2024-04-24 17:06
My father-in-law is actually a really great, super-nice guy. But that doesn’t mean he’ll pass up an opportunity to give me a hard time — say, paddling the canoe towards… Read More
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Projects and observations on building things --- software in my office and wood in the garage.
2024-04-16 16:32
Being overquoted doesn’t make it any less true — I also love it when a plan comes together. Sure, victory over entropy is always temporary, but it’s still just really satis… Read More
2024-04-08 17:09
Lara, Copper and I just finished another LA-Seattle run in our 2019 Tesla; just about 23 hours on the road including charging stops. I enjoy the drive — great scenery along most of the… Read More
2024-03-25 17:16
The utter haplessness of so many business leaders amazes me. Somehow we’ve created a culture in which the more “important” you are, the less you actually do for yourself. F… Read More
2024-03-05 20:05
I finally got a 3D printer. Well, technically Lara got me a 3D printer, but I’ve been waffling about it for so long that it’s really on me. Anyways, it’s here now. And… Read More
2024-02-20 20:03
Last week I flew into Colorado and met my brother and cousin for an overnight trip to the Sangree Froelicher “hut” outside of Leadville. It was my second winter backcountry t… Read More
2024-02-06 02:52
I’m a big fan of projects that capture change over time — siblings that take a picture every year for decades; seeds becoming plants; stars moving across the sky. Time expansion… Read More
2023-12-18 17:59
Everyone loves to talk about code, but it’s really databases that run the world. And not nerd-chic graph databases, or vector databases, or object stores, or whatever hyped-up new hooh… Read More
2023-12-14 23:05
Since getting my lathe three years ago I’ve started a tradition of turning an ornament using the trunk of our family Christmas tree. Year one was a pretty but simple blobby thing… Read More
2023-11-21 17:56
“Code Monkey think maybe manager want to write god damned login page himself.”— Jonathan Coulton
Truer words may never have been spoken. Set up a database, build a si… Read More
2023-10-31 17:41
I want to be clear up front that I’m not a “methodology” guy. Whatever the hype, software methodology is inevitably either (a) full employment for consultants; (b) an ego t… Read More
2023-09-21 16:23
The beach outside our Whidbey place is amazing. There’s about twenty yards of firm sand and rocks along the shore, then a broad, flat, soft expanse of sand/mud/clay for just under 100… Read More
2023-09-09 18:52
Over the last few months I’ve been working on a project with the good folks at TCP — the latest stopover on my long, painful, only-debatably-successful journey to use technol… Read More
2023-08-26 21:43
Remote monitoring of a community water tank for under $500, that works kilometers away from wifi or cell service, incurs no monthly fees, and uses a battery that lasts up to ten years? The f… Read More
2023-07-13 00:10
Baseball, specifically Red Sox Baseball, was a Big Deal for kids growing up in the 1970s in suburban Boston. We all collected and traded cards, prayed to be put on the Red Sox for little lea… Read More
2023-06-22 17:12
This is article three of a series of three. The first two are here and here.
Last time here on the big show, we dug into SMART Health Cards — little bundles of health information th… Read More
2023-06-05 17:01
This is article two of a series of three, the third to be written soon. The first is here!
