Managing Tech: 1:1
Running effective 1:1s — focusing on people, not process, and using structured conversations to build trust, remove obstacles, and help your team succeed.
Quilt GPT
My favorite type of art is when the physical and digital collide. It drives my passion for IoT. This is the tale of using the Chat GPT to determine the layout of a quilt.
Managing Tech: Cadence
What time management really means in modern tech—and how individual contributors and managers build trust, focus, and leverage through intentional use of time.
Managing Tech: Time
What time management really means in modern tech—and how individual contributors and managers build trust, focus, and leverage through intentional use of time.
Managing Tech: Professionals
What professionalism means in modern tech - and the contract of trust, ownership, and shared responsibility that both employees and managers must uphold.
Managing Tech: Heroes
A practical look at managing tech by building trust, embracing radical transparency, and helping employees grow - even when growth means leaving.
Managing Tech: People
Thoughts on managing people in tech, why empathy matters, and how to balance humanity with accountability as a leader.
Web Component Template
A pragmatic Web Component template based on how I actually ship components, with clear patterns for structure, attributes, properties, events, and rendering.
The Unsung UI Control: Label
A practical walkthrough of building a flexible, design-system-friendly Label Web Component using modern Web Component patterns.
Warp Test Drive
AI is coming for your terminal. I spent an afternoon testing Warp's Agentic Development. The results were surprising, humbling, and kind of inspiring.
Svelte 5 Ownership Mutation
Svelte data binding is a joy, but you can work yourself into a corner if you are not careful. Take a closer look at some edge cases to stay on track.
Getting Comfortable with Circles
In this post, we put aside the charting libraries, dive into some circle math, and discover that building lightweight custom charts is easier than you think.
Four D Time Management
Time management is a key "soft" skill for Information Technology professionals. This heavily distilled version of Getting Things Done will help you master your time, and lower your stress.
AWS Transcribe with Python
Upload an audio file to S3, manage the details of an AWS Transcribe job, and download the results. Include code to clean up after yourself if you are so inclined.
Three P Weekly Status Report
My term for agile status reports. These weekly reports make a manager's job much easier - and setup employees for success. Let us take a look at how I structure and run my weekly reports.
Reasons to Stencil
Congratulations, you have decided to use one of the many libraries and tools available for building modern web interfaces. Now just do not lock yourself into that decision.
Items and Renderers
Consider for a moment the humble list control. In this article we take a closer look at building a list control, and the different ways to render content.
Building a Bar Chart with Stencil
Every once in a while you need to roll your own. With a splash of SVG and helping hand from Stencil, you can create a custom chart as a web component.
The Secret Life of Tabs
As user interfaces (UI) go, tabs are a particularly useful pattern. In this example we will look at the mechanics of building a tab component using Stencil.
Building a Clock with Stencil
Building a clock can reveal a lot about how a platform works. In this walkthrough we will take a look at building a clock component using Stencil.
Building a Calendar with Stencil
Learn about calculating content before rendering while building a calendar component with Stencil. Styling allows you to drop the result into your iOS application.
Tic-Tac-Toe Light
WebSockets and IoT are a performant and efficient pairing, and I asked the audience at HTML5 Developer Conference to prove. A tiny Arduino vs. an audience of well over 100 developers just waiting to break things.
Functions, Storage, Watson ... Oh, My!
Recently Apache OpenWhisk (IBM Cloud Functions) released a beta feature around triggers for Cloud Object Storage, and I figured I would take it for a spin.
IBM and the Open Organization
A review of Red Hat CEO, Jim Whitehurst's book, The Open Organization, wherein I attempt to distill the why, how, and what contents into my favorite quotes.
Serverless Storage Redux
In previous posts you can read about uploading and download a file with IBM Cloud Functions. In those posts I use an SDK. This time we look at the REST API.
Serverless Download from Object Storage
In a previous post, I walked through how to upload a file to an IBM Cloud Function. In this post, we will get it back out, and download it to an HTTP client.
Serverless Upload to Object Storage
Uploading a file to an IBM Cloud Function takes some consideration. In this post we combine IBM Cloud Object Storage with Web Actions for robust storage.
LightBlue Bean to IBM Cloud
Bluetooth has evolved from the pairing nightmare days of old. Custom breakouts like the Light Blue Bean let you play with all the new (and nuanced features). Let us connect one to the IBM Cloud for real-time data.
Teaching Watson to See My Garage
A Raspberry Pi camera and custom-trained Watson model detect whether a garage door is open or closed. Combines ML, image processing, and IoT.
What I Install
I have been a Mac user for some time, and really committed to the platform with the release of Mac OS X. Here is what I installed, when I moved to Mojave.
Transferable ImageData
When passed as a transferable object (versus structured clone), the reference to the place in memory where the object resides is being handed off.
Image Processing in a Web Worker
Web Workers give us a separate thread but they come with a trade-off - no access to the DOM. In the case of image processing however, this does not matter.
Developer Advocacy and the Project Triangle
A reflection on how the classic Project Triangle applies to developer relations, exploring the trade-offs when building authentic developer communities.
Getting Started in Developer Advocacy
Many Developer Advocates evolve into the role; many come to it new. This post is for those new to the field who are looking for some general guidance on where to start. Based on first-hand experience.
Real-Time Barcode Scanner
I have covered image processing techniques to scan barcodes in the past. This time we break out an actual barcode scanner and attach it to the web in real-time.
Real-Time Drone Telemetry
A real-time telemetry demo using a drone, sensors, wireless links, and satellite uplink to stream flight-style data to the cloud, illustrating a modern "black box."
Real-Time Engine Telemetry
Wherein I use Java to connect to a Bluetooth OBD device attached to my car, and send the details in real-time to the web. Live camera feed and GPS coordinates show up on a map.