Posts
I have written 98 things since 2008, and those things are listed below in an orderly list:
- I Finished the Elon Book
I figured I should write some takeaways since I only read one book every five years or something
- On Laravel, Full-Stack JavaScript, and Productive Frameworks
Is Laravel better than Remix? Is JavaScript better at the front-end? Which one should I use? Who's on first?
- Lessons Learned from Four Months of Working Solo
I quit my job and focused full-time on side projects for four months. Here's what I learned during this time and what I plan to do next.
- All of the things I watched while on paternity leave
I like watching TV. Get out of here, books.
- How We Built Hydrogen
π shopify.engineering
- Hydrogen & Tailwind: The Perfect Match for Building Beautiful Storefronts
π shopify.engineering
- What I Want To Do
Here is a list of things I want to do.
- One Year at Shopify
I've been working at Shopify for one year now. Here's what I've learned.
- Building an in-browser image editor with React
π product.voxmedia.com
- Rendering React on the Edge with Flareact and Cloudflare Workers
π blog.cloudflare.com
- Building my new website with Next.js, TailwindCSS, and Vercel
I talk about building my new website with some fun new technologies.
- Songs I Sing to Barrett As Lullabies
- Creativity vs. Consumption
- How We Rewrote a Vue App with React and Tailwind in 21 Days
π product.voxmedia.com
- Managing complex object inputs with wrapper classes in JavaScript
π product.voxmedia.com
- Day 10: That's a wrap on the nutrition challenge. How did it go?
- Day 9: My Dream Side Project
- Day 8: Building a CrossFit Stats app with React and Next.js
- Day 7: You should see Eighth Grade, a movie by Bo Burnham
- Day 6: Fortnite for people like me who don't normally play video games
- Day 5: Adam
- Day 4: Building a Gatsby plugin to automatically embed tweets
- Day 3: Inspirational tech people I follow on Twitter
- Day 2: What's the deal with this Nutrition thing?
- Day 1: My 30 Day Creativity Challenge
- Kindness and Code Reviews: Improving the Way We Give Feedback
π product.voxmedia.com
- I created an educational site called Full-Stack Fundamentals
I'd love to have you become a member! And share it with others.
- Why won't my puppy stop pooping in the night?
It's starting to become a problem.
- Building a modern single-page app with Vue and Rails
π product.voxmedia.com
- Fresa is a better way to develop WordPress
I built Fresa, a library that makes WordPress development more enjoyable using object-oriented standards and fluent, expressive interfaces.
- Building a Realtime Chat App with Laravel 5.4 and VueJS
Let's build a realtime chat application using Laravel 5.4 and VueJS, and then we'll test it with Laravel Dusk!
- Applying the "Just Enough" principle to web development
Learn about the "just enough" principle I borrowed from Erika Hall and how I apply it to my web development process.
- How to Share Snapchat Stories on the Web
- CodePen Des Moines Happened! Here's a recap.
As an active CodePen user, I've been wanting to host a CodePen meetup in my area for a while. In the spring of 2016, I decided to bite the bullet and enlist the help of my pals Justin Lobaito and Ryan Young to plan Iowa's first CodePen meetup! Spoiler alert: It was really great.
- Building DateColors: A Date-to-Hex JavaScript Plugin
I'm working on a project which contains a collection of 40 to 50 items. None of the items have photos or other distinguishing visual indicator, so I wondered... Could I add a difference in color based on the date of each item in the collection?
- Challenge: A Week with Vim
I go on a week-long challenge to only use Vim as my text/code editor. Goodbye, Sublime Text! See you never! Totally kidding.
- Nobody Looks at Your Shoes
When's the last time you noticed somebody's shoes? Nobody looks at your shoes. I write about how it relates to life and keeping up appearances.
- How My DigitalOcean Droplet Handles Heavy Traffic
How much traffic is a lot of traffic for a DigitalOcean droplet? I test out a couple different heavy traffic scenarios with CloudFlare and WordPress.
- Introducing: Auto Background Blur for large background images
When you're building out a website with full-width background images, you've probably run into an issue with resolution and size. Screens are getting huge, and images keep getting larger. But how large is too large for images?
- Using HTML Datalist
Did you know there exists a native HTML solution to those beloved Autocomplete widgets? It's called datalist, and you can use it today (sort of).
