Spotify Archivist

So for the last 10 years I've been adding songs to my Spotify liked songs. It's great but every once in a while a song comes on and I think... "do I really still like this song?" … [more]

the megaphone

Megaphones are amazing. For nearly as long as we have organized into large groups, we have rolled materials into tubes and spoken into them to help carry our voices to the back of the audience. Wit… [more]

The Hunt Begins

Today my hunt for a new role begins in earnest. So I am dropping some thoughts and links here.

Why am I looking for a new role?

The company that I was at (Lumio) has ended in bankru… [more]

Book Report - Rilke's Book of Hours

I've been trying to read more poetry this year. Which has honestly been refreshing. I dove into Rilke after re-watching JoJo Rabbit^more]

Some Thoughts on Engineering Leaderhip

So this article started as a thread of tweets. I want to expand on it, so I am going to quote all the tweets here and the… [more]

Last Lectures

Way back in my year end review for 2021 I wrote,

As part of that effort I’ve worked to build a culture in engineerin… [more]

Book Review-How to Survive in a Science Fictional Universe

Review-How to live safely in a science fictional universe By Charles Yu

If I said the words: “Primer with daddy issues” how would that mak… [more]

What Makes a Team Lead Great?

“Well, don’t you think that you as the commander have an obligation to create a vision for your command?” It was more of a statement than a question. “No, I feel that my job as the com… [more]

Lessons Learned From a Film Producer About Making Software

This last week, I had my leadership team in town for the first time in a while for some planning meetings, and some team building^more]

The infinite power of people

This afternoon I was reading a theological book (Jacob: a brief theological introduction by Deidre Nicole Green… [more]

Today is going to be a great day, and other mindset shifts

This covers a bit more than a week, but it’s been wild over here. Onboarding into the company that acquired us, the whole family getting COVID (we’re all doing better thanks), and the associates qu… [more]

Disjunctive Normal Form and other fine reads

It’s another week of DHH causing waves, which probably shouldn’t be surprising (not linking because I don’t really want to provide him a larger platform). But it does highlight one of the things I … [more]

Book Review-Elantris by Brandon Sanderson

Review: Elantris by Brandon Sanderson

The original Cosmere novel, that had somehow slipped through my reading list until this week. I was reading an article suggesting some ideas for how to … [more]

Book Review-The Emperor's Soul by Brandon Sanderson

Review: The Emperor’s Soul by Brandon Sanderson

No one does magical systems better than Brandon Sanderson. That’s a pretty absolute statement but one that I am comfortable with^more]

Book Review-A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller

Review: A million miles in a thousand years

This was a fun one. It’s nominally cycling and philosophy and discussions of story so you know it’s going to be one I like.^more]

Book Review-Getting to Yes

Review: Getting to Yes By Roger Fisher and William Ury

This is a quick read with some really good insights into negotiating that isn’t focused on tricks or manipulative tactics.

It em… [more]

New Literature Section Added

Just a quick note to say that there is now a literature section in the nav menu and on this site. I wanted to migrate all the nanofiction/twitter size fiction I've wri… [more]

Book Review-Aloha Rodeo-Three Hawaiian Cowboys, the World's Greatest Rodeo, and a Hidden History of the American West

Review: Aloha Rodeo: Three Hawaiian Cowboys, the World's Greatest Rodeo, and a Hidden History of the American West by David Wolman and Julian Smith

Strap yourself in for a story where co… [more]

Book Review-The Ocean at the End of the Lane

Review: The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaimon

I have a mixed experience with Neil Gaiman's work. Not because he isn’t a brilliant story teller, because he is. It’s more a conte… [more]

Book Review-Road to Valor

Review of "The Road to Valor" by Aili McConnon & Andres McConnon

I have love cycling, a fact you should be aware of if you intend to stick around here. Coupled with my love for… [more]

Human Communications Are Hard

Delays and technical issues bias us against others experiencing them.

This comes from more]

Some thoughts inspired by "Toward peer review as a group engagement"

These are rough thoughts and should be taken as such. Think of them more as the interesting points that deserve thought in a context that the author of the paper (Andrea Bonaccorsi) was not specifi… [more]

2021: Year in Review

It has been quite the year!

As the pandemic has been dragging on, ramping up, slowing down, generally continuing to drag on.

Thoughts

I am excited for 2022.

2022! How did … [more]

Encourage teams to take risks

In any given moment we have two options: to step forward into growth or to step back into safety.

— Abraham Maslow

This last Sunday we went on a light hik… [more]

2020: A year

This has been a crazy year, but honestly an exciting one for me and my family. We've lived through multiple natural disasters, moved, changed jobs, survived a pandemic, had a new baby join us, and … [more]

A Simple QR Code Based System for Organizing Your Boxes

Recently we had our second child, and that meant digging through a bunch of boxes in the basement to find leftover baby clothes and gear. After not being able to find a few things we were pretty … [more]

Tech Things I read in 2018

This is going to be a pretty straightforward list of what tech related reading I did this year. It doesn’t include hundreds of blog posts and forum discussion. I’ll break it into two ca… [more]

Neptune (Gremlin) Local Dev Setup

I am playing with some graph databases right now, for a fun project I may write about later. When I first started out I was using Neo4j, which has an excellent local development story, a lovely… [more]

Vetting Information you read on the internet

Hi friends!