Last time I explained why I think SMART Health Cards are awesome. This time I’m just going… Read More
2023-05-30 16:28
A few weeks ago I helped out with a demo at UCSD that showed patients checking into the doctor using a QR code. It was pretty cool and worked well, excepting some glare issues on the kiosk c… Read More
2023-05-29 21:16
Appropriate for Memorial Day and the reflection it deserves. A Woman of No Importance by Sonia Purnell tells the story of SOE, OSS and CIA agent Virginia Hall, winner of the Distinguishe… Read More
2023-05-09 20:36
Last Tuesday I got up in the morning, showered and ate some breakfast, took the dog out, did the crossword, got a new pair of eyes, took a nap, watched the Mariners game and went to bed… Read More
2023-04-24 16:15
I’ve been working on myself for fifty-four years; software for about forty; kids for almost thirty; and (as Jim says) sawdust for six or so. Whatever the domain, sometimes projects go… Read More
2023-04-21 16:26
A few weeks ago we got to spend some time in Ventura. What a beautiful spot, despite the (record, just saying) low temps and rainfall. The beach there is fantastic — uncrowded, gre… Read More
2023-04-06 17:30
I’ll grant that I have a relatively nerdy social circle — but it’s still sort of shocking just how many people I know are actually doing useful and interesting things with… Read More
2023-03-22 16:54
Just a few months after the Great Gunshot Search incident of 2005, I found myself at Washington Hospital Center while Dr. Craig Feied showed us list after list on a huge (for the time) monit… Read More
2023-01-15 21:30
Lara and I shuttle regularly between Bellevue and Whidbey Island in Washington, so the Mukilteo-Clinton ferry is a big part of our life. WA actually runs the largest ferry system in the USA… Read More
2022-12-23 17:34
If you haven’t played around with ChatGPT yet, you really should. It’s a pretty remarkable “conversational model” that interacts more or less like a real person… Read More
2022-12-12 17:04
Pretty unusual topic here — but it’s one that (a) has been taking up most of my brain the last few days, and (b) will hopefully be useful search fodder for others who find themse… Read More
2022-12-01 17:18
Heads up, this is another nerdy one! ShareToRoku is available on the Google Play store. All of the client and server code is up on my github under MIT license; I hope folks find it useful an… Read More
2022-11-16 17:17
Let’s get this out of the way up front: if you’re here expecting more snarky piling on about how stupid Elon Musk is, you’re going to have to get your schadenfreude fix els… Read More
2022-11-07 00:16
My nephew (a pretty cool guy BTW) has started playing a lot of chess. I thought it’d be fun to make him a custom board using driftwood from the beach — it’s been too long s… Read More
2022-10-28 15:40
“USCDI vs. USCDI+ vs. EHI vs. HL7 FHIR US Core vs. IPA. Definitions, similarities, and differences as you understand them. Go!” —Anonymous, Twitter
I spent about a decad… Read More
2022-10-24 18:03
I love reality TV about making stuff and solving problems. My family would say “to a fault.” Just a partial list of my favs:
The Great British Bake Off (and spinoffs)
Artis… Read More
2022-10-05 16:01
OK, let’s see if I can actually get this thing written.
It’s a little hard to focus right now. We’re almost two weeks into life with Copper the shockingly cute cavap… Read More
2022-09-20 20:21
I’ve just started keeping a list of the (good) books I’m reading. Check out the full list!
I grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts in the late 70s and 80s. Our schools did th… Read More
2022-08-19 23:19
TLDR: if you watch TV on a Roku and have an Android phone, please give my new Share To Roku app a try! It’s currently in closed testing; contact me here to receive an invitation. The a… Read More
2022-07-21 15:57
Those few regular readers of this stuff may remember What should we watch tonight, in which I used the Roku API to build a little web app to manage my TV watchlist. Since then I’ve fou… Read More
2022-06-30 17:10
A few weeks ago “bentwood rings” started showing up on my Pinterest feed amongst the usual fare of woodturning and off-grid power systems (that recommendation engine knows it… Read More
2022-06-14 16:47
If you’ve built software at any scale, you know how the game works. You get requirements from somewhere — usually they’re wrong or at best incomplete. You do your best… Read More
2022-05-24 21:32
Today I’m setting aside my belief that all crypto is doomed to fail. It is, but that’s a medium-term diagnosis — at least for now, and ignoring the day-to-day bugs that occ… Read More
2022-05-23 15:02
Have I mentioned how much I love our place on Whidbey Island? The ocean and animals are always present, and the house is built perfectly to take advantage of all that natural beauty. But the… Read More
2022-04-27 15:02
The Internet is a funny place. At the exact same moment that Russian troops are committing war crimes in the real world, Russian users online are just bopping around as if everything is cool… Read More
2022-04-19 16:18
A few weeks ago upon hauling another awesome log up off of the beach, I realized that there was in fact nowhere to put it. Every mostly-out-of-the-rain nook and cranny on our property was fu… Read More
2022-04-08 15:43
Once upon a time, hacking was easy and cheap entertainment, and we did it all the time:
Microsoft’s web server used to just pass URLs through to the file system, so often you could… Read More
2022-03-30 16:47
It seems I can’t write about code these days without a warmup rant. So feel free to jump directly to the next section if you like. But where’s the fun in that?
My mixed (ok ne… Read More
2022-03-26 21:33
I really was born at exactly the right time to ride the golden age of computing. When I was in high school and college, computers were powerful enough to impact every corner of our world, bu… Read More
2022-03-24 17:57
It seems like everywhere I go these days I’m talking to a bot. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all for technology that keeps me from having to interact with actual humans. And… Read More
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