Archives
2024
December
November
October
September
- Spectator Sport, a brief introduction to an upcoming Rails plugin
- Seeing like a Rails and Ruby platform team
- The secret to perfectly calculate Rails database connection pool size
- The Novice Problem
July
- Notes from Carrierwave to Active Storage
- On the importance of Rails code reloading and autoloading
- Introducing GoodJob v4
June
April
March
February
January
- Replacing Devise with Rails `has_secure_password` and friends
- Two stories about technical debt, I guess
- The answer is in your heap: debugging a big memory increase in Ruby on Rails
- Trigger GitHub Actions workflows with inputs from Apple Shortcuts
- Recently, January 3, 2023
2023
December
November
October
September
August
- Appropriately using Ruby’s Thread.handle_interrupt
- Fake the algorithm til you make it
- How to isolate I18n configuration in a Rails Engine
- I read "Recoding America by Jen Pahlka"
July
June
- 19 sales & marketing strategies in 19 weeks
- Rebuilding Concurrent Ruby: ScheduledTask, Event, and TimerSet
May
April
- I read "The Constant Rabbit by Jasper Fforde"
- I read "The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow"
March
- How GoodJob's mountable Rails Engine delivers Javascript importmaps and frontend assets
- Recently, March 12, 2023
February
- Service Object Objects in Ruby
- Slop and call
- Prevent CDN poisoning from Fat GET/HEAD Requests in Ruby on Rails
- Introducing GoodJob Bulk and Batch
January
- Framing open source contributions at work
- How GoodJob's Cron does distributed locks
- Conflict, at work
- 2022 in review
2022
December
November
- Environment, at work
- Worknotes: November 13, 2022
- I read "Synectics: The Development of Creative Capacity by William J. J. Gordon"
October
September
- Persian Tahchin-inspired crispy chicken rice
- Weeknotes: September 19, 2022
- Reflections on Brompt, 2022
- I read "Object Thinking by David West"
August
July
- Hate and sarcasm
- Four dumb-cringe tech interview stories
- "What the fuck are you talking about?": The story of NodeTiles
- We're all just people here, even platforms
- Worknotes: Week 9
June
- I read "Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge in Computing by Mar Hicks"
- Laws of Spacecraft and Software
- I read "Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots"
May
April
March
- Working the problem
- Sense-making list-making
- I read "Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993 by Sarah Schulman"
- Five years on food stamps
- I read "Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber"
- Over-rapported
- I read "OOP the easy way by Graham Lee"
- Software models
February
- It asks you to be interactive
- Even if the answers are messy and provisional
- TIL: ActiveRecord transactions roll back on Ruby Thread abort
January
2021
December
November
October
September
July
- GoodJob, what's new: Cron, concurrency controls, and a dashboard demo (v1.12.0)
- Paranoid and Reparative readings
June
May
- Is SecureRandom.choose the wrong name for generating randomized strings with Ruby?
- Generic advice for managers
January
2020
November
- Maimonides' levels of charity
- If you can hook them for a day, you can hook them for two
- Dying on management mountain
- Triangular eating
- Better by our own standards
- The five ideals explained
October
- The furthest to go in efforts to reach their full humanity
- The sublime
- Centering Civic Tech
- GoodJob v1.3: Web dashboard and full documentation
- Performance facilitators not supervisors
September
August
- GoodJob v1.2: Multithreaded queue isolation and LISTEN/NOTIFY
- GoodJob v1.1: async and improved documentation
July
- Introducing GoodJob 1.0, a new Postgres-based, multithreaded, ActiveJob backend for Ruby on Rails
- Retail politics
- Engineering Operations is not the same as Development
January
2019
December
November
- Deterministic test data with Faker, FactoryBot, and RSpec
- Because it helps them to release software
- The Concrete Sumo - Ethics in Software Engineering Discussion Guide
- Public comments on Sunset housing
October
September
July
June
May
April
February
January
- Having a creator's profile
- Just the fact there doesn't seem to be a reason doesn't mean there isn't a reason
- The work of product management
- Advocacy, inquiry, and very large teams
- What are the rewards?
