My writing
An open replacement for Skype voice
Written 18 May 2013 in #technology
My house has terrible cell service, so I've been reluctantly relying on Skype for making phone calls. Yesterday, I discovered that there is an open protocol called SIP that has similar functionality to Skype but is cheaper and has better call quality in my testing. Read on to see how I set it up.
Bulletproof your blog: a guide for surviving traffic spikes
Written 27 Mar 2013 in #programming
It's frustrating to see a story that looks really interesting on a site like Hacker News, but when you click on the link you find that the traffic surge has brought the blog down. This is probably even more frustrating for the blog's author, who presumably has put a lot of time/effort into writing their post.
Comcast crapware
Written 08 Mar 2013 in #technology
Apparently Comcast tries to trick you into installing crapware now when you set up your internet!
What Blackboard discussions could be
Written 17 Jan 2013 in #technology
I recently took a course with a barely-used Blackboard discussion board. Vibrant online discussion would have added a lot to this class, and I think the only thing standing in the way was Blackboard's bad user experience.
Are developer job boards a waste of money?
Written 02 Jan 2013 in #programming
Last winter, I lead the search for a junior software developer to work on some Rails/CoffeeScript projects. We weren't located in a place with a high density of Rails developers, so we decided to use developer job boards to broaden our search.
We had a limited advertising budget so I wanted to make sure we got the most out of our posts. I researched the common job boards for developers and decided on the 37Singals job board ($400) and Authentic Jobs ($99) as the best bets for our post.
Keeping your email secure from hackers
Written 27 Dec 2012 in #technology
I've helped a few people deal with hacked Gmail accounts recently, so I wanted to write up some general advice on keeping your email account secure and what to do if your account is hacked.
Wolfram Alpha and probability distributions
Written 30 Oct 2012 in #epidemiology
I just discovered you can use Wolfram Alpha to replace a critical values table for common probability distributions. You can also quickly graph distributions. This is super helpful for the introductory statistics class I'm taking now.
The future of farming?
Written 24 Oct 2012 in #miscellany
This video of Eric Maundu talking about his urban aquaponics company Kijani Grows has been making the rounds on Reddit and Hacker News.
Solution to iOS 6 map woes
Written 21 Sep 2012 in #technology
A number of problems have been reported with the new non-Google maps on iOS 6. These include lack of integrated public transit directions, no Street View equivalent, and lots of issues with the maps themselves.
Bling for your Terminal: zsh with my fancy Fino theme
Written 02 Sep 2012 in #programming
If you use the command line on OS X or Linux and you haven't heard of Zsh, this post will change your life.
Now Twitter is just a social network
Written 17 Aug 2012 in #technology
Like many others, I'm dismayed by Twitter's new API rules. Marco Arment wrote a good explanation of how these rules impact 3rd party services that rely on the Twitter API. But more generally, these changes mark Twitter's transition from a social platform into just a social network.
Combine: get paid faster with Stripe + Heroku
Written 10 Aug 2012 in #programming
The worst part of freelance work is getting paid. Some clients are great — but some drag their heels, send you bad checks, or don't pay you at all.*
Quote: essential vs. urgent
Written 09 Aug 2012 in #miscellany
If I were to let my life be taken over by what is urgent, I might very well never get around to what is essential.
Woodward & Bernstein on Watergate, 40 years later
Written 08 Aug 2012 in #miscellany
From a great article by Woodword and Bernstein about Watergate from a few months ago:
Opinionated email signatures
Written 22 Jul 2012 in #technology
Protocol.by is a creation by some students at Harvard and the MIT Media Lab. I describe it as an "opinionated email signature" -- opinionated in the sense that instead of just listing your contact information it tells people how to use it.
Managing default iPhone apps with emoji
Written 06 Jul 2012 in #technology
Where do you put your iPhone's default, undeletable apps?
BreakTime for Mac: automatic reminders to take regular breaks
Written 05 Jul 2012 in #technology
For better or worse, I can sit down at the computer and bang away on the keyboard for hours without taking a break. Doing this regularly isn't healthy, so I wanted an unobtrusive app to automatically remind me to take breaks.
Running Prose locally
Written 03 Jul 2012 in #programming
Prose.io is the new static site (Jekyll) editor from Document Seed. It is awesome enough that I switched my blog hosting from S3 back to GitHub Pages*.
Beginner's guide: the three parts of web hosting
Written 29 Apr 2012 in #programming
Stop the paranoia: it doesn't matter if Google reads our email
Written 12 Feb 2012 in #technology
There's been some recent buzz about how it's bad that Google is "reading" the email of Gmail users. Google examines email algorithmically to power its targeted advertising in Gmail.
Blogging with Jekyll + S3 + CloudFront
Written 21 Jan 2012 in #programming
When I decided to power this blog with Jekyll, it took me a while to figure out a good way to host and configure it. I thought explaining my setup might be helpful for others who are getting started with Jekyll.
Top software dev job boards
Written 08 Jan 2012 in #programming
I've been working on posting a web software developer job opening and it's taken a fair amount of research to find the various job boards that seem to be appropriate. I thought other could benefit from this list, and I'd be happy to expand or update it if I've missed something.
Ultimate webdev/power user tools for Mac (2011 edition)
Written 29 Dec 2011 in #programming
Hardware
Bulletproof your blog: a guide for surviving traffic spikes [v1]
Written 28 Dec 2011 in #programming
I have written an [updated version of this article](/articles/bulletproof_your_blog).
New Kindle first impressions
Written 22 Nov 2011 in #technology
Usability & UX: forgotten in obesity web intervention?
Written 09 Nov 2011 in #epidemiology
A group of researchers in the Netherlands just published the results of their web-based adolescent obesity intervention. This kind of intervention is promising because it scales well: more users on a website are essentially free, while adding people to an intervention that requires doctor visits would be much more expensive.
Trello Icon
Written 15 Sep 2011 in #technology
I just spent 15 minutes putting together a (mediocre) Trello icon for use with Fluid. I am not a designer so, I'm sure someone could improve on this.