How I Program Stuff
I love programming. I can truly say that of all the things I enjoy, I enjoy programming the most. There’s nothing quite like the feeling you get when you...
Reflections on Heroku's Waza Event
Several days ago I was lucky enough to attend Heroku’s first conference, Waza. Waza is the Japanese word for art and technique, which, in retrospect, was...
Dogs Are Great Programming Companions
I love dogs. Really. They’re the best beasts on the planet. For those of you who don’t know: I work at home with my chihuahua, Scribbles. She’s an awesome...
How to Instantly Fix Problematic Deployments on Heroku
NOTE: Have no idea what Heroku is? I feel sorry for you. You should create an account with them immediately, then come back and read this post! Today I was...
Going to War
Sometimes personal development can be hard, really hard. I find that I go through periods where I just feel exhausted of continuously trying to make myself a...
Tools I Use - tmux
I love reading about tools other programmers use in their day-to-day existence. There are so many great pieces of software out there that it’s impossible to...
New Habit - 100 Carbs
Since finishing my writing habit, I decided to kick off the new year with a health related habit. Over the past year or so, I’ve been making gradual changes...
Writing Habit -- Complete
Two days ago I successfully completed establishing my writing habit. It took me exactly 21 days to build (I didn’t mess up at all)! My habit was to write for...
What I'm Doing in 2012
I’m really glad the new year is here. For the longest time I thought new year’s resolutions were a bit silly, and I never participated in them. The past few...
DevOps Django - Part 4 - Choosing Heroku
This is the fourth article in a series I’m writing titled DevOps Django. If you’re new, you may want to read the first part of the series before this one. In...
My 'Done' List
I really enjoy thinking and writing about programming. Since I started writing code years ago, I’ve been obsessed with code quality and best practices–and I...
What I've Learned About Writing (So Far)
As I mentioned a few days ago, I’ve been working on establishing a writing habit in my daily life. Today marks the 10th continual day, since starting, that...
DevOps Django - Part 3 - The Heroku Way
This article is part of a series I’m writing called DevOps Django, which explains how to best deploy modern Django sites. If you’re new, you should probably...
System76 'Bonobo' Ubuntu Laptop Review
I don’t normally write product reviews on my blog (although I do frequently write amazon reviews), so this is a bit out of place. However, I feel the need to...
Establishing a Writing Habit
I’m a big fan of personal growth and development. My thought on the matter is that each of us is only given a little time to live, so we might as well make...
DevOps Django - Part 2 - The Pain of Deployment
This article is part of a series I’m writing called DevOps Django. This series is meant to explain how to best deploy modern Django sites. If you’re new, you...
DevOps Django - Part 1 - Goals
A little over a month ago I published an article describing the state of Django deployment. If you don’t want to read the back story, I’ll summarize it for...
Deploying Django
Over the past two years, I’ve learned a hell of a lot about deploying Django apps into production. And yes, I really do mean a HELL of a lot. While Django is...
My Use (and Abuse) of Caffeine
Caffeine is an amazing drug. Interestingly, I’ve never actually written about my extensive use of caffeine before, although it is a large part of who I am....
On Business Guys
Disclaimer: This post is going to be a bit different than my usual. Instead of discussing technical or philosophical stuff, I’m going to be doing a bit of...
Live Simply
I often find myself living a complex life. There are so many things I want to do, so many things I need to do, and so many things I should do that it is...
The Growing Python Community in Los Angeles
As a developer living in Los Angeles, I’ve often felt distant from my programming comrades up north in Silicon Valley. Let’s face it, Silicon Valley gets an...
Absolute Victory
I’ve recently started reading biographies of famous historical figures, and came across some very interesting stuff while reading Ghengis Khan and the Making...
The Root of all Change
I think a lot about philosophy. One specific area that fascinates me more and more is personal development and achievement. How do people achieve greatness?...
On Programming Deadlines
There are a lot of differences between programming, and programming professionally. The most notorious of which, is deadlines. Deadlines When you’re writing...
