Live Train Announcements with a Raspberry Pi
I turned an old Lionel train signal from Ebay into something that announces arriving and departing trains with some model railroading flair.
Archive
Nighttime Time Lapse Photography with AllSky
A few weeks ago, I came across an intriguing article on IEEE Spectrum featuring a Raspberry Pi sky time-lapse project. The project utilized the standard Raspberry Pi HQ camera with a wide-angle lens, running an open-source program called AllSky to control and export time-lapse videos. Being fascinated by the intersection of cameras and astronomy, I couldn't resist taking on this project.
Tracking Smoking Temperatures with Grillbot
What’s the best way to overcomplicate grilling? Make a meat thermometer that logs temperatures to your computer. This helps me track and understand how different cuts and types of meat behave throughout the smoke. Smoking and grilling meat is one of my many hobbies and I'm constantly searching for ways to improve. With my longer cooks like brisket, I want to be able to go back and review temperatures over the whole cook for different cuts. Building something like GrillBot allows me to capture that data in an easily digested format for later review.
I Built a Bluetooth Low Energy, ESP32-Based Darkroom and Film Development Timer
Developing is just subjecting exposed film or paper to a series of chemical reactions. It involves "developing" which brings out the exposed image, "stopping" which halts the chemical reaction of developing to freeze the image, and "fixing" which removes light sensitivity from the medium so it can be viewed in normal light. All chemical reactions are sensitive to quantity, temperature, and time, and different films and developers have different developing time requirements. Develop for too long or too short a time and it changes the quality of the image.
How To Write a Go/Lambda Based Twitter Meme Bot
What's more fun than a pep talk by a Coach Ted Lasso bot?!
Raspberry Pi Model Rocket Telemetry Flight 3: 1200 Feet! (With Project Updates)
How I Backup (2021 Edition)
Experiencing any sort of data loss makes you paranoid about backing up. Here's how I stay calm knowing my data is safe.
Another Update On My Raspberry Pi Powered Model Rocket Telemetry System
Since first blogging about this project last year, I've gone through several iterative improvements of the platform, and so I'd like to share the latest and greatest on this project.
An Update On My Raspberry Pi Powered Model Rocket
A second launch of the rocket with more powerful motors shows some improvements, but there's still plenty of room to grow.
Capturing Model Rocket Telemetry Using a Raspberry Pi Zero (Part 2)
Written by someone who has watched "Apollo 13" more times than he'd like to admit.
Capturing Model Rocket Telemetry Using a Raspberry Pi Zero (Part 1)
Written by someone who has watched "Apollo 13" more times than he'd like to admit.
AWS Honey Code is Visual Basic for a New Generation, and that's a Good Thing
AWS Honey Code empowers users to build quick solutions to very specific problems and keeps engineering teams focused on shipping products.
Using Webpack to Build Browser Extensions
This tutorial covers the basic file structure of the project, the Webpack configuration, and how to build the project.
Lean Into Your Side Projects
Side projects offer freedom of creation and exploration to developers, which is a needed outlet.
Go Analog
Close your laptop lid; take a break
Accessing Dropbox From A Vintage Macintosh
Vintage computing is a great way to appreciate the engineering and design achievements of yesteryear; here's a quick tip on how to actually get a little work done while you're at it.
My 2018 Open Source Contributions
Sharing a few projects I've built this year.
SSIR: Open Source Software Is Philanthropy
When properly supported, open source software can spark innovation, accelerate social good, and ultimately help change the world.
Case Foundation Blog: The Technology Powering the Impact Investing Network Map
How data visualization drove the Case Foundation's build of the Impact Investing Network Map.
Doomsday Machine Followup: Docker Project
Doomsday Machine is a tool for backing up cloud services to a local machine. This project is a followup to a Node.js project I started in April. While that project worked well, I wasn't happy with the code's performance and lack of support, being that the project was just my code. Instead, I've constructed this project which is really just an amalgamation of others' great projects.
Why AR Will Supersede VR
Apple’s unveiling of their augmented reality development tool, AR Kit, at the World Wide Developer Conference is an indicator that they see the future of augmented reality being much stronger than the future of virtual reality.
