Matt

  • Applying The Creative Writing Process to Software

    Grabbing the best ideas from other industries and applying it to your own is a fantastic way to learn and discover new ways to do things. I was listening to the Tim Ferriss podcast yesterday in an interview with Neil Strauss.  Two best selling authors discussing their creative process for writing a book.  It got me thinking…

  • too many computers?

    There are quite a few computers in the house. Heather has a MacBook Pro for herself I have a Macbook Air that I use most of the time and leave around the house In my office there is an old 2009 Mac Mini which is showing it’s age but mostly acts as a machine to host my…

  • Finding time to code

    Finding time to write code after work, when you have an eight month old and a full time job is nearly impossible.  I’m not sure how others manage to do this. It’s time to do an audit of my time management.  To figure out just where all my free time is going so that I…

  • Father’s Day

    This was my first Father’s Day as a father. Man, that’s still kind of weird to say. Ada’s personality is starting to show through. She’s going to be a handful and tornado of energy to manage.

  • Polyglot vs Specialization

    I consider myself a fairly well rounded developer. So when it comes time to choose a technology to accomplish a task I will happily choose the one that is the best fit whether it requires Ruby, Python, Java, Objective-C, PHP, CSS, or Bash or anything else. Recently I was given a project to take on.…

  • Thoughts on Swift

    So for an iOS developer like myself Swift is pretty exciting. When a new language comes along, especially one that is sure to get traction, there is a lot of opportunity to create some exciting new things.  We all know that Swift will make inroads into the mac and iOS app scene, but as a…

  • What happens when computers are smarter than you

    A few years ago I was working at a finance company doing quantitative stock algorithms and I remember hearing an interesting story. Back in the early 2000’s there was some buzz around neural networks and their ability to be used to pick stocks.  The company at the time had invested some R&D into creating their…

  • Investing in your Productivity

    This week in discussion with the rest of my team it became apparent that there was a lack of investment in creating tools to help with the productivity of the team. There are four distinct areas you can focus on to improve your productivity as a software developer. Focus Software development requires a lot of time to…

  • Lessons from Consulting

    As a consultant you get the chance to work on lots of unique projects from the ground up and also to come in and fix up existing projects.  With an eye towards managing a budget, estimating your time, and  keeping active communication there are a lot of valuable lessons to learn. On the other hand…

  • Strategy Adjustment

    Despite my amazing singing, Birds can fly had a less than stellar first week in the store. Invader Crush essentially saw no downloads. It seems that there are just too many games in the store. It’s nearly impossible to get noticed with simple games (outside of pure luck).  I thought that the laughable graphics and…