Zietlow

Go JSON Unmarshaling

Sun, 08 Feb 2026 11:38:28 -0500

TL;DR

When working with an API that returned json with inconsistent types, json.Unmarshal would fail because it was mapped to a matching Go type via tags in the struct. The solution was to create a new type to support any permutation of data the API might return, and have that type implement Unmarshaler or UnmarshalerFrom interfaces to add the logic to decode this correctly.

Problem

When working writing an API client, I was relying on Go's standard library encoding/json in order to decode JSON object to a Go struct. This works wonderfully, as by default json.Unmarshal() will decode the json data; mapping the json type to Go type. e.g. string <> string, int <> int, object <> struct. I'm working with book data from the API.

Time of Contempt

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 17:10:52 -0500

Blood of Elves

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 17:10:27 -0500

Sword of Destiny

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 16:16:52 -0500

The Last Wish

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 16:08:24 -0500

Learning Systems Thinking

Fri, 02 Jan 2026 07:19:44 -0400

Systems Thinking

Thu, 04 Sep 2025 17:51:48 -0500

Systems Thinking

More than ever software cannot be thought of in a linear, one-off environment way. It really never could, and continues to become more clear as software continues to grow in complexity, interconnectivity, and functionality. Systems thinking offers an school of thinking to model these systems in a way that captures how different parts interact and influence one another with the system as a whole. It shifts focus deeper behind how they work in isolation, and focuses on the relationships and interdepencies among components. It reminds me of why I appreciate the studying the field of marco economics. Where the outcome on a macro scale is so far beyond a simple relationship of supply and demand. Something like inflation is the result of thousans of inputs, outcomes of hundres of components of an economy, and millions of mirco decisions that all have an impact on the system as a whole.

Tmux

Sun, 29 Jun 2025 17:42:18 -0400

Working from neovim and writing go code I find myself often cycling through multiple terminal windows while working on projects. This cycles between iterm and ghostty terminal and splits within neovim itself depending on my environment. Often resulting in a cacophony of windows, panes, and red yarn connecting the dots... There has to be a better way. Or moreover I'm tired of relying on a different set of application keybindings, alt-tab, and my mouse. The overall design of my workflow is to keep laser focus by keeping everything within a single window, and reducing the amount of time switching between different programs or reaching for the mouse. Tmux has always been the obvious answer for improvement.

Week 23

Sun, 08 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Working on more R&D time as well as self-improvement

The Dark Forest

Mon, 02 Jun 2025 07:21:32 -0400

The Three Body Problem

Mon, 02 Jun 2025 07:21:23 -0400

The Anxious Generation

Mon, 02 Jun 2025 07:20:24 -0400

The Book of Why

Mon, 02 Jun 2025 07:19:44 -0400

Week 22

Sun, 01 Jun 2025 14:24:53 -0400

Continuing to explore experimentation and learning as life rapidly changes

Week 17

Thu, 24 Apr 2025 07:20:48 -0400

Sadly my paternal grandfather passed

Week 9

Sat, 01 Mar 2025 06:09:57 -0500

Spent more time writing code, found joy in this

DOE Simplified

Wed, 26 Feb 2025 19:37:34 -0500

The book explains simple methods for collecting and displaying data and presents comparative experiments for testing hypotheses. Discussing how to block the sources of variation from your analysis, it looks at two-level factorial designs and covers analysis of variance. It also details a four-step planning process for designing and executing experiments that takes statistical power into consideration.

Supercommunicators

Wed, 26 Feb 2025 08:36:01 -0500

Team Topologies

Sun, 23 Feb 2025 15:46:52 -0500

Why

This was added to my list by my lead software architect. It was to better understand a more modern and efficient team organization based on the reverse Conway maneuver

Week 8

Sun, 23 Feb 2025 06:04:57 -0500

Fairly low energy week

Go Http

Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:04:20 -0500

Some handy small snippets for when working with go's net/http

Leadership That Gets Results

Mon, 17 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This HBR article attempts to categorize leadership into 6 distinct styles, and aggregate quantitative data on the effectiveness of each. In doing so the Author Daniel Goleman also overlaps each style with various aspects of emotional intelligence - which to me seems like a logical conclusion. Not all individuals would be suited for all leadership styles. Additionally each leadership style would have different levels of impact based on the landscape, environment, and goals.