I realized that because of the certain set of skills I have been honing at work for the last decade I have some quick ways of vetting websites for content accuracy that the averag… [more]

design and the internet as ephemera

Hang tight... this is going to get a little esoteric.

The expirement really begins with three realizations. 1) That no one seems to agree on the direction that previous and next should be i… [more]

The right Tools for the right job

Last week I did a bit of programming for Game Of Codes in my "free" time which lead me to a couple of interesting observations.

1. Number of passing t… [more]

Jumping on the AMA bandwagon

Today I am at React Rally in SLC and after a particularly inspiring talk by Preethi Kasireddy I created an Ask Me … [more]

monument

Over the past several years I’ve been working on a new application framework for nodejs. Monument is currently on it’s second major release.

What is Monument

Monument is fo… [more]

Let's talk about Boot camps

So the giant article I’ve been planning to write from what I learned prepping for that talk I gave on being senior<… [more]

Being Senior Part 1- the books and data

This is just a quick post to throw up the books I quoted from and a link to the data for anyone who attended my presentation at Utah JS Conference 2016 today. I am putting down my thoughts in a lon… [more]

Seeing and Speaking

I was reading this wonderful article from ia and it occurred to me that jargon and seeing are related to each other.

We know from resear… [more]

Io: the language, not the moon

This is the first in the Seven Languages series of posts and covers the Io language, a small prototypal language.

Let’s get this out of the way righ… [more]

mourning

If I do this right then I will likely offend everyone, and then gently touch hearts so that we can all see eye to eye and heart to heart.

I am deeply deeply saddened by the news of the death… [more]

estimations and theory building

My team lead at Instructure, more]

:hover should be dead

:hover’s days are numbered. It has little time left in this world.

I am serious.

Here are the main reasons why:

• It doesn’t exist on touch… [more]

2015: in review

It is said that change is the only constant and that certainly proved true this year around here in 2015. I started the year working as a Front End Stack team (core team) member for the LDS Church … [more]

Learning the Trade

I thought I would throw together a list of resources I have found interesting and useful when it comes to building the internet. This is by no means exhaustive and will be updated over time as I fi… [more]

Design Tools are Broken

To code or not to code? I try to push all my friends studying design to learn to code. It can only help them be better designers.

But this isn't an article about that. This is an article … [more]

The Problem of Over Communication

Just like under-communicating over-communicating poses a serious problem to organizations. Before you read this and immediately write it off as just another rant, think about it. How often do you r… [more]

Confidence Without Ego

When I was young I thought humility was placing yourself below other people. To believe that they were better than me. To subserviate myself to their opinions and requests. I thought of the stereot… [more]

Approaching CSS the OO Way

In an interview somewhere in the web development industry:

"Hey, have you heard of CSS?"

Oh yeah! Totally... it’s that stuff that designers write right? You know it makes things p… [more]

Toward a More Responsive Future

Let’s face it, ultimately the ideal solution for responsive images does not exists yet. Honestly, I am not sure that browser makers really have a dog in this fight so it will likely be a whil… [more]

Moving the World

Dear America:

In the wake of yesterday's election it would be wise to reflect on these wise words from our first President, George Washington.

“I have already intimated to you th… [more]

There is a Right Way

I grew up working with power tools. I think I was 9 the first time I used a router. As a family we were making mancala boards for christmas presents for family and friends. The noise was intense, t… [more]

Short Circuit and the Javascript IF Statement

A quick javascript tip that lets you eliminate small IF statements

Ok so it’s not really that kind of Short Circuit, though it is almost as cool. In javascript, as in many programming l… [more]

11

Today on the 10 year anniversary of September 11th I thought I would reminisce about my memories from that day, far from New York City. I am working to compile my families’ stories and may ex… [more]

Hide the Admins

This morning after reviewing the hackmycf.com* scan results foransble.com I noticed that the only major security issue that turned up was that the railo admin was accessible from a public IP addres… [more]

Setting up Speed: Cherokee, Railo and CouchDB on AWS

I am working on a little side project (ansble.com) which is going to require scalability, and a layered architecture that I just couldn't reasonably build in a physical environment. So I started to… [more]

Setting up Speed: Cherokee, Railo and CouchDB on AWS

I am working on a little side project (ansble.com) which is going to require scalability, and a layered architecture that I just couldn't reasonably build in a physical environment. So I started to… [more]

Current Projects Update

I realized tonight that I have a whole bunch of projects lying around that aren't mentioned anywhere here on designfrontier. So to remedy that I decided to put together this quick article.

more]

Now Serving: Obsolescence

This article is part of a series, “Now Serving,” that takes a look at the changes in design, and consumer culture, that are happening right now.

“We have advanced technologi… [more]

Trust and the Box

Last Friday I was in Historic Mission Control at NASA’s Johnson Space Center(jsc) listening to Milt Heflin, one of jsc’s Associate Directors, describe some of the history that happened … [more]