2018
November
- Difficult workshops and vulnerability
- Market perils and political exclusion
- Asymmetry of happiness and misery
October
September
August
July
April
March
- 2017 Professional Goals Reviewed
- Japanese processes
- If you replaced “accessibility” with “responsive design” in 2018, this is what you’d get
January
2017
December
- Design Principles are insights made actionable
- Taking responsibility for safety on the line
- People do not need or await permission to move
- The Three Ways Explained
July
May
April
January
2016
December
November
October
May
2015
December
2014
October
February
2013
September
July
June
May
2012
December
September
August
July
April
March
February
January
2011
November
October
- The point where creativity and invention occur
- The work itself isn’t inhumane
- Fundraising Tool Memo Boilerplate
- The prevailing worldview of the present
- That Californian Ideology
- Community mapping class interview & outcomes
September
- Project fecundity
- Meet AmeriCorps no more
- Crime and Data Leadership
- Ambiguous URL
- Shifting beliefs, remaking the pie
- Where rhetoric is substance
August
July
- Similar message, wider audience
- DonorsChoose Contest Update: Consolation Prize Edition
- A modest web-app proposal
- Competitive Collaboration or Collaborative Competition
- The event is a tyrant
- Planning is timeless
June
- Print & Share: not everyone is a social media ninja (nor need they be)
- Developing intent
- Irrefutable gerunds
- App contest submission boilerplate
- Data divides and umbrellafication
- Wisdom and discernment
- Minimal Mass
- Uncrime Mapping
- Data-driven, content-first design
May
- "Describe the basis for your approach to this project. How did you determine the need for this project now and who was included in its design?"
- Nailed that response
- Capturing well-being, not simply access and speed
- Failure on balance
- A reminder that it's still about power
- Philanthropy's progressive legacy
- Reductionist function and practice
- Apps off the approved vendor list
- Lovingly reimagined, progressively remade
April
- Belief-based design
- Shirt sales, scraped daily
- Social Media Community Architect and Manager
- Apparently I'm nonprofitly conservative
- That national interest thing
March
- ...it was sexist when I got here
- A form from my favorites
- Towards advocacy-based media
- Advocacy in print - Survival News for 2011
- How to decorate your office without really trying
- The 48 hour mobile web app: Drunken Stumble
January
- Notes from the City of Boston's Open311 / Citizens Connect API Developer Meeting
- Adding class to Wordpress linked images
- Authenticity and such
- The benefits of age
- Mediation Journal, Version 0
- Assessment of needs-assessment needs
- Adding hyperlinks to print publications
2010
December
- De nada, Una Pequeña Casa
- T Shirt
- Mediation journal pieces
- Boston Bike Crash Map in the News
- Blue Ribbon Commissions in Print
- Proposals to change the tax-deductibility of donations
- Public data vs. Self-reporting
- This is me not being cynical about nonprofit innovation
- Undermining nonprofit significance
November
- Accessible leisure through technology
- Boston Bike Crash Map
- A difference of a map
- Goofus & Gallant, MBA
- Metaphors and diversity
- Learning styles and chemistry
October
- Life before the chart
- Stop being a weenie and just go make something
- A deucedly outrag* wordlist
- Professional writing sample
- Fairly fool-proof whole-wheat popovers
- No wonder you weren't good at it
- When all you have is a hammer
- Don't confuse "online" with "Twitter"
- This image will save us
- Scientific disunity
- The Analog Divide
September
- Mystics, poets and best practices
- Kitchen Consensus Conjecture
- "...be manically participatory..."
