Blog
I've been writing online at various sites since 2003, mostly about a wide variety of topics including web development, tech, food and whatever else I feel like writing and sharing.
There is no bar
There is no bar for the quality of a blog post. Allow me to be an example....
50 years of Atari
Commemorating the 50th anniversary of Atari, Benj Edwards interviewed founder Nolan Bushnell for How-To Geek...
Apple retail workers vote to unionize a store in Maryland
Workers at Appleās Towson Town Center store in Maryland have voted to unionize, with 65 yeses and 33 nos. Around 110 employees were eligible to vote in the election....
Celery Parsnip Salad
Parsnips⦠Theyāre the veggie everyone loves to hate, theyāre a veggie that tastes best in the cooler seasons when their flavour is sweeter like winter squash, whereas the rest of the time, they have a bitter taste. This dish is one way to enjoy them raw....
GitHub Sunsetting Atom
"We are archiving Atom and all projects under the Atom organization for an official sunset on December 15, 2022."...
Ryan Broderick on VR āReal Estateā
There are plenty of ways to make money in the metaverse ā custom avatars, cool maps, unique digital experiences, ad-supported livestreamed playthrough videos ā but the folks trying to convince you to buy a digital mansion or a virtual yacht arenāt going to be part of that new economy. ...
Lee Rob and The Story of Heroku
āHeroku made it easy for any developer to build and run applications in the cloud without managing their own infrastructure. Now 15 years later, it continues to inspire the next generation of developers. Why did Heroku become so popular? What can we learn from their incredible developer experience? How is Heroku shaping the next generation of serverless?ā...
8 short rules for being a creator
Just 8 short and simple rules for being a creator....
Welcome to the new more streamlined blog.
This blog has been around since 2003, from being on blogger, to various custom builds, to wordpress, to jekyll, to ghost, to wordpress......
Elon Musk and Twitter
Elon Musk, in a letter to Twitter chairman Bret Taylor and filed with the SEC expressed his interest in buying 100% of Twitter....
Marco Arment on redesigning Overcast
Overcastās latest update brings the largest redesign in its nearly-eight-year history, plus many of the most frequently requested features and lots of under-the-hood improvements....
Apple: āAn update on AirTag and unwanted trackingā
Apple Newsroomās update on AirTags and malicious tracking: Every AirTag has a unique serial number, and paired AirTags are associated with an Apple ID....
Open source developer corrupts widely-used libraries, affecting tons of projects
A developer appears to have purposefully corrupted a pair of open-source libraries on GitHub and software registry npm ā āfaker.jsā and ācolors.jsā ā that thousands of users depend on, rendering any project that contains these libraries useless. ...
Judge orders Apple to allow external payment options for App Store by December 9th, denying stay
Epic v. AppleĀ judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers says Apple must comply with an order to let developers add links and buttons to external payment options, denying the companyās motion for a stay....
Eight Things Apple Could Do to Prove It Actually Cares about App Store Users
WhenĀ you spend money in Appleās App Store, the company generally takes a 30 percent cut ā one that adds up to an estimated $19 billion per year. ...
Facebook shouldnāt be allowed to buy Giphy, says UK regulator
15 months ago, FacebookĀ said it was buyingĀ the popular GIF search engine Giphy for about $400 million. Now the acquisition may be a bust, thanks to an antitrust probe by the UKās Competition and Markets Authority. ...
Drew Devault: āIn praise of PostgreSQLā
Drew Devault: After 25 years of persistence, and a better logo design, Postgres stands today as one of the most significant pillars of profound achievement in free software, alongside the likes of Linux and Firefox. ...
Fish and Brewis
Fish and Brewis is a favourite traditional dish from Newfoundland (my home province), itās a dish that combines Fish, Potatoes, pork, Hardtack, onions, butter and salt....
Careful with WiFi names on your iPhone.
A few weeks ago, Schou and his not-for-profit group, Secret Club, which reverse-engineers software for research purposes, found that if an iPhone connected to a network with the SSiD nameā¦...
Campfire Mac and Cheese
Mac and Cheese is a staple in nearly any cooking situation, and camping is no different....
Basecampās crazy weekā¦
First, Casey Newton broke the news on some controversy from Basecamp that happened due to a list: The controversy that embroiled enterprise software maker Basecamp this week began more than a decade ago, with a simple list of customers. ...
Is Heroku Still Relevant?
Heroku has long been held up as the gold-standard platform as a service (PaaS) for software developers to easily deploy their code without having to worry about the underlying infrastructure, while others see it as akin to a magical fallen civilization with a limited future....
Switching from Google Analytics to Plausible.