Backing Up Cloud Services With Doomsday Machine
With a rising threat of ransomware and other data-crippling threats, backups are indispensable. While cloud services, by their nature, are extremely stable and backed-up often, there is still the threat that a malicious entity could compromise or corrupt those services.
An Opportunity For Responsible Innovation With Amazon’s Alexa
There has been a need in the ever-expanding universe of Internet of Things (IoT) devices for some unifying factor. I’ve written about this before, calling for an open standard to make IoT devices interoperable.
Featured On IOT Weekly
My recent article on the need to create an open standard for IOT devices, Where The Internet of Things Runs Aground, was in issue 96 of IOT Weekly.
BASIC Inspired A Generation Of Technologists. What Will Inspire The Next?
I received a Christmas gift in fourth grade that profoundly impacted my career path and thus the rest of my life.
New Project: GrammarLint
This is a Node.JS implementation of the grammar verification Bash scripts by Matt Might. Taking his work a bit further, this implementation installs as a global binary, allows for future expansion of modules, and outputs the found errors in various ways that best suit the user.
Where The Internet of Things Runs Aground
The big holiday gift of the season seems to have been the Amazon Echo Dot. The small voice-controlled gadget was the perfect combination of low-cost and high-tech for gadget lovers and techies everywhere.
_theInitialCommit Featured on TechNative
_theInitialCommit was featured on the site TechNative this week. It's been an exciting time for that project as the interest in it seems to grow week over week. I'm also excited to share that Maddison Long, also featured in the article, will be joining the project to help recruit new interview candidates and further promote it.
Algorithmic Journalism
In hindsight of this election, there have been countless articles on how social media, so much more than ever before, affected the outcome of the race.
New Project: _theInitialCommit
I've started a new blog that's meant to be an exploration of the people behind the projects. Each post is an exclusive interview with a member of the open source community.
New Node.js Package: Mongoosey
A simple Mongoose frontend that can be built into a pre-existing Express application.
Presidential Candidates Tweets N-Grams (Twitter API + D3.js)
This is a small data collector and visualization that scans the Twitter API for tweets from presidential candidates, analyzes the n-grams of the tweets, and renders the most popular n-grams based on frequency.
Contributing to Backup Tool
My latest project, BackupTool, has really taken off. I've added a new section to the project outlining how contributors can help out with the project. This is my first open source project to get this sort of traction, so it is quite exciting.
Sweaters & Sustenance
My best friend, John Allen, worked with a videographer to produce this amazing documentary about his non-profit, Sweaters & Sustenance.
New Project: Backup Tool
I wasn't impressed with the open-source Glacier backup tools out there, so I'm implementing my own in Node.js.
Content is Changing: Is Your Team Ready?
Content Science Review recently featured an article co-authored by my colleague Jessica Mancari and myself. In it, we discuss a new approach to content and digital production that we've been expirmenting with in our teams at Adfero.
Chef's Hat Featured on LifeHacker
Chef's Hat was featured on the lifestyle blog Lifehacker last weekend. This is a very exciting moment for the app as that post has brought it much attention and validation to the effort. I'm excited for the project to begin catering to a wider audience thanks to the positive review from Alan Henry at Lifehacker.
TruckToMe Now On React Native
After reading more and more about how great React Native is, I began learning it and discovering its potential. With TruckToMe sitting on the project shelf for far too long, I thought it an apt project for rewriting in React Native.
Chef's Hat Featured on ArlNow
Chef's Hat was featured on the local blog ArlNow as part of the site's regular feature on local startups
New Drupal Modules: Mobile Preview and Social Media Links
I’ve been a Drupal site developer for a number of years, and I’ve always enjoyed the quality and robustness of the Drupal contributed module community. Given the experiences I’ve acquired on my Drupal projects and a personal commitment to contribute more open source software, I decided to release two modules I created to the Drupal community.
New Project: Chef's Hat
Think of Chef's Hat as a bookmarking tool for your recipes. When you're visiting one of your favorite recipe sites, you can click the Chef's Hat button in your browser, and it will then save that recipe to your Chef's Hat account. Your Chef's Hat account keeps track of those saved recipes for you to search and explore later.
