When the pipe bursts 7am every Wednesday, it was time to release the code. I’d take a weeks worth of code that I knew nothing about, by 2 dozen people, and ship it to production. We tested the code in isolation. We tested it together in our lower environments. But even then when it was… Continue reading Molasses – Why did I build a feature flag startup?
Making Laundry Less Terrible with Machine Learning
Since my son was born, I’ve been doing a lot of laundry. An infant’s laundry needs are small (well the clothes are) but frequent so to be efficient you might as well do the whole family’s the laundry. When you do enough laundry, you’ll notice those little tags. Each garment has a set of shapes… Continue reading Making Laundry Less Terrible with Machine Learning
The Westworld Software Team is bad at XP and DevOps
While watching Season 1 of Westworld, I spent the entire time annoying my wife. I would bug her about the anti-patterns I saw the software teams at Westworld using. Of course, the anti-patterns were for dramatic effect. It wouldn’t be interesting if everything went right. But, since it’s rife with bad practices it can be a good… Continue reading The Westworld Software Team is bad at XP and DevOps
Molasses! A feature toggle library for Elixir
Early this year when I read about Erlang in Seven Languages In Seven Weeks, I mentioned that Elixir was a language I intended to explore this year. At Maxwell Health, we also started to investigate Elixir for new projects because we wanted a functional language in our arsenal and we liked it’s concurrency story. So… Continue reading Molasses! A feature toggle library for Elixir
More Books in 2016!
I’m back with another set of books I read this year. I’ll be finishing a few more by the end of the year. Walkable city: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time – When I travel, I love to use the public transit of a city and walk as much as I… Continue reading More Books in 2016!
Antidote
As of data released yesterday, the state of Massachusetts loses 5 people a day to opioid overdose. The whole nation is facing an epidemic, young people are dying at an alarming rate and more people becoming addicted to opioids every day. Naloxone is a drug that reverses the effects of an opioid overdose and saves… Continue reading Antidote
TV Pilots are a treasure trove of data
A few months ago, I did a little weekend project of looking at TV comedy pilot scripts. For those unfamiliar with the concept, when a television show is being developed a network will order a pilot episode as a test to see if it will pick it up for a full season. As a result,… Continue reading TV Pilots are a treasure trove of data
Some More Books I Read in 2016
When I started the year I had a goal that I would write a blurb about each book I finished this year however I’ve fallen way behind in the writing piece. As a form of catch-up (read as cheating), I’m going to quickly recap the books I’ve read since The Power Of Habit. Born To Run – A… Continue reading Some More Books I Read in 2016
The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business By Charles Duhigg
At my old job, we used to have cans of Coca-Cola available in our fridge. I remember every day I would start to drag around 3 PM, and then the lovely sound of someone else opening a can would cause me to get up, drift to the fridge, open my own and drink it as… Continue reading The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business By Charles Duhigg
This Is Your Brain on Sports: The Science of Underdogs, the Value of Rivalry, and What We Can Learn from the T-Shirt Cannon by L. Jon Wertheim and Sam Sommers
I like sports but I think I love the human side of sports more. I read Deadspin, when I had cable I watched Outside The Lines and 30 for 30 and I listen weekly to Only A Game on NPR. Sometimes it feels like professional sports are its own universe where outlandish behavior is acceptable… Continue reading This Is Your Brain on Sports: The Science of Underdogs, the Value of Rivalry, and What We Can Learn from the T-Shirt Cannon by L. Jon Wertheim and Sam Sommers