Longer-form posts and essays.

Corn – October 2017

Corn – October 2017

An interview with Dan Rubin by Polaroid

My boy Dan Rubin on the Polaroid OneStep 2: First of all, it’s insanely exciting to see a brand new instant camera with the Polaroid name on it. The OS2 is a brilliant point-and-shoot camera — great for capturing life as it happens, especially with the built-in flash. I’ve been shooting with mine for nearly two weeks now,…

Prompton Dam, Prompton State Park – October 2017

Prompton Dam, Prompton State Park – October 2017

Creating Summit: The current summit view

This post is the first in a series of posts about my experience building and designing Summit. This post focuses on just one view within the application; the current summit view. The idea for Summit came nearly 4 years ago as far as I can tell. I’ve hunted around for scraps of paper, digital notes, code snippets to…

Cedar Ave. Scranton, PA – September 2017

Cedar Ave. Scranton, PA – September 2017

Repost: Daman Rangoola on Twitter

👉 Daman Rangoola: Random iOS 11 bug: type 1+2+3 quickly in the stock calculator app, see what happens. Bet it won’t say “6”.

Attending October’s NEPA.js meet up

On Tuesday, October 10 I attended October's NEPA.js meet up. John George of NEPA Web Solutions was this month's presenter and his topic was Bitcoin and the Blockchain: Democratizing How We Exchange Value. I believe all members of NEPA.js would agree, John's presentation was arguably the best presentation the meet up group has had to-date. Though the Blockchain…

Apple picking – October 2017

Apple picking – October 2017 Eliza and I did some apple picking last weekend. We ate as many as we could while picking and then she made apple butter with our take.

Developers, Let me tell you about Microsoft (audio)

I've been writing about Microsoft's moves for the last three years. This week everything has come together and I've been writing my first multi-platform application using C# and Visual Studio. In this long rant I go on and on about how Microsoft needs to spread the word about what they are up to. Links for this bit: Steve…

GeekWire Summit: Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft

Satya Nadella in a video interview on YouTube at GeekWire Summit: By the way, all of these efforts didn't started three-and-a-half years ago. It was Bill [Gates] who started MSR and Steve [Ballmer] who started our cloud push. A sprawling, candid interview with someone who may end up being Microsoft's best CEO. I love that he doesn't take…

SOLO

Ron Howard: Hey #Twitterville we just wrapped production so here's a special message #StarWars Follow the link for his video. Cute. Howard seems to be having a ton of fun with this, which I think is great given the circumstances he walked into. I also think the name is great. It is what Jabba calls Han. SOLO.

Be a social developer

Dwayne Hinterlang on CodePen: What if I told you there are even ways to connect with like minded people in person? Whether it's quickly learning something for the first time, discussions of discoveries, pulling all nighters to breath life into an idea or even devoting yourself to achieving mastery! We can do them together. Online resources, like Hinterlang…

Listening to Manton's 70th episode of Timetable. I like the "out and about" feel of it. It is similar to what I like to record for my audio bits.

Self-driving car accidents (because, humans)

Ryan Beene for The Seattle Times: What they’ve found is that while the public may most fear a marauding vehicle without a driver behind the wheel, the reality is that the vehicles are overly cautious. They creep out from stop signs after coming to a complete stop and mostly obey the letter of the law — unlike humans….

Rebuilding Slack.com

Mina Markham: In August, we released a major redesign of slack.com, and we want to give you a peek behind-the-scenes. She goes on to show tons of details on their latest redesign. There are several bits I found interesting such as their attention to accessibility, how they handle fall backs for IE11, and how they made responsive illustrations….

Mike Monteiro on Twitter

Mike Monteiro on Medium on Twitter: Twitter today is a cesspool of hate. A plague of frogs. Ten years ago, a group of white dudes baked the DNA of the platform without thought to harassment or abuse. They built the platform with the best of intentions. I still believe this. But they were ignorant to their own blind…

Micro.blog for Mac beta

Micro.blog: Mac users can use the native Micro.blog for Mac app. It’s a free download and supports most of the same features as the iOS version. You can see a short video of it on Manton's blog. You'll even notice a rather handsome avatar make an appearance. Unfortunately I cannot give this a spin yet since I haven't…

ESO observes kilonovae

European Southern Observatory: ESO’s fleet of telescopes in Chile have detected the first visible counterpart to a gravitational wave source. These historic observations suggest that this unique object is the result of the merger of two neutron stars. The cataclysmic aftermaths of this kind of merger — long-predicted events called kilonovae — disperse heavy elements such as gold…

It is a beautiful fall day for apple picking and apple cider donuts.

IBEROSTAR Playa Mita, Mexico – September 2017

IBEROSTAR Playa Mita, Mexico – September 2017

Smartify

Smartify: Smartify is a free app that allows you to scan and identify artworks, access rich interpretation and build a personal art collection in some of the world’s best museums and galleries. Gunseli Yalcinkaya, writing for Dezeen, calls it "a Shazam for the art world". This is cool. Can't wait to try it out. /via Dave Mark at…

The Giving Tree Wellness Center, Penn Avenue, Scranton, Pa – September 2017

The Giving Tree Wellness Center, Penn Avenue, Scranton, Pa – September 2017 In September Mark Keith and I poked our heads into this brand-new business in Downtown Scranton. They have a nice spot (and sensory deprivation chambers).

What’s new in WSL in Windows 10

Tara Raj for Microsoft: We've been documenting many of these new features and improvements on this blog over the last few months, but we've often been asked for a single document listing all the new improvements, and with FCU (version 1709, build 16299.15) shipping on October 17th 2017, we thought it was time to publish a list these improvements!…

Spotify’s Discover Weekly Playlist

Sophia Ciocca: This Monday — just like every Monday— over 100 million Spotify users found a fresh new playlist waiting for them. It’s a custom mixtape of 30 songs they’ve never listened to before but will probably love. It’s called Discover Weekly, and it’s pretty much magic. I've mentioned Spotify's playlists before. They are incredible. They are magic. Side note:…