What Makes a Leader

Mon, 17 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Week 7

Sun, 16 Feb 2025 18:18:20 -0500

First week timeshifting to have greater overlap with IST and EU timezones

Add IndieAuth to Your Website

Wed, 12 Feb 2025 17:51:48 -0500

IndieAuth

IndieAuth is built upon OAuth 2.0 and OpenID. Authenticating via the IndieWeb requires your website URL as your Id. To obtain authorization you will be directed to your chosen IndieAuth server (OAuth provider). The IndieAuth Server can be self hosted, or rely on a hosted option such as indieauth.com

Why not use not just use OIDC? In short b/c it relies on more centralized solutions such as social login providers or managed IDP services by companies like Okta

Week 6

Fri, 07 Feb 2025 16:00:03 -0500

Week 1 of digital detox

Week 5

Sat, 01 Feb 2025 15:45:57 -0500

Week of new experiments

Go Handy Snippets

Thu, 30 Jan 2025 19:21:15 -0500

Useful Go-isms

Popping an element from a slice via cutting

 </div>

func arrayPop(list []int, index int) []int {
	return append(list[:index], list[index+1:]...)
}
evenNumbers := []int{2,4,6,8,9,10}
evenNumbers = arrayPop(evenNumbers,4)

Combining 3 slices

 </div>

list1 := []int{1,2,3}
list2 := []int{4,5,6}
list3 := []int{7,8,9}

megaList := append(append(list1, list2...), list3...)
// [1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9]

Single line array swaps

 </div>

// Traditional swap
temp := list[0]
list[0] = list[1]
list[1] = temp

// Single line swap
list[0], list[1] = list[1], list[0]

Maps must be initialized

Map types are reference types, like pointers or slices, and so the value of m above is nil; it doesn’t point to an initialized map. A nil map behaves like an empty map when reading, but attempts to write to a nil map will cause a runtime panic; don’t do that. To initialize a map, use the built in make function

Data Structures and Algorithms Go

Wed, 29 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Algorithm

Simple Sorts

Selection Sort

Sort a list of []Type by searching for the smallest (or largest) element of the array, removing the found element from the list, and copying it to a new list.

Time Complexity: $O(n^2)$

Example

func selectionSort(list []int) []int {
	newList := []int{}
	for range list {
		smallest, smallestIndex := findSmallest(list)
		list = append(list[:smallestIndex], list[smallestIndex+1:]...)
		newList = append(newList, smallest)
	}
	return newList
}

func findSmallest(list []int) (int, int) {
	var smallest, smallestIndex int = list[0], 0
	for i, number := range list {
		if number < smallest {
			smallest = number
			smallestIndex = i
		}
	}
	return smallest, smallestIndex
}

Bubble Sort

Thanks Obama

Email Authentication Policies

Wed, 29 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Problem

I'm a manager of a team that maintains a large scale CIAM solution. One of the many things that the platform does is allow users to preform account actions via email, such as reseting password, or performing email verification. We received a heads up from our infosec team that there would be changes to our company's DMARC policy, and that we should ensure that our emails are able to pass before those chagnes go live. To translate that into impact of our users, if we failed to pass DMARC checks once the changes were live, there was a risk that our users would be unable to receive official emails from us.

Flow

Tue, 28 Jan 2025 08:44:14 -0500

I picked this book up, intending to better understand how I could optimize my day as a people leader to achieve flow state, and thus maximize my output and productivity. What followed was the discovery how much challenge and focus can impact not just productivity, but also happiness, and fulfillment in life.

Never Split the Difference

Tue, 28 Jan 2025 08:36:01 -0500

Advice on how to negotiate from a former hostage negotiator.

