David Eisinger

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.

Migrating from GitHub to SourceHut (2024-11-05)

I’ve moved this site’s repository from GitHub to SourceHut, an alternative, open-source Git host. I thought I’d take a few minutes to explain the why and the how.

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.

P&B: Annie Mueller – Manu (2025-01-17)

Blogging is just one person saying, "Hey, here’s me." I know sometimes it can feel like you’re screaming into the void but honestly, even that can be therapeutic. Because at least you’re the one screaming, you’re making a sound, you’re putting something out there.

Twenty Twenty-Five – Duncan Davidson (2025-01-17)

In that vein, I find myself reflecting a lot on three books I read in 2024: Areté, Clear Thinking and Extreme Ownership. All three underscore a crucial truth that Epictetus first taught two thousand years ago: the only thing you can control is yourself. Everything else — weather, traffic, politics, the current state of the environment, the angry person yelling on the corner, the frustration of coworkers — is input. It’s up to us to decide how to react to that input (or not). To decide what to do next, what decision to make, and what action to take.

Opinion | The Old World Is Breaking Down. A New One Is Breaking Through. - The New York Times (2025-01-13)

Donald Trump is returning, artificial intelligence is maturing, the planet is warming, and the global fertility rate is collapsing. To look at any of these stories in isolation is to miss what they collectively represent: the unsteady, unpredictable emergence of a different world.

You Should Compile Your Own Philosophy | Brain Baking (2025-01-12)

From my youth, I had fixed on the age of forty as the period of my efforts and pretensions of every kind, fully resolved, that when I should attain that age, in whatever situation I might find myself, I would contentedly remain there for the rest of my life, living from day to day, without care for my future subsistence. When that period arrived, I executed my resolution without regret […].

The indie web should be a universe of discovery (2025-01-12)

The indieweb should feel like the Norrington Room: an expansive world of different voices, opinions, modes of expression, and art that you can explore, peruse, or have curated for you. It’s not about any particular goal aside from the goal of being enriched by people sharing their lived experiences, creativity, and expertise. It’s a journey of discovery, conversation, and community, not a journey of extraction.

How I Plan a Quarter: 2025 Q1 Plan (13 Week Year) – Writing at Large (2025-01-11)

There are those that say that you should go on a retreat to plan your year or quarter, and I’m sure that’s nice if you can afford to do it but unfortunately I can’t. What I do instead is take some time in the weekend before the end of a quarter to plan the next quarter, and this is the process I go through, step-by-step.

P&B: Steven Garrity – Manu (2025-01-10)

I will leave you with a suggested question to ask other blog writers: What will happen to your blog after you’re gone? I ask because I don’t have a good answer for this. I don’t think anything I’ve written is critical for future generations, but I’d also like my eventual great-grand-kids to be able to read a bit about how their old great-grand-dad saw the world (if they care to).

This Glorious Machine (2025-01-10)

Riding an e-bike is like discovering a long forgotten secret of the universe or, perhaps, inventing something worthy of a heartfelt “eureka.” Look: zipping through traffic on my first e-bike, blitzing past the stuffy tin cans all around me, I’ve become master of the four winds. Now first place in a triathlon, now a mythical creature that can move at the speed of thought. Upon my trusty electric 6-gear steed I am Hermes, lord of heavenly motion.

Design artifacts (2025-01-10)

Use the tools! Make the docs! Draw the diagrams! But only if it leads to progress.

codecrafters-io/build-your-own-x: Master programming by recreating your favorite technologies from scratch. (2025-01-09)

This repository is a compilation of well-written, step-by-step guides for re-creating our favorite technologies from scratch. What I cannot create, I do not understand — Richard Feynman. It's a great way to learn.