Announcing the Ideas Category
Ideas are cheap. Really. There are hundreds, thousands, millions of them floating around out there. Many of them aren’t all that unique. Most are so vague that they don’t even rate being called an idea...
View ArticleA Site that Provides De-Fluffed Transcipts of Web Content
Abstract: A site where users can post transcripts of videos and overly wordy articles. Users paste in the URL of the original source and get transcripts posted by other users. Problem: Lots of people...
View ArticleIdea: Typo Swap Key
This one is simple. Keyboards need a key that means “swap the characters on either side of the cursor”. I type words like “htis” all too often, and I suspect I’m not alone. Instead of positioning the...
View ArticleFederal Election 2015, Stephen Harper and the Conservative Dilemma
Despite a number of philosophical differences, I understand why many Canadians support the idea of a fiscally conservative government that only offers the most essential of services in exchange for...
View ArticleThe Back of the Plane
I started sitting at the back of the plane because the probability of survival in a crash is significantly higher. To do this, I had to overcome considerable anxiety, since as it turns out I’m waaaaay...
View ArticleWhat is Passion Worth?
When I ask this question, I’m not asking it in the general context of something like creating art, where an answer is truly elusive. Instead I’m asking in the context of business: what is the value of...
View ArticleKeeping the House Cool, Old School
Today I’m keeping the inside of our house cool using a method I picked up many years ago: it was pretty cool and comfortable overnight, so early in the morning I closed all the windows, and pulled the...
View ArticleCreative Downloads: Everything Is Not Free, at Least Not Yet
A few minutes ago I didn’t know Sara Madison existed. Until an author friend shared her brilliant post “Dear Broke Reader: Your Sense of Entitlement is Killing Me” on Facebook. Readers of this blog...
View ArticleTheory vs. Scientific Theory
The video below has been around for a few years. It’s a great clip. The issue I have with it is that I think it supports people who already understand the scientific process, but it fails to fully...
View ArticleFix: Single File Tests Break in Netbeans 11.0 / PHPUnit 8.2
UPDATED 2019-07-22: Netbeans 11.1, released today, incorporates a robust fix for this problem that should survive future changes in PHPUnit. TL/DR: There’s a one line patch to PHPUnit below that will...
View ArticleOn the Rise of Hate
As we recover from yet another mass killing we hear a lot of smart people saying that the rise of hate is driven by a fear of loss of power. But they don’t clearly identify where that fear comes from....
View ArticleMorning Coffee
What I particularly like is the days when I’m standing in front of all the bits required to make coffee and there’s this internal dialogue: L: Okay, make coffee now.R: Wut?L: MAKE COFFEE!!R: How?L: Oh...
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My Test-Driven Design (TDD) Experiment
Photo by Helloquence on Unsplash Is a Test-Driven Design approach effective, even when working on a medium scale personal project? Yes, and here’s why. I’ve long been an advocate of Unit Testing in...
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Laravel 7, Behat, Mink, BDD, Netbeans 12, and subdomain testing!
There’s a mouthful. There’s two parts to this post. The first part is the story of how I arrived at using Behat, a tool that facilitates Behavioural Driven Design (BDD). The last part is the TL;DR...
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Recollections of Depression
I’ve got this old, slightly torn and patched 100 dollar bill up on a desk shelf where I can see it. A few months back we found it between some papers and I didn’t have the slightest recollection of...
View ArticleDocker, Explained for “Old School” Developers
Anyone writing code has probably seen a bunch of references to Docker by now. It’s like this new toy that’s all the rage, but for people like me — where picking up new things takes a crap-load more...
View ArticleUse an Ad Blocker to Improve your WordPress Dashboard UX
Easily one of the most irritating things about WordPress is the continuous attempts to up-sell in the dashboard. Here’s how to get rid of them. It’s one thing to have a gentle hint, like Updraft Plus...
View ArticleAn Argument for Complex User Interfaces
A Boeing 747 cockpit, a functional complex interface Note: This was originally published on a Joomla blog in 2013. The details are outdated, but the principles remain the same. User Experience (UX)...
View ArticleCBGOS, My Clear Bin Granular Organizing System
One of the problems with being ADD is the “If you can’t see it, it ceases to exist” phenomenon. For me, this is one reason why my desk is stacked high with piles of stuff and projects are scattered...
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