Week 4

Sun, 26 Jan 2025 07:50:25 -0500

The week of Gumma's funeral

Experimenting With Digital Minimalism

Thu, 23 Jan 2025 18:34:10 -0500

Abstract

I invest too much of my time into low value, low reward activities. This can be doom scrolling Twitter, reading the latest drama on reddit, or getting sucked into a rabbit hole on Youtube. Sometimes this takes the form of playing a mindless game, or getting sucked into binge watching something on Netflix. I've become addicted to technology. In order to optimize my life for satisfaction, joy, and virtue I need to find a more rigid role for media and technology. To start I'll establish a new baseline, or foundation upon which to build upon.

Vim Motions

Wed, 22 Jan 2025 10:45:51 -0500

VIM Basics

Movement

 </div>

↑ - k
← - h
→ - l
↓ - j

Words

 </div>

w - next word
b - previous word
e - end of next word

Exit

 </div>

:q - quit 
:qw - save & quit
:w - save
:q! - quit without saving

 </div>

G - end of file
gg || :0 - beginning of the file
% - jump to matching '()', '{}', '[]'
<c-b> - page up
<c-f> - page down

 </div>

0 - Move to beginning of line
^ - First non-blank char of line
$ - End of the line

 </div>

w - next word
b - prev word
0 - start of line
^ - first non-blank char of line
$ - end of line

Text Editing

 </div>

a - append
A - append from the end of the line
I - insert at the beginning of line
o - insert from new line
O - insert from prev line
x - delete char under cursor
s - delete character & insert
S - Delete line and insert
C - delete to the end of line and insert
r - replace single character
R - Enter Replace mode

Clipboard

 </div>

u - undo
<c-r> - redo

More Vim

Select within (), {}

 </div>

:vi( - select text within ()
:vib - select text within ()

:vi{ - select text within {}
:viB - select text within {}

Visual Modes

 </div>

v - visual mode
V - line visual mode
<c-v> - visual block mode

Week 3

Sat, 18 Jan 2025 17:31:44 -0500

The Rubber meets the road

Digital Minimalism

Thu, 16 Jan 2025 19:37:34 -0500

Recap

Digital Minimalism, by Cal Newport, focused on applying the ideals of the minimalism moment to a chaotic, digital world. I picked this up as a continuation of my interest and focus on achieving a happier life. Cal would use the phrase "deep life." Digital minimalism isn't about technological luddite, so much as it is about spending our limited time on higher areas of return. This really further highlights that our time on this Earth and specifically our time is a zero sum game.

Tackling Social Medias Hidden Dangers

Wed, 15 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Recap

Cal discusses the impact of the youth ban on social media in Australia, and really dives into the big picture of the motivation behind such a new regulation. Discusses downsides of social media, such as the faux-social connections it triggers in our brains, and how this further ties into the loneliness epidemic experienced in America.

My Notes

with social media comes a lot of inherent risk
- It's like a digital slot machine
  - This is why all social media companies are utilizing algorithmic feeds.
  - It's not about serving you something you want to see; it's about pulling the slot machine lever (swiping down) and finding that nugget that feels like the jackpot
- This is especially a risk for the youth without fully developed frontal cortices
- Uses the phrase digital fentanyl when describing social media use
folks taking the other of the argument that social media is a town square
- social media is not the Internet

Week 2

Sun, 12 Jan 2025 08:22:59 -0500

New Year; New Routines

Week 1

Sun, 05 Jan 2025 21:23:16 -0500

Rolling into 2025

Week 51

Fri, 20 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Keep on keeping on

Week 50

Sun, 15 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Life happens, working through the advent of code

Uses

Wed, 11 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Inspired by the community posts at uses.tech, here's my list of regular tools.