Enjoying the Grind
A big part of accomplishing awesome things is dealing with the daily grind that makes them possible. Chances are, if you’re attempting to do something...
Simplifying My Jenkins Work Flow
Up until recently, my Jenkins work flow has been tedious. It typically went something like: Install Jenkins instance, fully configure it the way I want....
I Want to Be a Renaissance Man
Throughout my life, I’ve been extremely interested in several different things: Skateboarding. When I was in elementary and middle school, I was obsessed...
Diet Updates
Exactly 1 month ago, I decided to try a new diet regime. Over the past 7 months now I’ve been slowly losing weight, trying to get down to my goal weight of...
The Time I Accidentally Destroyed a Production Server
Over the past few years or so, I’ve learned a lot about software in professional settings. I learned that software development is not always all it’s cut out...
The Perfect Django Settings File
I know this isn’t the best way to start an article, but I lied. This article won’t show you how to make the perfect Django settings file. Instead, it will...
2011 Yearly Goals Update 1
Early this year I wrote a post outlining my goals for the year. Since April is almost over, I thought I’d do my first follow-up to let you know what I’ve...
Essential Tools for Pythonistas
Pythonistas need a lot of good tools in order to work efficiently. I’d like to take a few minutes to enumerate some of my favorite tools that help me write...
Simple Continuous Integration / Deployment With Jenkins
At work we rely heavily on continuous integration and deployment to help us deliver lots of code into production and staging environments quickly. In a...
Building a Better Body
Since last October I’ve been trying to build a better body. In September, I was somewhere near 300lbs and extremely out of shape. In October I started...
5 Things Programmers Can Learn From Bodybuilders
Programming is hard. Whether you do it for fun, for money, for fun & money, or whether someone has a gun pointed at your head and is forcing you to program…...
My New Office
As a programmer, I spend a lot of time in my office. It’s my sanctuary. It’s where I do all of my work, where I learn a lot of new things, and where I have a...
Don't Get Too Cocky
I learned an important lesson a few months ago, and thought I’d share. Don’t get too cocky. For the longest time I considered myself a good programmer. In...
My Desktop Environment
I love reading about the tools that other people use daily, what sort of editors they use, what software they consider essential, how they use it, and why....
Programming Innocence
I’ve been programming for a long time. When I first started programming, I would spend as long as I humanely could on the computer writing code. Sure, my...
Startup Mode
Yesterday I got some exciting news. Very exciting. My company is going to be doing some massive, explosive expansion over the next 90 days. How expansive?...
What I'm Doing in 2011
Another new year is quickly approaching (time seems to fly, doesn’t it)? I thought it would be appropriate to do a brain dump of my plans and ideas for 2011....
Deployment System Requirements
Over the past month, my colleague Kurtis and I have been engineering a fully environment. This article discusses the requirements that we had for our...
Reflections on the Django Deployment and Ecosystem Workshops
Earlier this week, I attended the two day Revolution Systems Django workshop in Santa Monica, CA. Day one was the “Django Deployment Workshop”, and day two...
Being Myself
I’ve been thinking a lot about my life lately. Maybe it’s because the new year is almost here, or maybe it is because I’ve been having a lot of weird “grown...
Non-Profit Idea: Neverending Charity
I often have business / charity ideas that I would eventually like to act on. I (stupidly) never kept a record of them anywhere, until today. I ordered a new...
Happiness is Simplicity
I’ve been feeling especially thoughtful the past several weeks, and have been doing a lot of thinking about happiness in my life. I won’t pretend to know...
Why Don't You Use virtualenvwrapper?
If you’re a python programmer, you’ve most likely heard of virtualenv. If you haven’t, then you need to check it out. virtualenv is a tool to create isolated...
How to Reset Your Sleep Schedule, Seriously
Every now and then on Hacker News, I see a new discussion about resetting your sleep schedule. Resetting your sleep schedule is the process of shifting your...
Asterisk Expression Truthiness
Ever done any extensive Asterisk dial plan coding? If so, chances are you’ve been frustrated with Asterisk expressions at one point or another. If you’re...