OrchardNest

A few days ago I took delivery of a Framework laptop, a new product that prioritized repairability in support of the Right to Repair movement. I’m enjoying it a lot and wanted to share some early observations. My notes below will...

A second update and demo of my work through Hands on Rust. This time we are building a graphic turn-based dungeon crawler game.

My summer vacation is coming to a close and I am once again looking for my next consulting project. An ideal project would involve a healthy mix of: Elixir/Phoenix programming Product and user interface design Technical documentation...

A short show and tell for how I am learning Rust through game development.

This blog post is part of an open exploration of my core values when it comes to work. Ideally reading through these posts will help you consider your own values. If you happen to be here researching my consulting services, my hope would...

Figured I’d do a short check in with how my vacation is going. Book reading is a primary activity. Check out my Goodreads profile for more info. I like reading with Bob Ross or Rick Steve’s Europe playing on the TV in the...

With some well earned extended summer downtime underway I once again have a more flexible schedule and want to promote my open office hours! Open office hours is a great way for me to give back to the community and hopefully help people...

After dedicating a full time effort towards an Elixir/Phoenix consulting project since October, I’m taking some time off and looking forward to a nice mix of vacation and personal projects. Consulting Retrospective The project...

I’m a privacy advocate. I use Firefox as my main browser. I install adblock browser extensions. I block ads from within my network router. Most of these privacy tools rely on the fact most ads and tracking happen through JavaScripts...

Over the last year I’ve gained a much higher appreciation for the proper documentation of a company’s values. When I was younger I was much more carefree about company values or even the company mission statement, but lately I...

This week I attended the Emerging Technologies For The Enterprise 2021 conference online. Normally hosted in Old City Philadelphia, I’ve been a long time attendee of the show. I find ETE to be a great place to hear about fresh tech...

It’s been a while since I posted here on the blog so figured I’d do a short life update. COVID / Health Check First, my immediate family and I are still healthy. We continue to stay quarantined and limit our interactions with...

During a recent mastermind meeting a member asked the group, “how do you handle customer feedback?” Like everything, it’s complex. I’m going to box my thoughts with the assumption we are talking about single-person...

In today’s post I want to start a conversation around the tradeoffs of using Typespecs and Dialyzer use in your Elixir code. Elixir is a dynamic, not a statically-typed language – and just to preemptively avoid the programming...

Once again I missed my weekly updates so today notes include all items since the last check-in, December 13th. Additionally, I’ve been taking it easy during vacation so this list is lighter than usual. Guildflow Got some...

Over vacation I worked through a small project to use Terraform on Linode to provision a new webserver for my personal website. The following is a collection of notes and resources from the experience. Project Goals / Areas of...

Once again I missed my weekly updates so today notes include all items since the last check-in, November 22nd. Guildflow Finished the marketing campaign on Ethical Ads: Privacy-focused advertising for developers and while I didn’t...

Lots of times it’s easy to feel bad about missing deadlines but when you add it all up, it turns out a lot of things happened last week. I missed last week’s update so consider this one a twofer. Guildflow Wrote up pitch to...

Lots of times it’s easy to feel bad about missing deadlines but when you add it all up, it turns out a lot of things happened last week. Guildflow Updated the site with new Add to Calendar feature. Updated the SSL certs for the...

Lots of times it’s easy to feel bad about missing deadlines but when you add it all up, it turns out a lot of things happened last week. Guildflow Launched multi-episode sponsorship of the Release Notes podcast. Updated marketing...

Lots of times it’s easy to feel bad about missing deadlines but when you add it all up, it turns out a lot of things happened last week. Guildflow Worked on some limited podcast marketing experiments. Started work on website...

Teaching has always been a big part of my self identity. Be it teaching at university, Big Nerd Ranch workshops or even my work with local tech meetups. With my increasing enjoyment of Elixir and Phoenix I’ve been anxious to find a...

Lots of times it’s easy to feel bad about missing deadlines but when you add it all up, it turns out a lot of things happened last week. Guildflow Got my pull request that adds Postmark broadcast email support to the Elixir swoosh...

In advance of adding some new broadcast email features to Guildflow I’ve built some additions to the Swoosh Elixir email library that allow one to use the new broadcast message stream feature of Postmark. Brief video tour and links...

Lots of times it’s easy to feel bad about missing deadlines but when you add it all up, it turns out a lot of things happened last week. Guildflow Launched the big marketing landing page update with lots of new screenshots to...

The Apple AirPods Pro earbuds I ordered in February are broken. The left pod has this really bad vibration that just never seems to never go away. It’s particularly noticeable during my walks. I had some connection issues before and...

A short video where I catch you all up on my various project: Guildflow, Android Book Club, consulting work search, ideas in my head.

Lots of times it’s easy to feel bad about missing deadlines but when you add it all up, it turns out a lot of things happened last week. Guildflow Finally finished the new page and editable navigation feature. Deployed version...

Lots of times it’s easy to feel bad about missing deadlines but when you add it all up, it turns out a lot of things happened last week. Guildflow Posted a draft of the terms of service for feedback. Made and shared progress on...

Lots of times it’s easy to feel bad about missing deadlines but when you add it all up, it turns out a lot of things happened last week. Guildflow Pushed out a new build (see the CHANGELOG). Mostly bug fixes and security updates....

I would like to once again remind people I am looking for work. You can see more details about my freelance and consulting offerings on my For Hire page but to summarize, the following types of projects are usually a good match for...

I love the enthusiasm and energy of this video. A few thoughts on cutting to the chase in videos for an online audience.