- This is not a website
- Commodity work
- Making language of meaning
- Nonprofit Social Media Literacy
- Find fresh perspectives at NonprofitMillennials.org
August
- Fondly remembered experiments in minimal webdesign
- P, NP and Panlexicon
- Social Media Strategy and the Dodo Bird Effect
- Art, I hardly knew ye
- Wealth Parade
July
- What does your computer symbolize?
- Zilch for a nonprofit
- The medium is the method
- The move towards empowerment
June
- Task identification and completion
- Typology versus taxonomy
- Fierce editing
- Management Theories and Interventions
- Straightforward Project Satisfaction and Fulfillment
- Typology of Social Giving Transactions
- Forces of Organizational Entry
- Zen and Postmodern Art
- iPhone apps allow giving, just not charity
- Get your own
- Goodbye Producers' Forum
- Stages of team development
May
- Write first, outline later
- Try it again
- A definition that is good enough
- JFK accuses media of sensationalism, triviality
- History is an art form rooted in scholarship
April
- Corporate social distractibility
- Ethical omissions
- I am now a Technology of Participation facilitator
- Principles of Organizational Development Practice
- The Economy: it's made of people
- Leaders and privileged voices
- Mendacity in order
- Do what I say
- Internships and the media
- Quotes on self
March
- "If you don't know how to notice, you can't do anything well"
- A rhetoric for writing in the post-digital era
- The author function and the internet
- Two of charts
- Frequency of occurrence of letters in English
- Numerical Indifference
February
- Laying out latest layout
- Good enough data
- Models, feedback and crows
- Cleaving the visual experience
- Mount Vernon, Port Huron and Sharon Statements in Comparison
- Quality of life, mind and language
- Motivated design
- A temperance of words
- Criticism for everyone
- Washing of dishes requires great peace of mind
- Ethical flexibility for export
January
- Amperlamb
- Hippostrophe
- He thinks I'm working on parts. I'm working on concepts.
- Still Ferrari-less
- Insufficient funds
- Social media is women's work
- American Press Subsidies
- The poor, the dead, and God are easily forgotten
- Two tales of Island 94
- Notes of the first water
- Radical volunteerism, or not
- Criticism of Actor-Network Theory
- Modern and post-modern science
- Umberto Eco on Modernism
2009
December
- Critical Thinking contextualized
- Transactions vs. Relationships
- Academia on the experience of poverty
- Easier drawn than said
- Axemaker conclusions
- Gatekeeper Code
- Like Wikipedia, but before
- Social Assistance Cynicism
- Invoking the first amendment
November
- Three Story Intellect Model
- Going crazy over social impact
- Ace Advertising
- Gifts of Magnificence
- Poverty mythology
- Unions and the media
- The journalism landscape in a nutshell
- Ethics made easy
- Outside of my jurisdiction
- My nonprofit Facebook strategy and tactics
- Metaphor death
October
- Starvation begets starvation
- Charity, Mercy and Sin
- Quotidian insights
- Frames for Copyright
- The motion of gifts
- We participate, they profit
- Why framing matters
- Not another Rogue's nest
- Twenty-four dollars
- Kick in the baud
- An ample account
- Leverage your nonprofit status
- Chasing Best Practices
- God didn't do Best Practices
- It's complicated
- Obviously not to scale
- Social work is women's work, so we don't care
- Speak up for democracy
- Teaching through breakage
- Catastophizing and other thought distortions
- In the beginning, God separated Heaven and Earth
- Welcome Grassroots Users of Technology
- Perspectives on Building Power
- Millenial Nonprofity Exposition
- Janets Spiral Periodic Table
- But licensed in how many dimensions?