Hardware

Personal: Lenovo Thinkpad P1 Gen 5
- OS: Fedora 40
- CPU: Intel i7-12700H
- GPU: Nvidia RTX A1000
Keyboard: ZSA Moonlander mk1 - Cherry MX Brown
Alt Keyboard: Keychron v1 75% - Cherry MX Brown

Software

My most accurate config can be found in my dotfiles repo and neovimrc repo

Coding: Neovim and Jetbrains
Whiteboarding: excalidraw
Browser: Brave Browser
Notes: Obsidian
NAS: TrueNas
Tabular Data: Google Sheets
Passwords: 1Password
Keyboard Layout: oryx config

Desk Setup

Veri Desk Electric Standing Desk
Main Monitor: Samsung 49" G9 VA LCD 5120x1440
2nd Monitor: LG 35" VA LCD 3440x1440

Homelab

Dell PowerEdge R720 - Currently running TrueNas

Local Dev with NeoVim

Fri, 04 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Neovim Basics

Open New Pane

opens a in-memory file (buffer) and creates a viewport of that buffer (window)

 </div>

<c-w> v - split window vertically
:vsplit :vs - alais for above
<c-w><c-s> - split window in 2 horizontally
:split :sp - alais for above 
:sp +term - opens window and creates new terminal session

Navigate between nvim panes

 </div>

<c-w-h> - Moves the cursor to the left pane.
<c-w-j> - Moves the cursor to the lower pane.
<c-w-k> - Moves the cursor to the upper pane.
<c-w-l> - Moves the cursor to the right pane.

Fuzzy Finder (Telescope)

 </div>

:Telescope - to launch
<c-/> - insert mode while in Telescope
? - normal mode while in Telescope
<c-c> - close telescope

Keymaps for Telescope

 </div>

space-sh - search help
space-sk - search keymaps

Harpoon

 </div>

space-a - add to list
<c-e> - show list
<c-1> - Select 1 from list
<c-2> - Select 2 from list
<c-3> - Select 3 from list
<c-4> - Select 4 from list

Todo

 </div>

:TodoQuickFix - list all todos in project
:TodoTelescope - list all todos in telescope

Coding

 </div>

<shift-k> - show function definiton in tooltip

Diagnostic

 </div>

space-q - show all diagnostic messages
space-sd - search diagnostics
<c-W>d - show diagnostic under cursor

Coding

<shift-k> - show function definiton in tooltip

Coding

 </div>

<shift-k> - show function definiton in tooltip

Local Dev Tools

Kitty Terminal

 </div>

<c-shift-t> - new tab
<c-shift-q> - close tab
<c-shift-right> - next tab
<c-shift-left> - previous tab
<c-shift-enter> - new window
<c-shift-n> - new os window

Tmux

 </div>

tmux new -s sessionName - Start a new session with name
tmux a -t sessionName - Attach to session with given name
tmux ls - list all sessions
tmux kill-session -t sessionName
<c-b> + d - detact from session

Go Indieauth Client

Wed, 04 Sep 2024 19:17:53 -0400

Introduction

What started as small bug when attempting a Web Sign-In, quickly rabbit holed into attempting to craft an IndieAuth playground for testing Web Sign-In.

Demo

About the Project

After spending some time on the forums and reading through the documentation, I remained somewhat lost. I identify as someone that learns best by throwing things against a wall to see what will stick. What I found missing was something akin to Google's OAuth Playground.

Week 26

Mon, 01 Jul 2024 16:08:35 -0400

Reorganizing after a chaotic June

Week 25

Wed, 26 Jun 2024 18:03:34 -0400

Taking some time away

Week 23

Sun, 09 Jun 2024 18:03:40 -0400

Recharging and finding a center at a tech conference

Week 22

Sun, 02 Jun 2024 05:54:25 -0400

Striking work/life balance

Week 21

Sun, 26 May 2024 21:34:14 -0400

Taking some recharge time

Week 20

Sun, 19 May 2024 06:11:01 -0400

Adjusting work/life balance

Add Gift Card to Play Store Account

Mon, 13 May 2024 22:01:51 -0400

Step by steps instructions on how to add Google Play gift cards to a google account.

