Published inDev Genius·PinnedLog4Shell, as explained by Metaphor and Memes!What a charming holiday season — with a pair of AWS zone outages, I thought it’d be great to dig into availability zone resilience and the tradeoffs and practicalities involved in achieving it. Surely there could be no greater Systems Integrity topic to chat about? So what is Log4J and what’s the big deal? Log4J is a super common…Log4shell8 min readLog4shell8 min read
Apr 19, 2020Some Thoughts on DIY Plastic RecyclingDisclaimer: This article really has nothing to do with anything going on in society right now. I had some curiosity about the viability of DIY plastic recycling at home, and I wrote up my journey. Maybe reading along will be fun for you :-) Please don’t try any of this…Plastic Pollution14 min readPlastic Pollution14 min read
Published inGlitch: Make Better Software·Oct 3, 2017Making your big app a little Glitchy around the edgesA story about using Glitch-powered microservices to add real functionality to large, preexisting web applications. I’ll show you how we added support for Slack Classic URL Unfurling, a feature useful in just about every web app. …Microservices9 min readMicroservices9 min read
Sep 7, 2017BarbudaThis is Barbuda. I, like most of you, haven’t heard much about it before today. Their last census was in 2011, but most estimates today place their population at about 1,800 people. …Environment4 min readEnvironment4 min read
Jun 22, 2017Flextime & Work SchedulesBecause sometimes it’s a beautiful day outside. Because sometimes it’s not. — Flextime is the most valuable and most under-appreciated perk that I’ve known in my professional career. It’s a benefit that I’ve used consistently and to great benefit throughout my time at Fog Creek, from my internship in the summer of 2008 through today. …Remote Working13 min readRemote Working13 min read
Published inGlitch·Jun 6, 2017How I wanted to start with StripeSimple Stripe checkout with Glitch — This morning, a helpful blog post by Slater Stich made the rounds on Hacker News, showcasing a static website implementing Stripe Subscriptions that was backed by AWS Lambda. The thing that caught my eye about this post was just how little code it took to get a subscription service up…AWS3 min readAWS3 min read
Apr 27, 2017Lists of things undoneBoards and boards of lists and lists of cards and cards of things undone. Projects and projects of cases and cases of things undone. Sheaves of paper piled high with jotted notes of things undone. ‘Todo’ list is unfair. It hints that things will be done. And let’s not forget…Amazon Echo2 min readAmazon Echo2 min read
Dec 29, 2016Get the most out of your 1–1’s and harvest the strengths of your manager or, failing that, find success in spite of them.I’d like to talk one about one-on-ones a little bit, speaking as a servant leader at a small tech company, and advocating on behalf of the individual contributors. …Management8 min readManagement8 min read