New CocoaPod: EmailFeedback
This is yet another feedback prompt. This one directs users to submit email feedback or write a review. The app will ask users of the after a set period of time (30 days by default) to review the app. If the user declines, the user is then asked if he or she prefers to just send feedback directly. Selecting this option opens an email composer view with some information about the app and device preloaded. All of the strings and time intervals used in this Pod are customizable.
JohnJonesFour Now Using HTTPS
Using a free SSL certificate from StartSSL, I've updated this site to default to HTTPS.
Is Your Website Ready for Google’s Latest Algorithm Change?
Beginning April 21, Google’s search algorithm will favor mobile-friendly websites. The good news? Most modern websites are mobile-friendly to begin with.
New Plugin: jScrollability
This jQuery plugin helps you build single-scroll pages with complex scroll-based animations a la the NYTimes Snowfall feature. As the user scrolls, this plugin will animate the position of items based on the scroll position. To use it, you select various page elements, set the boundary points for their behavior, and then define a functor to compute the behavior.
Adfero's Recent Open Source Contributions
Our interactive team relies greatly on the open source community when building sites and apps. This past quarter, while we’ve been busy building some great sites for our clients, we’ve had the opportunity to give back to the open source community by posting some code fixes and new modules. It’s important that companies who depend on open source software for their daily work contribute back to the community, and it’s something we encourage our development team to do whenever possible.
Jumpstarting Your Web Analytics Playbook
Starting in December, I'll be hosting a series of workshops at the Washington DC branch of General Assembly. The first one will be a short class on getting into web analytics; it's absolutley worth checking out.
Posted to GitHub: Oh My Tabs
This is my first attempt at a Chrome extension. It loads the latest links from Today in Tabs and displays them in a popup menu.
Relaunching My Site On Jekyll
It's been a while since I've posted anything, so I thought it might be time to correct that. Here's my new site now powered by Jekyll and running on Amazon S3.
Moving My Private Projects to GitLab
Git is such a fantastic tool for developers, and it has saved me on numerous occasions in personal and professional projects. However, the one aspect of Git that I was never fond of was the cost of private hosted Git repository services. Services like GitHub, Springloops, and Beanstalk all charge for such a limited amount of space and such a low cap on the number of private projects that developers always seemed to be getting the shaft.
What We Learned from Healthcare.gov
Anyone who works in an industry even remotely tech-related in Washington DC has repeatedly fielded the recent question, “what do you think of Healthcare.gov?” The news, and its DC-typical host of rumors, consumed this town and this country for a time. The failure of the site to function properly led to decreased public confidence in the new healthcare system established by the Affordable Healthcare Act, and it led to a very humiliating experience for the Obama Administration, the Department of Health and Human Services and the contractors involved, including CGI Federal. However, another tragedy in this family of tragedies is that the Healthcare.gov failure represents a missed chance for the government to set a higher bar for web-based government services.
3 Things in the Digital World to Watch
The buzz in Drupal groups is about the upcoming release of Drupal 8. With this major release, the maintainers of the prolific content management system (CMS) all but rebuilt Drupal from the database to the front end. The change comes as the result of an increased focus on creating code that is portable between Drupal and the larger web development community. The upside is that building a sophisticated Drupal site could become easier as Drupal sites will be able to more easily borrow code from existing open source projects. The downside is that current Drupal developers need to relearn nearly the entire platform.
Latest App: WearWhat
I'm excited to announce the launch of my latest app, WearWhat. The app is a different kind of weather app that gives you crucial information about weather when you start your day. The app is $0.99, and available in the iTunes US store. Learn more from this [press release](/download/WearWhatPressRelease.pdf).
Upcoming App Launch: WearWhat?
Next month, I'm releasing a new app titled WearWhat?. The app delivers quick local weather forecast information to users on the go. It's hard getting dressed in the morning without knowing the weather. You don't have time to wait for the weather report on the morning news, and you sure can't run outside unclothed to see if it's raining. (Trust us, that was a bad idea.) Instead, you can use WearWhat? to get a notification with the weather report at the time you choose.
Mobile Strategy Doesn’t End with Your Website
Now that Facebook has unveiled redesigned mobile pages featuring stronger action-oriented controls, it’s time examine how we implement mobile strategy outside of websites. Audiences absorb a brand through a variety of channels, and assuming that all mobile roads lead to your responsive website is too narrow of a focus.