Week 19

Sun, 12 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

It's been a while since I've been this invested an animals bladder schedule.

Week 18

Sun, 05 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Eureka! Sleep deprivation isn't productive

Keycloak With Docker Compose

Sun, 28 Apr 2024 17:33:28 -0400

Keycloak is an open sourced project for identity and access management developed by Red Hat. It is designed to be a versatile and robust IAM solution for both authentication and authorization for apps and services. What follows is a brief guide on how to run Keycloak locally using docker compose.

Docker Compose

By default, Keycloak will use a dev-file for storage, but for our use case we will be using Postgres. Keycloak does support other databases as well.

Week 17

Sun, 28 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Adjusting to a busy schedule with multifaceted challenges

Hugo

Sat, 27 Apr 2024 16:14:11 -0400

Compiling website

 </div>

# Recompile
hugo --gc

 </div>

# Recompile in developer friendly mode
# -D Enabled compiling drafts
# -F content with future post dates
# - ignore cache
hugo -D -F --ignoreCache

 </div>

# Recompile assets for production
# - remove unused cache after build
# - minify supported output
hugo --gc --minify

Working locally

 </div>

# Run server locally with live reloading
# e.g. http://localhost:1313
hugo server

 </div>

# Select non-default theme
# matches directory within /themes
hugo server -t hugo-clarity

 </div>

# Work via local webserver
# - enables drafts
# - enables future dated content
hugo server -D -F

Letting Hugo Scaffold New Content

 </div>

# Generate new content
# - automatically sets the date
# Selects the kind of post based on path
# Attempts to find & use archetype
`hugo new projects/some-new-project.md`

 </div>

# A kind of post can be specific with -k
`hugo new -k gallery blog/photo-gallery.md`

Theming

Dumping variable in theme

 </div>

<!--Display variable debug info-->
<pre>{{ debug.Dump .Params }}</pre>

Conditional check for homepage

 </div>

<!--Available within Page Object -->
{{ if .IsHome }}
 <h1>Homepage!</h1>
{{ end}

Trim whtie space

 </div>

{{ Prints "as-is" }}
{{- Trims white space before }}
{{ Trims white space after -}}
{{- Trims white space before and after -}}

IT Doesn't Matter

Mon, 22 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Spoiler, it turns our IT does indeed matter, and really isn't a cost center. At least that's true of large scalable organizations.

Week 16

Sun, 21 Apr 2024 18:15:51 -0400

Weekly blogging

It's not always DNS

Sun, 21 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

It's been 0 days since it was DNS.

Team of Teams

Sun, 21 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The Narrow Road Between Desires

Sun, 21 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Scrivener

Fri, 19 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

A utility to transcode ripped DVD and Blu-ray media MKV into MP4 containers. This would be useful for converting physical DVDs into stream ready media for Jellyfin or Plex

Why

I was struggling with getting automatic-ripping-machine to work for my use case, and I wanted to learn more about video and audio codecs as well as tools like ffmpeg.

Cynefin Is A GAMECHANGER For Software Developers

Wed, 17 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This is interesting marking the difference between complication and complexity.

Go Fix Social Links

Thu, 04 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

While I don't really use social media much these days, my friends and co-workers are constantly sharing links from Twitter, Instagram, Tiktok, and more via Discord. The challenge for me, and all of us really is that Discord doesn't handle the oembed from social media sites well in the app. More likely the cause is that they don't provide accurate omebed data. After all if you watch an embedded short, or view a spicy meme without going to these sites, how can they collect your data, or possible serve any adds?

Charleston Foodie List

Sat, 23 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

It's a Thursday night, and I'm looking for a great dining experience with my wife. A colleague is in town and wants to sample "a unique Charleston experience." Most common yet, friends are coming in from up north and are asking for a recommendation. What follows is my personal list of food recommendations for the Charleston area.

