CDEVROE

Blog

Longer-form posts and essays.

Writing helps me think more clearly. This archive is longer posts; quick updates now live in notes.

Topics: AI, blogging, photography, programming, projects, Signboard

Jun 3, 2016

Is Medium embracing the open web?

Julien Genestoux, founder of Superfeedr, on his company's blog regarding his company being acquired by Medium and how Medium is supporting open protocols already: At Superfeedr, we’ve promoted the open web by embracing open formats and protocols, such as RSS, Atom, XMPP and PubSubHubbub. Over the years, we’ve also learned that these protocols are only as powerful as…

Jun 3, 2016

I agree with Seth, read more blogs

Seth Godin, on his blog: Other than writing a daily blog (a practice that's free, and priceless), reading more blogs is one of the best ways to become smarter, more effective and more engaged in what's going on. The last great online bargain. I obviously agree with Seth. Everyone should blog. And should read blogs. Also, this bit…

Jun 2, 2016

Thomasz Furmanek, Kayaker, Instagrammer

I've been following Thomasz Furmanek on Instagram for a few years already (right around the time I got my first kayak, the Oru Kayak, which is the same one Furmanek uses). I liked this bit in his photographic interview with Daily Mail: The kayak enables me to travel to remote places and show people these places from a different…

Jun 2, 2016

Kayaking Merli-Sarnoski County Park in May 2016

When choosing a location to go for a paddle, don't be fooled by the size of the body of water. Enormous lakes aren't necessarily any more fun than the small ponds. Merli-Sarnoski's Mountain Mud Pond is an excellent example of this. The entire shoreline of the pond could be paddled in under an hour yet it offers a…

Jun 1, 2016

Upcoming.org Archive

Andy Baio has resurrected a massive amount of Upcoming.org's first 10 years of event data: This is a static historical archive more than 7 million events saved from Upcoming's first ten years. The vast majority of events were saved, and the original URLs for nearly all of them are active again — along with the original venue, watchlist,…

Jun 1, 2016

Stop tracking referral spam with Google Analytics

Nice tip from Scott Buscemi on the Luminary Web Strategies blog: Have you ever logged into Google Analytics and noticed a huge, unexpected spike in traffic to your site? Maybe your last blog post was shared by a huge influencer on Twitter — or maybe you’re the victim of referral spam. One simple click. Be warned, though, you…

May 31, 2016

Observations on using a standing desk

I've used a standing desk on-and-off for a few years. In 2011 I stood for a week before giving up. At the time I claimed that I wasn't able to focus on my work as well while standing as I was while sitting. Reading that now confuses me as I believe standing is far more conducive to focus than…

May 31, 2016

How I converted from Custom Post Types to Post Formats

It wasn't too ugly. But it wasn't exactly a cool swim either. I thought I would jot down why and how I moved from using a Custom Post Type for each type of post that I publish here — status, photo, audio, and normal post — to Post Formats. First, why move to Post Formats from Custom Post Types? For my…

May 31, 2016

A custom skin for MyFantasyLeague

Kyle Ruane on why he created a custom skin for MyFantasyLeague: There are things on that page that defy explanation—nested tables driving layout, 8px text, inline styles on everything, five different ‘main’ navigation elements. One big dumpster fire. And this is actually one of the better views in terms of usability. The power of the open web. If you don't like…

May 24, 2016

How I create a combo feed using WordPress

When my site was on Barley I had something we called a "combo feed". A combo feed combined all content types (what we called custom post types) into my main RSS feed. This allowed someone to subscribe to a single feed and get all of the blog posts, statuses, photos, and audio bits that I publish. Optionally, they could…

May 20, 2016

Owning my words and photos and audio bits

Jeremy Keith wrote on his blog about owning his words, or, being willing to publish his words (snarky or otherwise) on his own site under his own name. I recommend you read his entire post. But this bit stood out: I wish I could articulate how much better it feels to only use Twitter (or Medium or Facebook)…

May 20, 2016

Everyone should write (or, blog?)

Deanna Mascle wrote on her blog on why all teachers should write. In it she says this about why students should write in every class every day: Reflective writing at the beginning of a class or before a lesson can help students access existing knowledge and build a foundation for new information. Writing activities during a lesson can…