Really Simple Syndication (d. 2013)
Google declared Really Simple Syndication (a.k.a. RSS) dead yesterday when it announced the discontinuation of their Reader app. RSS found itself struggling for mainstream relevance over the past few years as few outside of news junkies and technophiles understood the value of the obscure format. As a result of the discontinuation, Google Reader and RSS have been tossed into Google’s proverbial dustbin of abandoned technologies with the likes of Google Wave and Orkut.
TruckToMe Featured on CBS
TruckToMe was featured on Washington's CBS affiliate
TruckToMe Featured on DCist
TruckToMe was featured on the local blog DCist by editor Ben Freed
TruckToMe Featured on CellarBlog
TruckToMe was featured on the local blog CellarBlog
TruckToMe, My Latest App
Now available on the iTunes App Store, TruckToMe is the best app for finding your favorite food trucks in the Washington DC region. TruckToMe works by watching the Twitter handles of over 100 DC area food trucks and tracks when they check in to new locations and when they mention DC area food truck hot spots such as Union Station and Farragut Square. Unlike other similar apps, TruckToMe provides an easy interface and faster speed that makes finding the best food trucks easy.
Washington Post Unveils API
This past week, the Washington Post unveiled an API, or Application Programming Interface, for accessing Washington-centric information such speech transcripts, issue information and campaign finance data. An API is a toolkit that allows any developer to leverage data produced by the Washington Post in his or her own program, such as an app or website. This API, once for internal use only at the newspaper, powers tools such as the Campaign Finance Explorer and the White House Visitors Log.
The New Frontier of Mobile Apps with Mitt Romney’s VP Announcement
Watching the coverage of Mitt Romney’s just-announced running-mate, Paul Ryan, Saturday morning, I could not help but get excited every time newscasters mentioned “confirmed via the Mitt Romney VP app.” For the first time, an app has been used as an organization’s primary method of pushing news. Not a website, not a Facebook page, but an app was used to break the Apple-like secrecy of Romney’s VP nominee. But did the Romney campaign choose an app just to look more “hip” than the opposition or was there a genuine, strategic purpose for this choice?
Usability Testing Is Like Proofreading (With Two Tools To Help You Get Started)
Proofreading your own writing invariably leads to missing massive mistakes hidden in plain sight. How many times have you sent that email or filed that story in haste only to later go back and see breathtaking gaffes in grammar and spelling that make you question your very ability to comprehend the English language? This same principle applies to a user experience that has slowly evolved from a straightforward concept in the mockup to a complex, over-revised mess in the final product: potentially large usability problems hidden in plain sight because of project fatigue.
3 Alternatives to Google Maps
With Apple’s announcement of new mapping software for its iOS line of software today, we are abruptly reminded that, like word processing and file sharing, Google did not invent interactive maps. There is a world of alternative platforms to Google Maps that offer advanced customization and other features Google doesn’t offer in their API. Below is a list of my favorite platforms that can be used to enhance the user experience in any website or mobile app
Content Delivery Networks Demystified
The worst thing to wake up to on a Saturday morning is a notification that your organization’s web server is down. When that happens, no one can see your website. You’re “off the air,” so to speak. It may seem odd, but your entire website relies on one single point of failure: the server. Whether it is because of a bad hosting vendor, a cyberattack or an unexpected spike in traffic, when that server goes down, public confidence in your organization and brand go down with it.
Please Stop Overusing QR Codes
It’s alright to admit that you’re annoyed by the amount of QR codes used in advertising; we’re all tired of seeing them. Those two dimensional barcodes, or quick response codes (QR Codes), were originally invented to help Toyota track auto parts, but with the advent of high-resolution mobile cameras and the intent of providing consumers with an easy way of accessing information on the go, QR codes are placed on everything from bank ads to cigarette boxes. But, like any fad, they are blindingly too common and implemented too improperly to add any sort of uniqueness to a digital strategy.
PaperBoy Featured on PennLive
PaperBoy was featured on the Harrisburg Patriot's website, PennLive
PaperBoy Featured on CumberLink
PaperBoy was featured on the Carlisle Sentinel's website, CumberLink