improving the current AngularJS client is holding up just fine. ExpressJS was the front-runner since the whole team has experience with it.But, when I came across LoopBack, which is a framework built on top of ExpressJS for…
I've been using Facebook's React for most new UI components in recent months at Ecquire. And, only more recently, using Mithril. They are both awesome for one very simple reason: No templates. Especially with how small I break out my UI components. I don't like having a file with 3 lines of HTML with Mustaches thrown in. Both, Mithril and React, use Virtual DOMs to avoid the need for separate…
I came across How I Got Converted to GMOs via ma.tt . This is a response to that article. I think it’s wrong to assume this is black and white or that the issue of GMOs is the centre of feeding the world. There are actual issues threatening how we feed everyone going forward. The UN has pretty much got it covered . But agriculture is not the same the world over, issues in America may not translate…
Roy Choi is a pioneer of awesome street food with the Kogi, korean taco, truck. nothing is authentic and tradition is in the human mind. we can create new ones as long as we are honest. I think it's more important to challenge authenticity and tradition than accepting them if they are old and irrelevant.
This is how Ecquire caught my attention ~2 years ago. Then, just a couple weeks after joining, I got to meet the team at Nerds on Vacation in Tofino, BC. Which was awesome.
Still not used to being on the east coast but I am starting to appreciate the more subtle beauty.
Veganism is not the end-all answer to a better world. Leo Babauta is claiming that is is . To me, Leo is still reacting. He is presenting Veganism as the only answer to numerous injustices. And yet, closing his eyes to other perspectives. I'd like to highlight that Veganism does not take in account all injustices and can potentially perpetuate some. Agriculture is complex Food, one of life's…
My partner and I have been scouring British Columbia, checking out potential properties to purchase. While the truth of BC's high cost of land may have hit hard, the excuse to venture into previously looked-over corners of this truly beautiful province has been a thrill. More recently, we jumped on a ferry from Horseshoe Bay and hit the road nearing the northern end of Vancouver Island. From…
Awhile back, I lived atop Burnaby Mountain. Often, I would take the 135 bus in and out of downtown Vancouver. One of these times, returning from downtown, I happened to sit next to a fellow who wished to share a story. The man overtly smelled of alcohol. Not sensing any danger, there was no reason for me not to hold a conversation. Though, the light banter quickly took a turn as he mentioned that…
James Somers asks if coders are worth it. Well, I’d like to answer that. I may have missed the point of the article , but he seems to be drawing attention to web developers making good money while working for web startups, which aren’t serious business. Serious, in the sense that the problems being solved aren’t grand or meaningful enough. A lot of the stuff going on just isn’t very ambitious.…
Last year, I spent 8 months living and working out of a 5th Wheeler. I did this with my partner, on a public farm, in the city of Vancouver. What were we thinking?! When the oppurtunity presented itself, we knew we had to take it. After moving every year for the past 5 years, ending up in a basement suite we couldn't afford, and growing ever more sick of city life the choice was clear. At least in…
I've been out of the freelance game since I joined Ecquire back in May. And, I feel I need to reflect on those years freelancing and see if I learned anything. I think it's better that I'm writing this 8 months after leaving the freelance business – there are a tonne of articles that get into the nitty-gritty details of freelancing – this way, I can offer a broad overview. And, since significant…
John Lius, a documentary film-maker and ecologist, has dedicated his life spreading the knowledge and successes of rehabilitating large-scale, damaged ecosystems. Watch the Green Gold Documentary by John Lius on YouTube. Spoilers below. The results of the projects covered in the above documentary are astounding. People in Jordan, China, Ethiopia and elsewhere have turned baron, dry, desert-like…
Anna Bronnes recently published on Ecosalon a link-bait article—with good intentions—that unfortunately fell a bit flat. I entirely agree with the intention: In the modern age, if you are able to comfortably put food on the table, it is inexcusable to not think about what you are eating. But, the article lacks significant information to help those wishing to become more informed about…
Running Jasmine tests against a webpage? Forget headless-browser testing. Why not inject your tests right into the actual web page? At Ecquire , we integrate with a bunch of services to move your data where it needs to be. Testing our code, to assert that we can properly identify data from different websites (Gmail, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook etc.), is something we'd like to do easily and…
I spent 10 days this July, in the breathtaking town of Tofino , surfing and writing code as part of Nerds on Vacation . It was an entirely positive experience, filled with practical lessons for startups, people who work from laptops, and remote teams. My teammate Tal wrote about The Nerds on Vacation Effect , which basically describes the huge boost in productivity, even when surfing almost every…
Responsive Web Design has gained in usage and ease of use. But one, rather large, missing piece is responsive images. The W3 Responsive Images Community Group and WHATWG have been coming up with some ideas. I should preface this post as such: I very well may have a lack of understanding or even misunderstanding regarding HTML spec proposals. Also, If you're not aware of Responsive Web Design ,…
A jQuery plugin that replaces a textarea with multiple text inputs, automatically appending a new input when the last is filled with content. I created this plugin as part of a provisionary coding task for an unnamed startup. The idea is to simplify server-side processing while having more control of the user input—And, hopefully, a better experience for the user. The Concept Instead of…
Inspired by Dustin Curtis' Svbtle and the subsequent open-source project Obtvse , I took a shot at simplifying the blogging interface. Actually, even before Dustin unveiled the interface for Svbtle, the concept had inspired me—with the three words essence of blogging I began to think about what that meant to me. I took it to mean two types of posts, those which are ones purely written word,…