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Portfolio 32
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Aug 07, 2024
My Values for Technical Leadership
My professional values as an engineer, architect, and technical leader.
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Jul 31, 2024
Imagining a Personal Data Pipeline
I've been thinking a lot about personal data lately: where it's stored, how to extract it, and what to do with it. Here's where I landed.
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Apr 08, 2024
Building a CLI from scratch with TypeScript and oclif
I'm building a pair of CLI programs in TypeScript and decided to use oclif for flag parsing and releasing. I needed something more than the getting started doucmentation they had so I wrote it myself.
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Feb 09, 2024
Goodbye Auth0
My 6 years at Auth0 ... how it all started, what Auth0 meant to me, and why I will proudly wear that shield for as long as the swag holds up.
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Jul 06, 2023
Conducting a Great Technical Interview
Technical interviews are a vital component of culture building and setting your team up for success. Here is how I make sure they go well and have a great time doing it.
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Mar 22, 2023
Scratching an Itch: Command Line Budgeting
After over a decade of trying to budget using existing tools, I decide to write my own in TypeScript. It turned out great!
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Aug 19, 2022
Published: Federation and Single Sign-On with OpenID Connect
After a years worth of work and a number of delays (on my end), I finally published my first liveProject with Manning!
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Mar 07, 2022
Engineering Velocity from the Bottom Up
When I look to increase my velocity, I'm trying to deliver more work I'm proud of without burning out. I want to get the most out of my time and maximize the parts of the job that I enjoy. Here's how.
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Jan 11, 2022
Generate new Eleventy post drafts with Hygen
Making new boilerplate files is one of many tiny professional pet peeves that makes me ask "what would a real engineer do?" Answer: automate it!
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Jan 04, 2022
Eleventy Custom Content Type Collections and Layouts
How-to on creating separate collections and layouts for a custom content type. In this case: cocktails!
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Dec 12, 2021
We Need Your Beginner's Mind
We need your experiments and your questions and your feedback. Your lack of understanding is a valuable attribute that goes away as you gain experience.
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Nov 01, 2021
Taking Notes: Why and How
I've been writing for myself regularly for probably 15 years and have tried out many different systems and apps. Recently, I think I finally found the right one.
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Oct 12, 2021
Accept-Encoding, Content-Encoding, and ERR CONTENT DECODING FAILED
An error message in a browser-based app lead to some digging and learning about content encoding and negotiation.
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Dec 31, 2020
Protect your WordPress REST API with OAuth 2 using Auth0
In this post, we are going to add the ability to use Auth0-generated access tokens for WP REST API endpoints that require an account and certain capabilities.
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Nov 27, 2020
Testable Documentation Spike #1: "It's Just Code"
My first spike on finding a system to take linted, tested code and outputting usable markup. This spike uses Docco to turn transpile commented JS files to HTML.
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Oct 28, 2020
Technical Research: Testable Documentation
I've been thinking about documentation quite a bit lately, especially the code-centric type, and how to avoid punishing myself for spending time writing it. Here's the start of my research project to that end.
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Aug 30, 2020
WordPress Unit Testing Techniques
I've learned a lot about how to avoid common issues and making life writing tests in WordPress a little easier. This post is a collection of ways I've found to accurately and thoroughly test a plugin.
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Feb 09, 2020
Taking WordPress to Eleventy
How I converted 12 years of posts in WordPress to an Eleventy static site ... and loved every minute of it.
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Jan 15, 2020
Notes from Rock Your Code Reviews with Dr. Michaela Greiler
I attended a great webinar led by Dr. Michaela Greiler on code reviews. I had my own opinions going in, of course, but I learned a lot and had a number of questions that I had (and didn't know I had) answered.
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Oct 31, 2019
Learnings from Full Time Primary Interrupt (On-Call)
What I learned spending a month as the primary on-call for an open source support team.
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Jun 27, 2019
Specializing vs Generalizing
Should you specialize and go deep or generalize and go broad? I'd argue they they are two sides of the same coin.
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Jul 10, 2018
Pitfalls of Being a WordPress Developer
Something happens to you as a developer when you start on and stick with a single platform for a long period of time. As you get better and better at that platform, you get further and further away from the rest of the ecosystem.
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Jan 05, 2017
Engineer Support for Content and Communication Rockstars
Regardless of the industry, when people care deeply about what they're making and who they're helping, it shows.
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Oct 09, 2016
Repo: Missed Search Log for WordPress
Concept for a log of search terms with no results on a WordPress site.
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Aug 09, 2016
Brewery Site Framework for Craft Beer Branding Gods
In one of those "meant to be" moments, I met the founder and president of the mind-bogglingly talented craft beer agency here in Seattle, Blindtiger. Oceania (Oce for short) invited me down to the office to talk shop and it just clicked.
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Jun 11, 2016
Community and eCommerce Site for Massive Minecraft Community
8-month engagement to provide engineering, strategy, code review, pair programming, performance reviews, and security guidance.
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Apr 01, 2016
Latest Deals Site Built on Rank It WP
A WordPress child theme gone mad! Built-in click statistics, moderation controls, grabbing text and images from submitted links, and expiring content.
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Mar 30, 2016
8ninths Site Rebuild
Just in time for an announcement by Microsoft about their HoloLens project, we launched a complete site rebuild for 8ninths, focusing on their VR and AR capabilities.
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Jan 18, 2016
A(nother) WordPress Starter Template
This theme is an extension of a framework created for a local agency that wanted a way to spin up custom WordPress sites quickly and correctly. It grew into the starting point for all sites that I create.
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Aug 19, 2015
Semi-eCommerce Site for a Local Composites Distributor
This site was a partial migration from a custom PHP and MySQL application that was in dire need of an update. Collaborating with a talented designer, I built a site housing almost 400 products and dominates search ranking for high-value, niche terms.
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Apr 09, 2015
WP-Drudge on Alan.com
Alan Colmes needed a central hub for his news curation and community surrounding his radio show and books. We've been iterating on this site for a few years and finally settled on a very customized version of the WP-Drudge theme I created.
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Jan 08, 2015
Building a Community Curation Theme: The Making of Rank It WP
I’ve been working on a new theme over the last few months and, now that it’s ready for use, I wanted to walk through how it was built. This is definitely the most technically-involved theme I’ve ever built and I learned a lot (more) about WordPress in the process.