Being Awesome
If you want to be awesome, then go be awesome. Code the stuff you want to code. Build the business you want to build. Lift the weights. Lose the weight. Go...
Why You Might Enjoy Using DNSimple
Practically everyone I know involved in the tech industry has a preferred domain name registrar / DNS provider. I’ve used quite a few different companies...
A Year in Bakersfield
For the past year, I’ve been living in a relatively small city in central California: Bakersfield. Last year (a week before Thanksgiving Day), my wife’s...
Time Off
This year for Thanksgiving, I did something I don’t normally do: I took some time away from the computer. Since both my work and hobby involve programming,...
Improvement and Perfection
I just finished watching a truly excellent movie, Jiro Dreams of Sushi. If you haven’t seen it, I’d highly recommend you watch it (it’s available on Netflix...
Sometimes You've Got To Kill It
I’ve noticed that sometimes, doing the things you enjoy just isn’t enough. Sometimes you need to do more. I often get that feeling deep down that I’m not...
Ambitions
It’s about 1am right now, and instead of sleeping I’m thinking about all the things I want to accomplish, and what I need to do to get there. While I’m...
Too Short
Some quick thoughts about how life is just too short to do stuff you hate. If you’re an engineer working on a product you can’t stand, it really isn’t worth...
Hack Things at the LA Hackathon
I know several things about you right now: You are more than likely a programmer. I know this because most of my writing here on this site is dedicated to...
Freeing Up Your Time
I’m a huge proponent of being lazy. And of course, by being lazy, I mean being smart. In my line of work (building tech companies), there are constantly a...
Some Constants
Everyone has their constants–a spouse, a ritual, parents, friends, whatever. Even with shit gets crazy in your life and you’ve got a million things going on,...
My Bane - Multiple Projects
This topic is something that’s been floating around in the back of my mind for the past several years. My weakness, fatal flaw, bane, whatever you want to...
No Regrets
I’ve always been an extreme person. My internal motto has always been to either do something all the way, or not do it at all. When I was getting to know my...
Don't Panic! Frustration is an Anti-Pattern
Frustration and programming seem to go hand in hand. When solving problems with code, there are an unlimited amount of things that can go wrong, and very few...
Dangerous People
There are lots of people on earth–some big, some small, some famous, some unrecognizable, and some dangerous. Out of all the people I can think of, the most...
Programming and Motivation
Writing software can be pretty draining work. It is insanely fun when you’re in the zone and feeling good, and insanely dull when you’re not feeling your...
Service Oriented Problems
In my last post, I discussed some of the benefits of writing service oriented web applications. In this post, I’d like to discuss some of the problems...
Service Oriented Side Effects
There are two primary ways to write web applications these days: By building a single, monolithic web application (where all your code is in a single project...
The Simplest Question
Improvement is something nearly everyone craves–you want to be better at your job, better at your relationships, better with your physical fitness–the lists...
My Heroku Book is Finished
I wrote a book on Heroku! It’s called The Heroku Hacker’s Guide, and you can buy it (right now!) in both e-book (PDF) and paperback formats on the new book...