Blog
Writing helps me think more clearly. This archive is longer posts; quick updates now live in notes.
Topics: AI, blogging, photography, programming, projects, Signboard
Last night was the NEPA WordPress Meetup for March 2017. It was a panel discussion regarding how agencies use WordPress with Jack Reager of Black Out Design (our gracious host, thanks Jack and team), Liam Dempsey and Lauren Pittenger of LBDesign in the Philadelphia-area, and your's truly of Condron Media. As these types of events typically do, the…
Chrome v57 is really cramping my style. It only shows me the last few days of browsing history. I hope they fix this issue soon. So, this week is a little light as a result. Sorry. Bullet Journal – I've been meaning to try this for a few years and so starting on Monday I began using this…
Karla Porter: I find myself searching for the value of spending a boatload of money and travel time to attend conferences. Not just for myself, but for you too. After all, that could be vacation time and money. If you read my blog you already know that I see value in attending events. I write about it and mention it time…
Andrew Ng resigns from Baidu to focus on helping AI impact more companies and industries. In his resignation post he mentions the impact AI is having, and will continue to have, on every part of life: Just as electricity transformed many industries roughly 100 years ago, AI will also now change nearly every major industry — healthcare, transportation, entertainment, manufacturing — enriching…
Sarah Parmenter: By the time 2016 rolled around, I was overdue an upgrade and I thought the new MacBook Pro’s were enough of an upgrade to warrant a new purchase. After all, it had been 4 years. A lifetime in hardware you use every day. I was in the exact same boat as Sarah. I had been using…
Apple: Introducing Clips. A new iOS app for making and sharing fun videos with text, effects, graphics, and more. I've been looking for an app like this for a long time. The Verge describes how I think I'll use this app. My best guess is because the default camera app is still something that’s supposed to be super simplistic…
Aspiring freelancers always ask this question. Lara Schenck answers: I tell people I’m looking for work. Then, while I wait for referrals, I do a bunch of stuff for free. That includes talking at meetups, doing free workshops, and writing blog posts. Finally, I cross my fingers and have faith that it will come when I need it….
I took two weeks off for travel/vacation (and didn't read much online during that time) so this list will likely be a bit all over the place and sparse. Dunbar's Number – I've read about this a few times. Caterina Fake, co-founder of Flickr and other things, reminded me of it in her TOI post this week. This principle…
Jordan Novet for VentureBeat: GitLab won’t bundle it in its community edition or its enterprise edition yet, but it will open-source the Gitter code for others to build on, GitLab cofounder and CEO Sid Sijbrandij told VentureBeat in an interview. What’s happening now, though, is that as part of GitLab, Gitter is launching a new feature called Topics, where…
Last week I attended SAIL, Second Wind's Small Agency Idea Lab, at the Boardwalk Resort in Walt Disney World, Florida. This is the first marketing and advertising agency event that I've been to (usually attending technology or internet related events) and I really enjoyed myself and learned a lot. SAIL is pitched as a lab and at times it…
CSS Grid is rolling out to browsers. Firefox already, Chrome this week. Eric Meyer: For well more than a decade now, when asked what CSS needs more than anything, I’ve said it needs real, actual layout. “A layout-shaped hole at its heart” is a phrase I may have used a fair few times. A nice step forward in…
Manton Reece: I love that blogs can scale from the trivial to the important. The microblog post about what you had for breakfast. The half-baked rant about something you’re passionate about. And sometimes, the rare essay that really hits the mark and makes people think. Publishing most of my "tweets" here first has led to some frivolous posts….
SpaceX: We are excited to announce that SpaceX has been approached to fly two private citizens on a trip around the moon late next year. That sentence makes me immeasurably happy. For most of my life I've been very disappointed in the human race's collective efforts to explore space. I wasn't even alive when the last manned mission…
Video: Ratchet Face – From a longer performance by Tom Thum who you may remember from this TEDx presentation. Amazing stuff. Video: Neil deGrasse Tyson on JRE – Joe Rogan had Tyson on his podcast. Two hours of nerding out and Rogan keeps up fairly well. Developer Tea – I stumbled across this podcast this week and Huffduffed…
You'll likely read a headline on your favorite news site today that reads as if the FAA has said drone strikes are up for 2016. And they likely are – as there are a lot, lot more drones in the air this year compared to last. However, what you won't read is this bit from the FAA's report:…
Eevee on the names of things in programming languages: Part of the problem here is that we’re not actually doing computer science. We’re doing programming, with a wide variety (hundreds!) of imperfect languages with different combinations of features and restrictions. There are only so many words to go around, so the same names get used for vaguely similar…
The following two sentences encapsulate an incredible feat in the advancement of human discovery: TRAPPIST-1 is a planetary system, located 12 parsecs away from the Solar system (39 light years), near the ecliptic, within the constellation of Aquarius. Around a star which is 12 times less massive than the Sun and only slightly larger than Jupiter, there are at…
Harold Jenkins: From February through March 2017 Venus will put on quite a show in the west after sunset. Unmistakably bright, its crescent will be getting thinner while the disc of the planet itself is increasing in size – meaning the planet will maintain its brightness, even though its appearance through binoculars, telescopes, and high-zoom cameras changes dramatically….
Instagram: With this update, you no longer have to choose the single best photo or video from an experience you want to remember. Now, you can combine up to 10 photos and videos in one post and swipe through to see them all. Fantastic update and finally one that is different than most, if not all, other platforms.
Marco Arment just released version 3 of Overcast, the podcast player I use on my phone every single day. I like this bit in the update: No closed-source code will be embedded in Overcast anymore, and I won’t use any more third-party analytics services. I’m fairly confident that Apple has my back if a government pressures them to…
Oristand – Want to try a standing desk? This is a pretty inexpensive and portable way to try it. Houdiniopoly – A local Houdini Museum is creating a boardgame and kickstarted the idea. They've already met their goal. Video: MSFT's hardware testing center – Cool behind-the-scenes look at one of Microsoft's facilities. Drones over Dubai – (more like…
Team Whiskey Bacon tears into Blue Apron and lists 10 things they hate about it. I agree with many of their points, especially #2 and #6 on their list and that Blue Apron is not for those that know their way around the kitchen. We tried Blue Apron for a time. It was an interesting experience. The quality…
I linked to this post in #32 but, just in case you missed it, I'm linking to it properly because I believe it deserves it. Cabel Sasser, on creating the intro song for Stagehand: There was no way I was gonna be able to put a “live” version of the song together by myself. I’m basically musically illiterate, don’t know…
NEPA.js is quickly becoming my favorite tech-related event to attend. On Monday night at the Scranton Enterprise Center a solid group of attendees listened and shared in Jason Washo's presentation on whether or not to handwrite or generate JavaScript through transpiling. Jason is a big believer in transpiling JavaScript but he kept his presentation balanced by providing both the…