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
It has been a whirlwind this last week or so. I'm writing this while 35,000 feet in the air as Kyle and I are off to San Francisco on a business trip. A trip we didn't know we were taking until late last week. Isn't flying amazing? The process of flying, however, is about as terrible as possible….
We’ve been doing some walking in the afternoons lately.
Noah Read, on his blog, on why he is posting “snippets” to his site which then get distributed to the social networks of his choice. Some of the content is so great that it seems a shame to be dumping it into 3rd party services, which may be gone within a few years. Microblogging and social sharing will survive,…
Today was a beatiful day. After lunch I went for a 2.5 mile walk around the city. Each time I venture out, either alone or with a Coalwork member or two, I try a new route. I'm surprised by the number of routes that can be made in such a short distance from our space. I try not…
Dave Winer is at it again. This time with an open source “browser” that can read a “river” called riverBrowser. riverBrowser is, at its core, a set of HTML, JavaScript, CSS that can read JSONP files and output them as HTML. What can this be used for? Well, it could — potentially — replace RSS for a number of applications….
Monkey Keyboard: Monkey is a free keyboard for iOS and Android that allows you to drop stickers while you're chatting in WhatsApp, snatch a file from DropBox while you're writing email, or send your lover a Spotify song right in iMessage. Looks very interesting. But free makes me leery.
Manton Reece, writing on his blog, about quick blogging workflows: I believe there are two important facets to microblogging. The first is the timeline experience: a reverse-chronological list of posts from your friends, like you see on Twitter. The second is that posting should be effortless: if there’s less friction between your idea and publishing it, you’ll write…
Yesterday a young chap walked into the doors of Coalwork wanting to see “what we were up to”. He moved away from Scranton but would like to see Scranton improve. After talking for awhile about start ups, failures, successes, our respective backgrounds, whether or not there was money to be raised in this area, it came down to…
DuckDuckGo: DuckDuckGo just crossed ten million searches a day for the first time ever! We’re proud to be helping so many people take back their privacy. In celebration, we’re giving away ten thousand DuckDuckGo t-shirts to enthusiasts who help their friends and family take back their privacy as well. I’ve been using DuckDuckGo on every one of my…
WordCamp is a big deal in the WordPress community and I’m very pleased that Joe Casabona, fellow Coalworker, is organizing one for Scranton, PA. There are only 88 seats left so run and get your ticket. Side note: I’ve been to WordCamp’s in Hawaii, California, Texas, Arizona, New York, Philadelphia etc. I’m looking forward to finally attending one…
Manton Reece, on his blog, about the fact that he’s using WordPress to “tweet”: I’m very excited about the potential for microblogging. For the last year I’ve been working on a new platform around this stuff. By adopting some of these tips for WordPress, your microblog will be ready for my platform, but more importantly your blog will be…
43North “Behold the world’s largest business idea competition.” Five million dollars in cash awarded to the winners (plural) of this competition happening in Buffalo, New York. If you’re into investing this is a model to watch as it goes into its second year. I’m watching closely.
Yes, I skipped the weekend. I’m going to skip all weekends likely. Here is why. And you may just have to live with that. Speaking of the weekend, this one was pretty good. On Friday, I was able to play full court basketball for the first time since I was injured. It was painful but fulfilling. On Saturday,…
Gestimer is “for those little reminders during the day” and has a pretty cool gesture-based UI for setting short-term reminders. I think I’d like an interface like this if Gestimer plugged into Reminders. Neat idea. /via Matt Gemmell on Twitter.
Speaking of losing weight; an interesting piece in the New York Times by Aaron E. Carroll about how eating less is more important than exercise as a determining factor in weight loss. In the adult population, interventional studies have difficulty showing that a physically active person is less likely to gain excess weight than a sedentary person. Further,…
Jim Dalrymple, one of the nicest people on the planet, is down 40 pounds — in part, due to the Apple Watch’s constant nagging to move. He wrote a follow-up to his excellent review of the product specifically about his weight loss. While I’ll do my best to answer the questions, I have to say that I don’t know…
At Coalwork we somewhat recently began offering $5 Fridays. A chance to come in and work for just $5 (regularly $15). And today was the first day that someone officially took us up on the offer. In fact, two people — one from about 45 minutes away — popped in. Scranton has never seen coworking. From our experience…
Paul Ford, in a tome-of-a-post for Bloomberg/Business Week: There are 11 million professional software developers on earth, according to the research firm IDC. (An additional 7 million are hobbyists.) That’s roughly the population of the greater Los Angeles metro area. Imagine all of L.A. programming. East Hollywood would be for Mac programmers, West L.A. for mobile, Beverly Hills…
Jason Fried in a post from September 2014: Remember that what you’re making is in a perpetual state of almost right up until the end. Great post. And boy is he right. Everything is a mess on a product until it isn’t. /via Jason Fried on Twitter.
I’m happy to see Joe Casabona pick up the 100 words torch. Dark Sky, one of my most-used applications on my iPhone, got updated yesterday. The update is terrific. It has the same information as it had before — except it is far easier to digest. It also has the added benefit of being more accurate and allows…
I missed posting this yesterday. I have only myself to blame. Number 10 already! Speaking of 10; yesterday I finally surpassed the 10,000 daily step goal. I’m using Pedometer++ (my favorite step-tracking app) to track my steps. When I hit the milestone the app exploded into this cool animation showing that I had made it. It was…
The best days are filled with variety. Variety helps to break up the day and keep me moving and productive. Today started with some programming to finishing up a client project. Then, I drove to two client meetings where I was able to do a little training and a little fixing. Then, lunch watching Casey. Then, a two-mile…
Yesterday I missed the opportunity to drop a James Bond joke. 🙁 For a over a year I’ve owned a GoPro Hero3. I love this little camera. However, for the passed 5 months or so it has sat in my home office doing little else than collecting dust. I took it out yesterday and shot a few photos…
I washed the dishes this afternoon and when I got to my least favorite dish to wash, the silverware, I was reminded of this post I wrote in March 2011. Rather than saving the silverware to last I should have started with them and figured out a way to make it fun. Or, at least more fun. Perhaps…