Iāve been using Google Analytics for years but decided to try new tools. But I just wanted to move onto a new Analytics tool that was faster and more private. What I eventually ended up choosing was Plausible. Ā Plausible is a powerful yet simple analytics platform. The simplicity is what got me happy about it....
The Mess at Medium
Last week, a partnerships manager at Medium working with the White House found that there was a strange problem with the platform......
Clubhouse Is Recording Your Conversations. Thatās Not Even Its Worst Privacy Problem
Clubhouse was sort of perfectly made for the pandemic. People arenāt going out, and theyāre desperately searching for social connections and entertainment. ...
Jeff Bezos Walks Through a One-Way Door, Opening a New Age for Amazon
Bloomberg: The walls of his highly compartmentalized empire have been crumbling for some time. Itās becoming increasingly difficult to be Jeff Bezos (at least by Bezosās standards). ...
Google killing Tilt Brush VR painting app butā¦
Tilt Brush, Googleās virtual reality painting application, has collaborated with amazing creators over the years, many of whom were part of our Artist in Residence Program. ...
Apple is astonishingly confident in its new M1 Mac processors
Appleās big Mac event delivered three new computers ā a new MacBook Air, a new entry-level 13-inch MacBook Pro, and a new Mac mini. ...
Why you can no longer install Fortnite on iOS
Fortnite disappeared from the App Store last month as part of developer Epic Gamesā big legal and regulatory showdown with Apple, but the battle royale hit was not gone entirely ā at least not for a little while. ...
Nintendo Switch overtakes SNES with more than 52 million sold
Nintendo had its strongest Switch quarter ever this holiday season, moving 10.81 million units to reach a total of 52.48 million sold as of the end of 2019....
The āTragicā iPad
āSteve Jobs stepped onstage 10 years ago today to introduce the world to the iPad. It was, by his own admission, a third category of device that sits somewhere between a smartphone and a laptop. Jobs unveiled the iPad just days after the annual Consumer Electronics Show endedā¦ā...
Googleās End of an Era
āLarry Page and Sergey Brin areĀ stepping downĀ from runningĀ Alphabet, leaving the company to Sundar Pichai. This likely signals the end of an era, when Google tried to solve a vast array of human problems under Alphabetās broad umbrellaābut pretty much failed to turn any of them into a profitable business.ā...
John Gruber: 16-inch MacBook Pro First Impressions
Apple today is releasing its much-rumored newĀ 16-inch MacBook Pro. It is full of good news....
How the heart became the centre of the Apple Watch
Earlier this year,Ā Appleās CEO Tim Cook commented on the importance of health to the company. In a statement that has been widely quoted, he said, āI believe, if you zoom out into the future, and you look back, and you ask the question, āWhat was Appleās greatest contribution to mankind?ā...
iPad Pro USB-C Hubs: The Best, Worst, and Weirdest Options
Chris Welch, writing for The Verge: The iPad Proās single USB Type-C port is one of my main frustrations about an otherwise truly stellar piece of technology....
Panicās Playdate
From the Playdate website: Hello. We made a brand new handheld gaming system. Itās yellow. It fits in your pocket. Itās got a beautiful black and white screen. Itās not super cheap, but not super expensive. It includes brand new games from some amazing creators. Plus it has a crank....
Donāt Fuck with a Nasa Engineer
Mark Rober: Someone stole a package from me. Police wouldnāt do anything about it so I spent the last 6 months engineering up some vigilante justice. Revenge is a dish best served fabulously....
Microsoft Is Worth as Much as Apple. How Did That Happen?
Just a few years ago, Microsoft was seen as a lumbering has-been of the technology world. It was big and still quite profitable, but the company had lost its luster, failing or trailing in the markets of the future like mobile, search, online advertising and cloud computing....
Jason Snell on the New Ipad Pros: āa Computer, Not a Pcā
Jason Snell, writing for Six Colors: With the iPad Pro and improvements to iOS and various iOS apps, I reached a point where I could do most or all of my required work on the road without bringing a Mac along....
Remembering Stan Lee
If Stan Lee revolutionized the comic book world in the 1960s, which he did, he left as big a stamp ā maybe bigger ā on the even wider pop culture landscape of today. Think of āSpider-Man,ā the blockbuster movie franchise and Broadway spectacle....
Austin Mann: A Photographerās Review of the iPad Pro
Austin Mann has published an excellent review of the new iPad Pro for photographers: I was working with Mavic Pro 2 in the black volcanic deserts of south Iceland. While sitting in the car (in the middle of the desert, in the middle of nowhere), I decided to offload my images and review them....
