Published: 04/05/2024
I lothe Facebook Messenger. It lacks a feature I value a lot: bulk delete. Well, I tried to fully automate the click on menu, click delete button then finally click the delete chat button. I even found a script that does it. The bad news is that script is badly out of date and does not work. But the idea is sound. I found that script had a pull request so I went to check it out.
Published: 02/07/2024
In any React application it’s important to understand the type of state going on and what the different use cases are for each, today let’s explore it together.
Published: 11/30/2023
Stack Overflow sucks. The code is sometimes helpful, many times its not, many times it’s plain wrong. GitHub Copilt and ChatGPT are excellent tools and are really useful for getting a really fast, specific answer that you can easily ask clarifying questions. I love using it to write complicated things.
Published: 11/24/2023
Discover the secret sauce behind AI’s success! Unleash your developer skills with my guide to mastering prompt engineering.
Published: 10/20/2023
I’m a man of many, many, many ideas. I have a long list and a variety of interests. I’ve always wanted to start and more importantly run a successful small business. To build a product, get it to market and run with it. I’ve been apart of a few consultancy companies and a few unsuccessful start ups.
Published: 09/12/2023
I might be crazy, but I find that I talk to my computer and they talk back, yes they. I talk to multiple models (I hope my wife isn’t jealous), not those kinds of models, but language models. My two favorite companions are Chat GPT 3.5 and Claude 2. I’m getting a local copy of LLama 2, so we’ll see how that goes. But since I’m talking to the voices in my computer and not just the voices in my head (joking, eh? Perhaps? Perhaps not?), I thought I’d share what they have to say. The computer voices.
Published: 08/28/2023
In 100 years like in 2123 we will all be buried with our relatives and friends.
Published: 08/23/2023
Back in April of 2022 we moved into a new house, giant house, mcmansion really (3400 sq ft across 2 levels). The lot is really massive, probably atleast 10-15,000 sq ft. Both the front and backyards lacked an automatic irrigation system not to mention the landscaping consisted of mostly weeds. Being cheap and very lazy, I set out to do my best to automate systems to care for my massive yard without the hassle of hiring a contractor and having them build a crappy system.
Published: 03/27/2023
As an avid reader with ADHD, I find paper books difficult to read due to my mind wandering. Therefore, audio books are the best option for me. Recently, while listening to a science fiction novel about post-humanity after a nuclear war, I came across a fascinating debate. The characters were debating whether the “administrator” of the system was truly a god. During this discussion, I picked up on something interesting about the three different rules: the iron rule, the silver rule, and the golden rule. Although I am not sure about their origin, I thought it would be worth sharing them here.
Published: 03/15/2023
A couple weeks ago I set-out to build a prototype for some friends of their web application ideas. They already had a design built partially in Material UI. In the past I’ve found most CSS frameworks and libraries to be a colossal pain, but after poking around I decided that MUI is a pretty awesome tool that I get to work with. It has led me to believe that if you’re building a component library for your own needs, you’re wasting time and the companies time (unless you want to do it for fun).
Published: 03/11/2023
Y-Combinator, a leading US private equity investment firm, is asking people (CEOs/Founders) to sign a petition to lobby the FDIC into backing the depositors of the SVB bank to ensure that they can access more then the $250,000 FDIC limit on deposit insurance.
Published: 03/10/2023
I should be doing something other then writing a blog post, I could be doing anything but I want to say something. The trouble is I don’t know what to say. Over the last year I’ve started but not finished over a half a dozen blog posts. I’ve lost the desire to complete the posts and get it out. So, I’m going to break that spell today. I will publish this post, even if its a crappy post.
Published: 02/16/2022
Today, I was teaching my highschool computer class. (I volunteer teach a Wednesday CS class) I wanted to build a Wordle solver so we took a JSON file containing all words in the English language, filtering all 5 letter words out of the file then using it to figure out suggestions for today’s Wordle based on letters included, excluded and positions. We got lost, some highschoolers couldn’t download files.. It was a hot mess. But it was a neat idea. Finally one kid was like, are the words in the JS file? We dug through the source code and found all the Wordle words.
Published: 02/15/2022
In my early days of professional programming, I had an internship at my university’s rec center. I was a web developer and I was tasked with building an employee certification tracking system. New to the idea of reusability and building for the future I was pretty nervous and did not understand what the implications where to implementing 15 column table, 3 columns for each certification. The certification then mapped into the UI and each field was manually generated. I stored the date certified, date expires and some other meta data in the 3rd column.
Published: 02/10/2022
A coworker of mine is trying to integrate his UI code with my GraphQL Resolver code. What he wanted to do was on each button push make a call to the backend, to add a row item to a list. The trouble with this approach is that this is a CRUD type API call. It’s a wizard that collects a bunch of required attributes up front than at the end calls an API to create the record with all required attributes.
Published: 02/09/2022
It’s Wednesday afternoon in sunny Golden, Colorado. Presently a high of 50 degrees with a light wind from a westerly heading. As I sit in my wife’s office, I relax at the sound of children screaming, pianos being played poorly and most of all, an ever present fear of the virus; the covid 19 virus coming from the cesspool that is a public school.
Published: 02/08/2022
I started programming when I was 13 years old. I stole my brothers HTML and Javascript book and built some simple web forms. I had no idea that a backend was needed or even what a backend was. I just knew I had some gray buttons on the screen and it did things. I went on to play with some web forum software, launching my own unsuccessful internet forum.
Published: 01/30/2022
I type this from my cushy home office, both dogs are in the office with me sleeping off their bunny chasing induced haze. Seriously, I have a damn good life. I get to work the hours I want (mostly) from an office where I have literally no coworkers or bosses shoulder surfing. It’s great, I love it.
Published: 01/03/2022
Happy 2022! Life is new, it’s a new year and I’ve started a new job… ish. More on that here. I’ve been at my current job for nearly 4 years all as an happy independent contractor! Well, after a tremendously hard year personally, I’m back at it. I’ve dropped the security assessor role and moved back into full time development role. Luke is now 2 and a half and growing like a weed. We’re hunting for a new house and have put in several offers. Hoping this one is the house we get.
Published: 08/19/2021
I’ve decided to apply to the University of Denver for my Masters. I’m going to study in the Information and Communications Technology with a concentration in Cybersecurity Management. That is assuming I get in; hence why I’m applying. They are waving the application fee for the next few months, so lets see if they will take my money and admit me into the program!