I’m a technologist at Viget in Durham, North Carolina, USA. I’m passionate about making things (both digital and analog), sharing what I’ve learned, and consuming mindfully. More about me.
Journal
Dispatch #20 (October 2024) (2024-10-01)
Note: I’m trying to get back to posting these in the first couple days of the month, so this dispatch only covers the last two weeks.
I turned 42 this month (apparently I have a very common birthday). Hitchhiker’s Guide aside, 42 doesn’t seem a particularly important milestone, but it is the product of six and seven, and so 42 represents the end of my seventh six-year cycle, which is an interesting way to think about the phases of life.
Dispatch #19 (September 2024) (2024-09-15)
Highlights this month were our annual trips to Rehoboth Beach and Beaufort. There’s something I really like about travel traditions, especially with kids. You get the benefits of breaking the normal routine, but you’re able to build familiarity and not feel the need to see and do everything. It’s different than visiting some place you probably won’t see again.
Dispatch #18 (August 2024) (2024-08-13)
Our boy’s two months old today! Look at this little dude.
Dispatch #17 (July 2024) (2024-07-10)
We welcomed baby Nico on June 12. He and mama are both healthy and well. Nev’s a great big sister, if a little vigorous with her affection at times. It is a big shift, going from double coverage to single, but Claire and I both grew up in four-person households, and something about adding a second kid resonates at a very deep level.
Dispatch #16 (June 2024) (2024-06-11)
TOMORROW IS THE DAY we welcome baby brother to the world, and I wanted to get this out before everything changes. I’m excited, for sure, but bringing a baby into the world is a major thing and I’m anxious for Claire. The joy can come after, once everyone’s emerged healthy.
Elsewhere
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. My current project is a social network of sorts, and includes the ability for users to connect with one another. I’ve built this functionality once or twice before, but I’ve never come up with a database implementation I was perfectly happy with. This type of relationship is perfect for a graph database, but we’re using a relational database and introducing a second data store wouldn’t be worth the overhead.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. In short, it’s a Raspberry Pi Zero connected to a roughly 5-by-7-inch e-paper screen, running some software I wrote in Go and living inside a frame I put together.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.
Links (from Pinboard)
Remind me later (2024-10-04)
As of this story, I am forced to make some changes in the format, particularly in the number of panels. Unfortunately, in this new format, the original ending of this comici s not available. I hope you can continue to enjoy more stories from The Secret Knots. Thank you.
Putting the “Person” in “Personal Website” - Jim Nielsen’s Blog (2024-10-02)
Isn’t it crappy how basic human activities like singing, dancing, and making art have been turned into skills instead of being recognized as behaviors? The point of doing these things has become to get good at them. But they should be recognized as things humans do innately, like how birds sing or bees make hives.
On personal websites and social web – Manu (2024-10-01)
>Having said that I’m hopeful. I do think people are slowly starting to realise that you can get immense human value from the web outside of traditional social media. You have to work for it but it’s absolutely worth it.
AeroPress Just Fixed My Biggest Beef with the Classic Coffee Maker (2024-09-28)
But most days, I make coffee in my kitchen, not under trees, and the original AeroPress has always felt a bit, well, cheap compared to the museum-worthy Chemex and my stainless-steel Breville. (And, hey, it is.)
Beyond survival mode (2024-09-27)
Weekly art, writing, and creative inspiration from the author of Steal Like an Artist and other bestsellers. Click to read Austin Kleon, a Substack publication with hundreds of thousands of subscribers.
The Art of Taking It Slow | The New Yorker (2024-09-27)
Contemporary cycling is all about spandex and personal bests. The bicycle designer Grant Petersen has amassed an ardent following by urging people to get comfortable bikes, and go easy.
Wealth = Have ÷ Need | Derek Sivers (2024-09-27)
Making money depends on other people, so it’s harder. It’s not entirely under your control. It’s an outer game. Reducing what you need is easier. It’s entirely under your control. It’s an inner game.
Attention, Spoiled Software Engineers: Take a Lesson from Google’s Programming Language | WIRED (2024-09-24)
Perhaps this is why I see the ethos behind the programming language Go as both a rebuke and a potential corrective to my generation of strivers. Its creators hail from an era when programmers had smaller egos and fewer commercial ambitions, and it is, for my money, the premier general-purpose language of the new millennium—not the best at any one thing, but nearly the best at nearly everything. A model for our flashy times.
Using Helix's Global Search | Helix Editor Tutorials (2024-09-23)
Unlock the full potential of Helix Editor's global search! Dive into our step-by-step guide to mastering workspace-wide searches with both basic and advanced regex techniques. Discover insider tips and the latest updates that will transform your coding efficiency.
To Learn to Live in a Mundane Universe (2024-09-22)
You have to imagine a life you can live with, where you are, when you are. If you don’t, you’ll never be satisfied. Neither AI nor anything else is coming to save you from the things you don’t like about being a person. The better life you absolutely can build isn’t going to be brought to you by ChatGPT but by your own steady uphill clawing and through careful management of your own expectations. You live here. This is it. That’s what I would tell to everyone out there: this is it. This is it. This is it. You’re never going to hang out with Mr. Data on the Holodeck. I know that, for a lot of people, mundane reality is everything they want to escape. But it could be so much worse.