This talk is a code walkthrough, implementing a date picker to showcase the power of ember-changeset and contextual components. Given at the Ember Boston Community meetup. Ember-changeset is an addon that provides an abstraction over Ember models such that only valid data will ever be set in a model...

A summary of my notes taken while reading Programming Phoenix. Ch.1 The layers of phoenix, the endpoint is where the HTTP connection contacts phoenix, from there it goes to the router which directs a request to the appropriate controller, passing through a series of pipelines. Pipelines chain functi...

Privacy is a fundamental human right. It is the right to control to whom and to what information is shared with others. Privacy protects the criteria used to determine how information is deemed private. Simply put, it’s ones right to keep or share information they themselves deem as private; somethi...

system-font-i18n-css provides twelve variations for the Sans-serif family of system font. This font stack provides more consistent character typesetting across multiple languages and all modern operating systems. system-font-i18n-css is optimized to select the best system font on a per-character bas...

In early 2015, I was working at an artificial intelligence startup. My team was planning to build a web application to connect to our neural network platform. The team as a whole had experience (on the AI–side) with Python, and the web team had a lot of experience using Django. We’d implemented a hy...

ember-i18n-changeset-validations is an Ember addon providing internationalized validation messages to ember-changeset-validations. This addon adds the ability to translate ember-changeset-validation messages using the ember-i18n addon. Available on NPM at ember-i18n-changeset-validations and on gith...

Before Trump takes office, I want to create a picture of the high-water mark, something I can point to and say “That was how it was” without the fog of time, or the distortions of propaganda and ideology. I was inspired by Sarah Kendzior: Fellow Americans, I have a favor to ask you. Today is Novembe...

I finally got around to converting my avatar from a raster graphic to a vector format. I wanted to be able to animate the polygons using JavaScript and CSS. Another great advantage of a vector format is how the format lends itself to generate a PNG or JPG in any size. Massaging the SVG File Format F...

In 2011 I wrote: Travel opens my mind to new perspectives and allows me to recontextualize existing systems of thought. While true for me at that time, for that trip; there is nothing magical about travel itself that opens the mind to new perspectives nor helps to “recontextualize existing systems o...

This is the first set mixed in nearly 12 years. Working in an open office space means many hours of my day are spent listening to music with headphones on, cranking away at software code. For me, this means listening to music that doesn’t distract from the task of writing and problem solving. This s...

In the style of Michael Chladek, I thought it would be useful to my future-self and others, if I wrote up a summary of installing Arch Linux on Apple MacBook hardware. Of course there are other guides out there, but this one is specific to the needs of someone looking for a minimalist, reproducible,...

Notes from the book: JavaScript: The Good Parts by Douglas Crockford Index JavaScript: The Good Parts Primitives Execution Flow Equality Loops / Enumeration Object Literals Arrays Delete Global Abatement Reference Reflection Functions Prototype Function Invocation Pattern Constructor Invocation patt...

Application logs are useful for many reasons. They are the primary source of troubleshooting information. Logs are essential to forensics during any rigorous security analysis. Web server logs are often used for analysis in order to gain insight into usage, audience, and trends. Logging Logs are tim...

Not too long ago, there was a great debate between two sides of the web. The “Responsive” web vs the “m.” web. One pushing for a single codebase that responds to user-context and another pushing for a second, mobile-only approach (typically using a subdomain starting with m.) It’s clear now, the res...

Docker is getting a lot of hype these days, for good reason. There are plenty of articles touting the merits of Docker but most are written without context and are limited to examining the the benefits of Docker independently of its’ practical everyday use in a software development project lifecycle...

The RASpec Impreza is a 2002 Subaru WRX “bugeye” chassis purchased in 2011 and fully restored from 2013 to 2015. The car was built by DENT Sport Garage and German Performance Service in Massachusetts. I built the RASpec Impreza as a cross-campaign race car capable of competing in time attack, time t...

I’ve seen many articles and discussions online discussing the merits of merge and rebase when integrating parallel branches into the main branch. It seems there are two camps arguing “which is better” when in reality, both have their own use cases. The task we need to accomplish is to determine whic...

When introduced to someone for the first time, I stay away from asking the cliché question “so what do you do?” This seemingly benign question is steeped in the cultural heritage of the New England colonial Puritan/Protestant work-ethic. Hard work, frugality, perseverance in the face of hardship (wi...

Lets face it, Do Not Track (DNT) is dying a slow death. Content providers are either ignoring the setting, or giving lip service to DNT while taking no action behind the scenes. Worse yet, if users are able to find the browser preference, they don’t understand its purpose or value. Enabling the feat...

In Understanding Media, McLuhan describes the shift in western society from an agrarian economy to an industrial economy as a template for the next shift from an industrial economy to an information economy. Another characteristic reversal after passing a road break boundary is that the country ceas...

Lets Start With What the USD is backed by The USD is no longer backed by gold1, but by a promise that the US Government will pay its debt (in the form of payment the interest on (and sometime redeem) government securities when due). If these payments are not made to the debt holders (Corporations, C...

Every selector you write is additional complexity that will need to be maintained. Can you generalize or abstract that selector so other components can use it? Write your CSS selectors to be as concise as possible Write your CSS selectors to be as performant as possible, efficient as possible and ev...

Take a moment to count the number of unique scrollbar widget types there are in Adobe Photoshop. You may be surprised. ”You can measure software maturity by the number of UI toolkits it implements.” I’ve counted four in Adobe Photoshop CS5.

Travel opens my mind to new perspectives and allows me to recontextualize existing systems of thought. I had casually studied Roman history over the course of a few years, prior to my travels to Italy. My understanding was built upon a small collection of books and two excellent podcast series. Whil...

From comic book stores to Facebook to message boards, it seems that the “Keep Calm and Carry On” poster is living a new life as pop-culture cool while people remix its’ message with both quirky or banal messages. This attempt tries to speak most directly to its underlying message of consumerism, ami...

Motion, keyboard commands and shortcuts for VI Improved Legend Motion / Normal mode Insert mode Changes Yank/Put or Copy/Paste Visual/Visual Block Mode Commands Files Windows Tabs coc.nvim Denite Help Search/Replace Find Files Legend Command Keyboard Character command ⌘ control ⌃ alt ⎇ delete ⌫ opti...

This paper documents the creation and testing of a game playing artificial intelligence (AI) agent program. The agent is designed to play a game of Connect Four by Milton-Bradley. The game is played by dropping pieces into a game board consisting of a grid of 6x7 slots. The object is to make a verti...

A Literature Review The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the existing literature concerning speech segmentation, categorical perception, and some other issues concerning bilinguals of English and Japanese. It will touch on some of the differences in the two languages and how they a...

Introduction Hikikomori (Jap. 引きこもり) and otaku (Jap. おたく) are considered today’s most prominent social problems. Hikikomori refers to the recent state of middle and high school students who drop out of school, and withdraw completely from society. Otaku are the deeply obsessed fans of a particular s...