- Nonprofit Budgeting Scenario
September
- Intellectual activity
- My use of the comma
- Technology 2.0: Mapping Presentation
- My featured dead cockroach
- [REMOVED] Boston Subway in Vector Format (SVG)
August
- Anxiety Reading
- Drupal: Adding a geocoding failure message to Location Module
- Good advice to live by
- Religion and individualism
- From Self-Actualization to Neo-Liberalism
- Marketing in Wealth Bondage
July
- Different Strokes
- Media and Radical Technology
- Moving Day
- Slow Down
- Clarity of hindsight: law vs. policy
- Three Americas
June
- Judging reality and experience
- Attributes of Respected Chairs
- A quote for the rain
- Charting work success
- Political Rhetoric
May
March
- The essence of Capacity Building
- Current Consumption of Currants
- Example of the (false) metaphor of the tube
- Lying in subtext and by omission
- 3 Fortunes
- Harnessing inequality
- Pratfalls to writing authentically
- Satyagraha versus Duragraha
- Cold-Start car advice
- Cell phones and "personal" computing
- Double Loop Learning
- Quotes on Thought and Process
- Excerpt: Sectors of the US Right---Active in the Year 2001
February
- Meandering thoughts on creativity, change and consciousness
- Press Release Rhythm
- Thoughts on Nonprofit growth, management and culture
- 18-25: moving from Becoming to Being
- Existential Charters
- The Purpose of Copyright
- The (false) metaphor of the tube for communication
- Mission and Promise: there is a difference
- Online Fundraising: please do it right
- Self, Language and Consciousness
- The Ethics of Awareness
- Tips for researching and applying to nonprofit jobs
- Notes on silence
- Know your organic PLU by number
- Two videos for February 1st
January
- Types of Facilitator Interventions
- American Commissar: my family archive project
- Using distinctions to create meaning
- 2008 in Review
- Weingarten Rights
2008
December
- Human Measurements
- From "Web 2.0" to "Produsage"
- The Nonprofit between Scylla and Charydbis
- How to write a cover letter for a job application
November
- Lessons from the 1960s
- Interview Questions
- Strengthening Organizations through Community Engagement
- Equally good alternatives to collaboration
- How to create cross-sector nonprofit value
- Being Wrong is Right, but not in the education system
- When "good" is better than "best"
October
- Birthday Wishlist
- Buyer's Remorse Hacking
- Community Organizer = Community Outreach Minister
- Small Government / Small Paper
- Blog Action Day: Poverty
- Graphical Organization of the Talmud
- Making ReCAPTCHA not suck
- Nonprofits and the Economy of Free
- Questions for external brand interviews
- PopCo Cake Recipe
September
- Nonprofits and Political Activities
- Search is not Serendipitous
- Exploring Poverty: Participation, Practice, Imagination and Exploration
- Why are nonprofits tax-exempt?
- Pod of Whales
- What is a nonprofit? A structural definition
- Get a Government Job
August
- Radio Ga Ga 2: The role of nonprofits in constructing a better world
- Failure of confidence
- How to make do with what you got
- Makes You Crazy
- How to write a grant the way I want to be taught grant writing
- Lessons for Nonprofitteers from Majora Carter
- Nonprofit Board Management, Governance and Advice
- Caring on the Internet
- Are you Ahw or Arr?
- Cleaving Running Reds from Jaybiking
- What to ask before building a website
- Drupal: theme override for Upload.module's attachments list
- Digital Media Forensics
July
- Individual Challenges for Nonprofit Leaders
- Poverty as the singular moral challenge
- Job qualification: Not a jerk
- Political News Coverage
- How to use a fridge crisper
- Vegan Baking Tips: Egg Replacement and Oil
- Tragic Food
- Facebook to Phone Trees: Nonprofit Technology for Everyone
June
- Fluoride, teeth and brushing advice
- Lumifi Search Widget
- 7 Nonprofit Challenges
- Line up in order of your SSN
- Other words for "Lie"
- Conference notes: managing nonprofit technology projects
- Contextonomy
May
- NTC08: The Seven Things Everyone Wants: What Freud and Buddha Understood (and We're Forgetting) about Online Outreach
- JP Cafe Brownies
- Binaries and Teaching
April
- Boston Vegetable Planting Chart
- Enchilada Sauce
- Brompt is a blog reminder
- Cat, New
- Progressive Terminology for Discussing Poverty
- Nonprofit Job Misconceptions
- Transitivity Fallacy
March
- Free society
- A millenial idea
- Why I like Apple Computers
- Breakfast Cereals, oh my
- Writing my Congress Critter
- Capitalism and Morality (Thai Beer and Monks)
- Reject or Denounce
February
January
2007
December
- lolart
- Medicalization
- Understanding Beliefs (and how to change them)
- Detective Nonsense
- Bees and Biology
- Remember Paul
- Hold the salt
- Reading List
- Design Analogies
- Destructive rhetoric
- Apple and Green Papaya
- Cribbed Apple Salsa
- King Corn
- Struck by Cain
- Consumption and deregulation
- Fat facts
- vis-a-vis viz. vis-a-vis, viz.