Seafood

Fleet Landing $$ reviews: on the water, fresh off the boat
167 RAW $$$ reviews: northern east coast seafood (lobster rolls) pretty good po boys
Cod Father $ reviews: top rate British fish and chips
The Ordinary $$$ reviews: IDK it's on my list per a recommendation

Fun / Experience

EO (Edmunds Oast) $$$ reviews: upscale food + brewery
FIG $$$$ reviews: local farm to table type place, menu rotates out A LOT, but food is super good and fresh
Church and Union $$$ reviews: american and breakfast food, served from inside an old church
R Kitchen $$$ reviews: New menu’s nightly
Circa 1886 $$$$ reviews: Low country seafood (Fancy AF)
The Obstinate Daughter $$ reviews: Low Country comfort food; Great atmosphere, great location; Interrior feels a little cramped; sells ice cream downstairs
Tattooed Moose $$ reviews: American Food; Recommendation based on duck sandwhich and duck fat fries

French

Maison $$$ reviews: recommended to me multiple times
Chez Nous $$$ reviews: French
Vern’s $$$ reviews: French/ European

Italian

Wild Olive $$$ reviews: Rustic-Chic Italian
Le Larfalle $$$ reviews: Regional Italian, cool vibes
Fannie & the Fox $$$ reviews: breakfast and dinner, wood fire pizza and hideaway bar

Steak

Halls Chop House $$$$ reviews: it's a steakhouse, not much to say
Oak Steakhouse $$$$ reviews: it's a steakhouse, not much to say

Burgers

Matt's Burgers $ reviews: No frills, nothing fancy, just a classic, delicious burger
Little Jacks Tavern $$ reviews: Comfort food and good burgers

Tapas

Malagón $$$ reviews: haven't gone but heard good things

BBQ

Lewis Barbeque $$ reviews: The definitive local best bbq in downtown; Proper Texas Style BBQ; Expect a wait in line
HomeTeam $$ reviews: haven't been (yet), but on the top of our list

Soul Food

Nigel's Good Food $$ reviews: Classic southern soul food; Meat n 3 kind of place

Bars

Recovery Room reviews: dive bar. cool place, weirdly into PBRs, has foosball and pool
The Alley reviews: bar + okay food. Has bowling, classic arcade cabinets, Skee-Ball, pinball ping pong tables, and lots of space (covid may have changed somethings)
Rusty Bull reviews: fun bar, good beer
The Whale reviews: craft beer collective
Paddock & Whiskey reviews: Wide whiskey & bourbon selection

Brunch

If it doesn't include mimosa's it's just a late breakfast

PhishSlapped

Sat, 03 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

A repo I use for testing sending of phishing emails via gophish, and mailhog.

Filtering (Fake) Phishing Emails

Wed, 31 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

There are times throughout the year at work when I will unknowingly be subjected to red team testing in the form of phishing email attempts. These are vital in validating an organization's ability to detect and respond to unfriendly actors attempting to gain access to unauthorized data. While keeping these detection skills sharp is critical, what follows is how I've mostly automated the detection of these red team phishing campaigns.

Consider the following email:

Jellyfin Joy: How to Turn Old DVDs into Your Personal Streaming Library

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

With streaming services like Netflix clamping down on password sharing, I've been reevaluating the number of subscriptions I maintain. This is less about being stingy and more about making TV time something that is more intentional. I want to avoid the "are you still watching" effect of solving boredom by mindlessly rabbit-holing through a binge fest on Netflix. I much more enjoy explicitly sitting down to watch a specific "thing" and move on with my life.

2023 South East Linux Fest

Fri, 09 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Because I can't help myself, I've created a schedule for SELF 2023. I've also included a PDF version of the schedule for those who want to print it out.