Fifty Years of BASIC, the Programming Language That Made Computers Personal
Harry McCracken, writing for Time: It was huge news among the small number of people who could be called computer nerds at the time ā people like Paul Allen, who was working as a programmer for Honeywell in Boston....
IBMās Acquisition of Canadian-founded Red Hat One of the Largest Ever
Open source software company Red Hat is being acquired by IBM for $34 billion USD. Depending on who you ask, it is either theĀ secondĀ orĀ third-largestĀ tech acquisition of all time....
Instant Pot Turkey breast
Itās thanksgiving, which means turkey time. I usually buy butterball boneless turkey breasts to make since I like getting more meat out of my turkey, and these are all meat and no bones (hence the name) Cooking one with an instant pot is actually pretty quick, and tasty....
Chicken and Sausage Jambalaya (Instant Pot Style)
I havenāt posted a good recipe in a while, so decided to post this one. Itās a dish I enjoy making in the Instant Pot....
Cheesy Zucchini Bread
Love cheesy bread? But want a healthier alternative that still tastes good? This cheesy zucchini bread is both healthy and tasty....
Speedy Chicken Tikka Masala
Chicken Tikka Masala is one of the most popular Indian dishes out there, and I love it, but I wanted to make a simpler version that was both speedy, healthy and tasty....
Pressure Cooker Balsamic Chicken Breasts
I love my pressure cooker, and this is a dish thatās one of my favorites....
Grilled Salmon Fillet with Spicy Blackberry Sauce
Itās summer, and that means itās time for grilling in the backyard, but maybe you want a break from the usual burgers or steaks or hot dogs? This spicy, but sweet and tasty fish dish will hit the spot....
Roasted Tomatillo and Pepper Sauce
When you want a nice zesty sauce but donāt want the usual salsa or pesto, this tasty Tomatillo and Petter sauce is great....
Reviewing The Nintento Switch
I had started to write my review of the Nintendo Switch, but Myke Hurley did a great job pulling together this video walkthrough of it, and nailed just about everything I had planned to write, so Iām sharing it here. If you are interested in the Nintendo Switch, then you need to watch this video....
Steve Jobsās first reaction to the Genius Bar: āThatās so idiotic! It will never work!ā
In 2000, when Apple hired Ron Johnson to create and run its first retail stores, Johnson got a crash course in working with Steve Jobs. Arguably the centerpiece of what became the Apple Store is the Genius Bar, one of Johnsonās ideas....
Slow Cooked Turkey Breast
Itās Christmas, and one favourite Christmas dish is turkey....
Mediterranean Chicken Quinoa Bowl
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Pineapple Peach Ghost Pepper Sauce
We grow our own Ghost peppers and various handy kitchen herbs in our back yard, itās nice to just walk out and grab what you need to make something....
Easy Baked Macaroni and Cheese
Mac and Cheese is one of those dishes that you can customize as much as you want and it never gets old....
Chili Lime Broiled Avocado
Avocadoes⦠the things you can make with them are incredible or just slice them and eat them as is. This is a fun recipe that is pretty basic, but tasty....
Avocado Dip
This tasty recipe was posted on here before, and got accidentally deleted when I did the jekyll migration last year. Since then, Iāve had people asking for the recipe again, so I am putting it back here now....
Adding Push Notifications to your Parse Server App
I was originally going to write about how to use node.js to enable push notifications, but the latest version of Parse Server now includes basic push notification support using Google Cloud Messaging (GCM) for Android devices and Apple Push Notification Service (APNS) for iOS devices....
Getting Started with Parse Server, Heroku and MongoLabs
Last week, Parse announced they would be shutting down their hosting by January 28th 2017, and like just about every other developer out there, I immediately started playing around with their open sourced Parse Server, and setting it up on Heroku....
Wasabi Coleslaw
This light and tangy slaw combines a crisp mix of cabbage, daikon, carrots and radishes with a bright dressing of rice vinegar and spicy wasabi....
Maple Lemon Chicken
My daughter and I made this for dinner tonight and it was tasty....
Cheesy Baked Spaghetti Squash
Chili-lime chicken, beans, spaghetti squash and cheese⦠This is a tasty combination that we love to make....
Fish Cakes
Iām originally from Newfoundland, and fish cakes are a staple we grew up with alongside another traditional dish called fish and brewis....
Generate UUIDs in PHP
Iām working on a project currently where I am using UUIDs as unique identifiers. PHP doesnāt have a good UUID function for this, so I wrote one that let me generate one. ...
Using the x-requested-with header to include content on demand
I like using the same PHP script for both AJAX and non-AJAX content requests. Using one script just makes everything easier because itās only one file to update/edit and itās one more cache-able request. ...