David Eisinger

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.

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.

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.

‘You Can Never Look Back’: How ’70s Rockers Rebooted for the ’80s - The New York Times (2024-12-05)

The year 1984 was a watershed in pop music. The stars who’d made it big the previous decade had to embrace new instruments and MTV or risk being left behind.

I want brands - macwright.com (2024-12-04)

But I strongly believe that there’s an opportunity for a brand like Costco’s ‘Kirkland’ or OXO to become the standard place for middle-class people to buy stuff. Paying 5-10% more for something with better odds of being genuine and high-quality, and for a less overwhelming junk-pile buying experience… there’s something there.

One Foot Tsunami: Meat-Ax Your News Consumption (2024-12-03)

I’m fortunate that my own day-to-day life does not actually need to be so negatively impacted by Trump’s every offense. Perhaps yours needn’t be either. It is no doubt a fine line, but it should be possible to stay aware of what’s happening without being consumed by the relentless malfeasance over which we have no control.

What I'm Thankful For - Freddie deBoer (2024-12-01)

Thanksgiving. No commercialism or materialism. No overt religiosity. No stress about getting the right presents. No pressure to find a cool party like with Halloween. The weather of late fall, the natural rhythms of harvest and feast before the winter, the pleasure of a holiday devoted to the concept of being grateful. The football, the family, the food. The after-meal nap. The wonderfully laidback nature of the whole affair. My favorite holiday.

Building LLMs is probably not going be a brilliant business (2024-11-30)

Large language models (LLMs) like Chat-GPT and Claude.ai are whizzy and cool. A lot of people think that they are going to be The Future. Maybe they are — but that doesn't mean that building them is going to be a profitable business.

Ella’s First Website | Brad Frost (2024-11-29)

I could go on about all of these things, but I won’t. Instead I will say that I am so incredibly proud of Ella. I am lucky to be the dad of such a smart, creative, hilarious, curious, and yes obnoxious girl. I hope this is but one of many many many many many many creations that leave her head and make their way out into the world. I love you so much, Ella.

Stinky Gifts From Your Idea Kitty (2024-11-26)

Your mind will never improve at finding good ideas; that cat will always deliver 90% crap. What changes is you. You somehow teach yourself to sort and salvage. You learn to forgive yourself faster, to bury the dead, and to pay proper respect to Nature's harsh whims. You name this new feeling "intuition" and "taste" and sometimes "luck".

Elixir-like pipes in Ruby (oh no not again) (2024-11-21)

When the method we want to call doesn’t belong to the last object in the chain, we have an escape hatch of .then (introduced in Ruby 2.5 as yield_self, and renamed to then in Ruby 2.6).

Signls (2024-11-19)

Signls (pronounced signals) is a non-linear, generative MIDI sequencer designed for music composition and live performances, all within the terminal. It allows you to create complex, evolving musical patterns using a grid-based approach. You can place nodes on the grid, and these nodes can emit signals, relay them, or trigger MIDI notes. There are 9 different types of nodes to explore, each with its own unique behavior.

The Two Most Important Skills for Interaction Designers - Christopher Butler (2024-11-18)

But the two skill(set)s that will determine the success of your design are entirely outside of those areas. When you don’t understand and practice them, you may end up with pixel-perfect design files, but you will end up with products that are far inferior than intended. You’ll know this has happened to you if your portfolio derives entirely from Figma exports rather than live screen captures.