/ [pdf]

Go Basics

Sun, 12 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Variables

Strictly Typed and Compiled

 </div>

var a bool
a = false
b := true

fmt.Println(a, "and", b) // false and true

 </div>

type banana int
var b banana
fmt.Println(b)
// 0
fmt.Printf("%T\n", b)
// main.banana

Functions

function singature func functionname(parametername type) returntype {

 </div>

func addNum(a int, b int) int {
 var sum = a + b
 return sum
}

hello world

 </div>

package main

import (
 "fmt"
)

func main() {
 fmt.Printf("Hello, Chris.\n")
}

Composite Data Types

Arrays

Arrays are fixed length

GoGoPing

Sat, 21 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

A rewrite of the ping application from C to go. Create a tool that is useful in debugging connections to the Internet.

At the time of writing this I had a specific use case that allowing ping to utilize concurrency for very specific testing (scaling network pings to multiple hosts in as efficient a way as possible). This later turned into nothing more than an opportunity for me to write more Go code and build a better understanding of berkley sockets and UDP.

Lightbox Gallery with Go Templates in Hugo

Mon, 18 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I typically spend my weekends shooting landscape photography or hacking away my newest side project. Trying to start the new year off by killing two birds with one stone, I embarked to build a lightweight lightbox component into my fresh hugo blog.

I want a reusable component, that once complete will allow me to quickly drop it into a future blog post in order to share a new series of photos. Given that I chose Hugo based on the ease of writing content in Markdown, I didn't want to deviate from that paradigm. Not wanting to add complex markup with my markdown content files, I quickly landed on implementing new Shortcodes.

About

Fri, 01 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Curious about the tech I use? Checkout my uses page

I enjoy a good candlelit dinner, long walks on the beach, and diving head first into interesting code. I believe the oxford comma isn't optional and that there's a special place in hell for people that don't rinse ketchup off of their plates

I use this blog to document interesting things I build, a form of "blogumentation", chronicle my adventures, share cute puppy pictures, and occasionally share my opinions.

Tue, 28 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

2019 East Coast Drupal Camp Guide

Fri, 01 Feb 2019 00:00:00 +0000

East Coast Drupal's guide to camps.

Event	Start Date	End Date	CFP Deadline	Locale
Drupal Camp New Jersey	02/02/2019	02/02/2019	Closed	Princeton, NJ
Florida Drupal Camp	02/15/2019	02/17/2019	Closed	Orlando, FL
Drupal Con	04/08/2019	04/12/2019	Closed	Seattle, WA
Drupaldelphia	05/10/2019	05/10/2019	Closed	Philadelphia, PA
Drupal Camp Chattanooga	06/08/2019	Closed	Closed	Chattanooga, TN
Drupal Camp Asheville	07/12/2019	07/14/2019	Closed	Asheville, NC
Drupal Gov Con	07/24/2019	07/26/2019	Closed	Washington, D.C.
Decoupled Drupal Days	~Aug *	~Aug *	Closed	NYC, NY
Drupal Camp Baltimore	~Oct *	~Oct *	Closed	Baltimore, MD
Drupal Camp Cornell	~Oct *	~Oct *	Closed	Ithaca, NY
Drupal Camp Atlanta	~Nov *	~Nov *	Closed	Atlanta, GA
New England Drupal Camp	~Nov *	~Nov *	Closed	Providence, RI

* Dates are based on camp dates from 2018.

Find mysql Table Size

Fri, 22 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

TL;DR

A sql query to list the size of database tables on a mysql server.

SELECT concat( table_schema, '.', table_name ) table_name,
 concat( round( data_length / ( 1024 *1024 ) , 2 ) , 'M' ) data_length,
 concat( round( index_length / ( 1024 *1024 ) , 2 ) , 'M' ) index_length,
 concat( round( round( data_length + index_length ) / ( 1024 *1024 ) , 2 ) , 'M' ) total_size
FROM information_schema.TABLES
ORDER BY LENGTH(total_size) DESC, total_size DESC
LIMIT 20;

Problem

I found myself working on a project that had been in active development for 5 years and had a 25 GB database. One of my tasks was to implement automated testing and build a CD/CI pipeline in an effort to decrease the amount of bugs we were shipping and decrease the feedback loop on newly implemented features. The largest challenge was the amount of time it took to build a fresh instance of the site. This was almost entirely due to the size of the database.