- Creating meaning through interaction
- Happy Birthday to me
- Volunteer logic
November
- Biology cliche
- Close to the Machine
- Knorking
- Cold Reading
- Creating Models
- Criticism of Civic Literacy
- Donations and Volunteering
- Chill Units
- Nightmares
- The John Hancock Building
- Understanding Academia and Legitimacy Exchange
October
- Alternatives to a Nonprofit Job
- San Diego is Burning
- Opportunities in Disguise
- Google Relevance
- Puddingstone
- Woody Allen Assignment
- Pancake Recipe
September
- Who is using Drupal?
- Latin Transit
- An important distinction
- Opinion on Nonprofits
- Politics of Fear
- Drupal WYSIWYG Editors
- Plagiarism
- Setting up Octave and Gnuplot on Apple Mac OSX
- Toe straighteners
- Fears of death
- Hemp milk
- Pasta dough recipe
- Tee
- Thesaurus computations
- Thesuarus computations
August
- Trustworthiness
- Verb to do
- Unintuitive: check
- More thoughts on an interesting thesaurus
- Two stories on a theme
- DESC Scripting and Conflict Resolution
- Geekout: Video on Maps for Cable Access TV
- Walkabout Trail, RI
July
June
May
April
- New England Construction
- Introducing Panlexicon.com
- Nonprofit Communications 2.0
- Copyright and the Nineteenth Century
- MeetAmeriCorps still a success
March
February
January
2006
December
November
October
- Boston Obscura: A halloween story
- Office faceoff
- Spooky baking
- Nonprofit Competition & Concept Map
- Travel: Amherst
- Germania St. #3
- Meta photography in Powder House Square
September
- Germania St. #2
- Germania St. #1
- Radio Ga Ga: Discussing AmeriCorp*VISTA on WUML
- Rhode Island Turf and Grapes
- Evening cruise on Boston Harbor
- Views of Santa Barbara
August
- Deeper than Porter
- Education + Urinal = ...?
- Planes galore
- Rubbed away in DC
- About in Dorchester
- Solar Powered Art
- Node101 Weekend in New York City
- Youth Channel Blockparty
- Central Park Pictures
- Web 2.0 will save us
- Night and Day
- Night scenes
- Meta photography in Boston
July
- Piecing together Cambrige
- Gone bicycling
- Vote Ben
- First Monday Night Write
- Making smoothies
- No chirps for Lowell
- A response for Net Neutrality
- Canoes on the Mystic River
- Run
- Sails on the Charles
- Breakfast smoothie
- Two, two, two yolks in one
- Harbor Island info
- Zuchini harvest
- Zandvoort
- Charles on the 4th
- A new look
- Fiction Post Disclaimer
- Chase Palm Park
- San Francisco nights
- Santa Barbara Summer Solstice 2006
- Two minutes for Paul and Liz
- Views of Isla Vista
June
May
April
March
January
2005
December
- Trash piano
- A hole in the ice
- Walking in Circles
- Word of the Day: Cankle
- Somerville Community Mapping