- Static App Showdown: The "Meeba" Experiment
I took part in a worldwide Hackathon called Static Showdown. It was a lot of fun, and here is a writeup about it (with a link to the game we made).
- Introducing Responsive Email Kit
If you know anything about me, you probably know that I'm madly in love with MailChimp. Their email templates are responsive out of the box, and their drag-and-drop editor is to die for. But what about when you can't use MailChimp?
- The Evolution of My Web Design Process
I've made a lot of changes to my web development workflow recently, and doing so made me reflect on how much my process has changed in the last 12 years. I have written these changes down for you here.
- How to use the tar command
I've been doing a lot in the command line lately, so I've gotten to use the tar command quite a bit. Here are a few useful tips that helped me get started.
- Hans Zimmer Is a Mozart Fan
I'm kind of obsessed with film composers. Here's a reason why Hans Zimmer and Mozart are awesome.
- Building a Responsive Timeline with Advanced Custom Fields
While redesigning this site, I was inspired by Dave Rupert's About page. Dave has built a responsive HTML timeline, and I thought, "Hey, that's pretty neat." After playing around with the design, I decided I wanted to integrate it into my Wordpress site. Here's how I went about it.
- TRIGGER WORDS: A film in 48 hours
Care to see a sneak peek of the trailer for the 48 Hour Film Project film in which I took part?
- A Happy Announcement
I announce the next step in my career.
- My Lesson in Hip-Hop
In which I discuss the merits of hip-hop music. The good, the bad. Lil Wayne to AndrΓ© 3000.
- So, You Want to Direct a Pixar Film?
In which I discuss the role of directors in recent Disney/Pixar films and how they can change.
- My Grandmother's Piano
In which I describe my thoughts on Alzheimer's disease, my grandmother, and the power of music.
- Thanksgiving Break Thoughts
- For Your Viewing Pleasure...
- Hard Work Rewarded
- Westward Expansion of the Digital Frontier
- Songs About Jones
- Power of Three Notes
- Selling Stuff
- Chronicles of a TV news producer
- Terrible Time Delay
- Proud
- Ted Williams!
- Video? With a Still Camera?
- Final Stretch of Break
- A New Year's Eve Update
- A Larson Christmas (2010)
- Serenading Sorority
- Sunday's Music: Adele, Nickel Creek
- Snow in Ames!
- A Classy Office Christmas
- Love and Other Drugs
- Bowling With The Band
- Caroling With Instruments
- Broadcast Classes At Iowa State University
- Intern Log: July 4 - July 10
- Intern Log: June 27 - July 4
- Intern Log: June 20 - June 26
- Intern Log: June 13 - June 19
- Intern Log: June 6 - June 12
- Intern Log: May 30 - June 5
- Intern Log: May 23 - May 29
- Intern Log: May 16 - May 22
- Intern Log: May 9 - May 15
My first week at KCCI: A day with Steve Karlin, "Next Gen News," WHY we do what we do, learning the ropes of producing, and an introduction to investigative reporting.
- Kicking myself over Katie Couric
- Journalism: Degradation or Transformation?
This was forwarded to me by one of my professors regarding ABC News' recent decision to lay off a number of employees and move toward the use of multi-functioning journalists.
- Futures Quest: An Overview
I was recently asked to attend a leadership conference in Brookston, Indiana as a representative of my social fraternity Beta Theta Pi. These are my thoughts on the experience.
- Leadership and Motivation
I speak about my experiences with several organizations, originally published in my band fraternity district newsletter.
- Launched: ISUtv Website
I discuss how the ISUtv website has been launched and what went into developing the site.
- Launched: New VPSA Site
What goes into redesigning a higher education website? Find out what I did.
- Westboro Baptist Church comes to Ames
We definitely had some interesting visitors in Ames this summer. Read what I thought.
- When in Rome...
This is a review of the trip I took to Rome from July 3 through July 5, sent to my parents and published in The Stratford Courier. Enjoy.
- Scholarship Database: An overview
An in-depth look at the construction of a scholarship database for the Office of Student Financial Aid at ISU.
- Media: Singular or Plural?
This might sound weird, but I've been thinking about something on a near-daily basis: the use of the word "media."
- Gmail: Just Do It.
It took me a year, but I finally did it: I switched from Iowa State University's Webmail program to Google's Gmail. I can't believe how beneficial the switch ended up being!
- Save the K-State Marching Band
- WCTV at ITEC
- Happy Halloween!
- How it all began