WTF is Sculpin

Tue, 07 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Sculpin is a static site generator written in PHP. And WTF is a static site generator? It's a tool for generating html files using raw data like TWIG and markdown. It's great for a website that has content that doesn’t need to be updated by multiple users on a regular basis, authentication, search, or any logic that requires server side communications. It can remove much of the complexity that comes with a CMS or hefty framework, as well as the need for server side technologies like PHP or a database server. A Static site generator is great for my personal blog or the local astronomy group news site, but not ideal for a large news organization that has much more dynamic content. Sculpin has the advantage of being written in a language I’m already familiar with; PHP. Some of the standout features of Sculpin include:

An Impostor's Blog

Thu, 02 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000

After a year and a half, I'm finally getting around to launching my new blog. That's a lot of time for a small static website. That should mean that this blog is packed full of innovative technologies, captivating designs, and polished features, right? It has to be perfect. Thankfully this is not perfect, or so I keep telling myself. Perfection is the number one reason I'm surrounded by half finished projects. Perfectionists often seem like super human people who strive for a higher quality than us mere mortals, but that's not the case. Perfection is a mask for fear, and an enemy to "done". This blog is my acceptance that imperfect and done is ultimately better than perfect and incomplete.

Getting started with Upstart

Thu, 17 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Upstart is an event based monitoring system for monitoring and controlling services and daemons. Upstart is meant to be a replacement for the older System V init.d start up scripts with better optimizations in parrelism and boot time. It can be used to run serveral one off tasks, like that of any shell script, or can monitor long running background services.

To create an upstart script, create a job configuration file in the /etc/init directory. All job configuration files follow the convention of .conf where is the name of the boot script for upstart. Below is a base template of an example upstart script.

Fun linux Terminal Tools

Thu, 31 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Anyone with a UNIX based machine (Linux or MAC) has access to a terminal. Anyone with a Linux computer has almost undoubtedly dabbled with command line utilities for some period of time. Here are a few little known terminal tools that I found interesting. I'll give examples of the tools, though it's worth noting that I'm on an Ubuntu Computer.

slurm: Displays network load using ascii art.
slurm -i eth0

mtr: Traceroute on steroids. The kind the NCAA frowns on.
mtr www.google.com

taskwarrior (package name: task): task add make todo list, task add relax feature rich console based todo list

nethack (package name: nethack-console): nethack For you truly hard core gamers a ascii art text based dungeon explorer move with the (h,j,k,l) keys open doors with o “?” for much needed help

Zietlow

Go JSON Unmarshaling

TL;DR

Problem

Time of Contempt

Blood of Elves

Sword of Destiny

The Last Wish

Learning Systems Thinking

Systems Thinking

Systems Thinking

Tmux

Week 23

The Dark Forest

The Three Body Problem

The Anxious Generation

The Book of Why

Week 22

Week 17

Week 9

DOE Simplified

Supercommunicators

Team Topologies

Why

Week 8

Go Http

Leadership That Gets Results

What Makes a Leader

Week 7

Add IndieAuth to Your Website

IndieAuth

Week 6

Week 5

Go Handy Snippets

Useful Go-isms

Popping an element from a slice via cutting

Combining 3 slices

Single line array swaps

Maps must be initialized

Data Structures and Algorithms Go

Algorithm

Simple Sorts

Selection Sort

Example

Bubble Sort

Email Authentication Policies

Problem

Flow

Never Split the Difference

Week 4

Experimenting With Digital Minimalism

Abstract

Vim Motions

VIM Basics

Movement

Words

Exit

Screen Navigation

Line Navigation

Word Navigation

Text Editing

Clipboard

More Vim

Select within (), {}

Visual Modes

Week 3

Digital Minimalism

Recap

Tackling Social Medias Hidden Dangers

Recap

My Notes

Week 2

Week 1

Week 51

Week 50

Uses

Hardware

Software

Desk Setup

Homelab