This was originally posted on my Patreon feed, but I feel is still useful to post here. Thank You! Thank you to @Siyoung Byun. You have been a consistent and patient Patron and I'm extremely grateful for your support. I hope in the near future that I will have more people to thank ;). A quick thanks to @jmwright for suggesting I fill o...

I wanted to write down, as a short post, some things I noticed while working through my last coding project. Though it was successfully completed and I'm proud of the work on RSS-Saver, there are some bits of the process and the final product that I am not totally pleased with. Writing about them here serves as a way for me to acknowle...

I sometimes worry that I lack certain important skills as a self-taught developer. I sometimes lack design ability, don't always know the best ways to do software project management, fail to write enough documentation and tests, and, perhaps most critically, often fail to finish projects. Fortunately, I think these skill gaps aren't pe...

I've been spending a lot of time this past year figuring out what I can do with my career. I've been really struggling through the pandemic times to understand myself and how I can live happily in this world while still facing challenges and 'stepping up' to solve problems and be as good a person as I can be. It's a tall order, and if ...

I have two Clojure libraries underway for my code CAD endeavours: forge for 3D models and svg-clj for 2D drawings. I have put more attention into the svg library because it’s an excellent balance of coding challenge and design utility. Thinking about my work so far, I realize a few reasons why starting in the 2D CAD world has been bene...

I’m mostly talking to myself in this one. I don’t think our world can sustain the status quo any longer. It’ll be the poor that suffer first and most, but everyone but the richest people are in for a tough ride. I think we all know this, and I don’t want to use this post to despair. I want to inspire myself towards action. I want a bet...

When I worked as an mechanical engineer and designer, I became very familiar with CAD software like AutoCAD and SolidWorks. Both are powerful tools for building complex and detailed models and they have their justified place in many design teams. It’s not free software, though, and your design models don’t export cleanly to other forma...

I don’t do well in office work. I don’t do well on the shop floor after a long day of drudgery. I do extremely well working on a creative project. I thrive when I’m working on something for myself or for a friend. I guess I hate authority, and I loathe incompetent, unthinking managers and bosses. Incompetent colleagues can be helped, b...

I work on and think a lot about design tools - code based CAD in particular. I originally stumbled upon the concept of using written code to create 2D and 3D models years ago when I was searching around the web for open source and free modeling software to use for side projects. OpenSCAD was what I discovered and I was fascinated. It b...

I just learned about this blogging feature with Hey and am excited to give it a try. I have recognized over the past pandemic year that I’m not entirely happy with my personal learning. I thought that I would develop better systems and studies through a year spent inside, but that’s not been the case. It was often a year of apathy, anx...