David Eisinger

Dispatch #24 (February 2025) (2025-02-05)

We actually got some snow here in Durham, which is not something that happens every year. We took the kids out sledding, and, well, I had a good time; they’ll grow into it. Nev and I built a wagon out of scrap lumber and some casters that roll a little bit too well. We let Nev pick the paint colors and so it’s three shades of pink. We built it for her to wheel her toys around, but you know we plopped that boy in there within the first hour.

Dispatch #23 (January 2025) (2025-01-03)

Happy new year! Nev turned three this month, and somewhere – not from us, as far as we know – she’s added the word “sucks” to her vocabulary. “This juice tastes like bananas … and it sucks.” This is, in my estimation, the hardest thing about parenting: how to raise a well-mannered child when there’s nothing funnier than a toddler being crass.

Dispatch #22 (December 2024) (2024-12-04)

I lost my notebook. I’ve been keeping a Bullet Journal-style notebook for the last several years. It’s got everything in it: my daily log, journal entries, short- and long-term todo lists, all my upcoming events, meeting notes, woodworking plans, everything. And I lost it. I brought it to a 1-on-1 meeting with one of my guys at a local bar, and then rushed out to make it to daycare on time, and somewhere along the way, I misplaced it.

Spellcheck Your Hugo Site With CSpell (2024-11-20)

I edit these posts pretty carefully before publishing, but I inevitably find a misspelling or two after the fact. In the spirit of continuous improvement, I decided to see what kind of automated solutions are out there for spellchecking Markdown files, and found CSpell. It works well, but its default configuration found a ton of false positives that I had to scroll past to find the actual errors.

Dispatch #21 (November 2024) (2024-11-07)

Of all the ways I thought Tuesday’s election might go, Trump winning a decisive victory was not something I’d thought possible. 2016 felt so … illegitimate, between the popular vote discrepancy and all the Russia stuff. 2024 feels like the majority of America just wants what he’s selling.

Local Docker Best Practices (viget.com, 2022-05-05)

Here at Viget, Docker has become an indispensable tool for local development. We build and maintain a ton of apps across the team, running different stacks and versions, and being able to package up a working dev environment makes it much, much easier to switch between apps and ramp up new devs onto projects. That’s not to say that developing with Docker locally isn’t without its drawbacks¹, but they’re massively outweighed by the ease and convenience it unlocks.

“Friends” (Undirected Graph Connections) in Rails (viget.com, 2021-06-09)

No, sorry, not THOSE friends. But if you’re interested in how to do some graph stuff in a relational database, SMASH that play button and read on.

Making an Email-Powered E-Paper Picture Frame (viget.com, 2021-05-12)

Over the winter, inspired by this digital photo frame that uses email to add new photos, I built and programmed a trio of e-paper picture frames for my family, and I thought it’d be cool to walk through the process in case someone out there wants to try something similar.

Why I Still Like Ruby (and a Few Things I Don’t Like) (viget.com, 2020-08-06)

The Stack Overflow 2020 Developer Survey came out a couple months back, and while I don’t put a ton of stock in surveys like this, I was surprised to see Ruby seem to fare so poorly – most notably its rank on the “most dreaded” list. Again, who cares right, but it did make me take a step back and try to take an honest assessment of Ruby’s pros and cons, as someone who’s been using Ruby professionally for 13 years but loves playing around with other languages and paradigms. First off, some things I really like.

I'm a feminist and I think it's harder to be a man than a woman. (2025-02-20)

Very earnestly I believe that despite greater access to power and resources, the box labeled “socially acceptable ways to be a man” is much smaller than the box labeled “socially acceptable ways to be a woman.”

Moving on from 18F. — Ethan Marcotte (2025-02-19)

During that time, a friend suggested that while things were calm at work, I should write down some lines I wouldn’t want to cross: things I’d want to watch out for that, if they materialized, might be a reason to leave. This was wonderful advice, and I’m grateful to them for it. Equipped with a plan, even a small one, I started thinking through what my lines would be.

The Tiny Book of Great Joys · Muffin Man (2025-02-18)

If you are interested in how I over-engineered the process of making a tiny book for my wife, using AI, a pen plotter, a 3D printer, and a lot of time, you are in the right place. The book is titled The Tiny Book of Great Joys, and here is how it turned out.

Working with Obsidian, Readwise, and AI to Create Notes · Web UI Engineer from Hamburg, Germany (2025-02-17)

Enhance your note-taking with the Zettelkasten method using Obsidian. Drawing from my experience since its 2020 launch, I'll reveal how Obsidian transforms personal knowledge management through strategic file organization and productivity-boosting plugins.

Ollama - NSHipster (2025-02-15)

If you wait for Apple to deliver on its promises, you’re going to miss out on the most important technological shift in a generation. The future is here today. You don’t have to wait. With Ollama, you can start building the next generation of AI-powered apps right now.

My Stationery Drawer (2025-02-15)

Writing tools are near and dear to my heart. They are also near my desk, in my stationery drawer.

My Stationary Drawers | Brain Baking (2025-02-15)

Where were we? Right, notebooks. The current one is number 17 if I’m not mistaken, and to my big shame, it is taking an unhealthy long time to fill. It’s not a race at all, but if it takes long it means that I don’t write enough, and if I don’t write enough, I get depressed. (Analogue) writing is not just a way to summarize, ideate, and generate new thoughts, but also a way to calm my mind, clean up my inner self, or like my bread baking grandmaster Sarah Lemke used to say: to get your shit together.

Is it okay? (2025-02-11)

How do you make a lan­guage model? Goes like this: erect a trellis of code, then allow the real pro­gram to grow, its devel­op­ment guided by a gru­eling training process, fueled by reams of text, mostly scraped from the internet. Now. I want to take a moment to think together about a ques­tion with no remaining prac­tical impor­tance, but per­sis­tent moral urgency: Is that okay?

I missed the memo for the outside space at this coffee shop… – Manton Reece (2025-02-10)

The bittersweet irony with parenting is not knowing until years later what you had.

Making Portishead's "Dummy": The Production Experiments | Reverb News (2025-02-06)

Aside from the undeniably excellent songwriting and tasteful musicianship on display, Dummy is primarily an album of texture—something that is fully apparent within the first minute of the record. The opening bars of "Mysterons" give you a taste of the album's sonic palette: minimalist, tremolo-laden guitar parts, expert turntablism, crackly sampled rhythms, booming 808 bass, entrancing synthesizers, and of course, Gibbons' unparalleled vocals.