Software Engineering

Coding, Python, web development, architecture, and deployment

  • Personal Cloud

    It kind of snuck up on me a bit over the years. I have got a rather decent collection of computers running for various different side projects over the years. At home I run a local NAS file server 24/7 for local backups and as a shared place to access files from other computers and…

  • A Surprising Year

    I was about to write a blog post about how 2017 was one of the least dramatic years, but then skimmed through my past 12 months of blog posts and realized just how much did happen. We didn’t move, or have another baby. However, these are some of the highlights: Ada started school! I learned…

  • My Crypto Token

    This weekend I was in Montreal for the PyCon Canada conference. The first time I’ve been able to attend event though it’s something I’ve debated going to almost every year for the last decade. However, the weekend was cut short to work on something more interesting. I used some of my time this weekend to…

  • Alexa vs. Google

    I got in on the pre-orders for the newly announced Google Home Minis After playing around with the Amazon Alexa for the last few months I wanted to see what the differences would be. It’s clear after just a couple of days with the Google Home in the house that it is MUCH better. Google…

  • Not Infallible

    I’ve been reading the Walter Isaacson biography of Benjamin Franklin which is quite insightful both in terms of the genius of the man himself, and the historical perspective. One trait he had which I think I also share is a healthy appreciation of my own and everyone else’s fallibilities. In my world view the human body…

  • Keep Moving Forward

    My current project is picking up. The more I think about it the more excited I become about the potential value that will be created with it. Things took a significant step forward on Friday with a meeting with an accountant firm and corporate lawyer.  I’m taking the weekend to think through the options they gave…

  • Naming is Hard

    There’s a quote in Computer Science – “There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things.”  Well, naming things is hard for everyone. Everyone brings to the table a history of accumulated connotations and associations such that the meaning of everything is different to each and every one of us.…

  • The Problem With Open Source

    Open Source software has been on my mind a lot the last few weeks with regards to a problem that exists within the community. The world is built on the shoulders of Open Source software. If you look at any tech startup out there,  they are more public code than proprietary. We leverage open source…

  • Consider Your Loss Aversion Bias

    Loss aversion is the preference we have to avoid losing $5 compared to gaining $5.  It’s logically the same value in this example but yet some studies have shown that we are twice as likely to favor avoiding the loss.  This effect plays out multiple different ways in our lives.  We tend to hold on to…

  • Team Communication Overhead Costs

    I’m in the middle of undertaking a large software project – something that could take 200 hours to get to an MVP. I wanted to get things organised. My first thought was to use some of the tools I’m used to – Trello for a kanban style board, bug tracking, continuous integration services, Slack. But…