I’ve been drawing a lot of inspiration from Steve Jobs recently. One quote that’s been bouncing around my head quite a bit is this one from 1983:

“It’s better to be a pirate than to join the navy.”

I’m sure there were many meanings tucked away inside that simple phrase, but the story I’ve seen attributed to Andy Hertzfeld (who was at Apple in 1983) centers around resisting the bureaucratic nonsense that was increasing in the Mac group at Apple as they were growing. Don’t give up your scrappy, win-at-all-costs, counter-culture identity just to conform to “the system”.

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Dutch is a 9-week old Goldendoodle, a frequent member of the “good dog” club, and lover of fetch. He’s named after our favorite coffee chain, Dutch Bros. Coffee1 and as a nod to Dutch Formula 1 driver (and defending world champion), Max Verstappen. He’s the newest member of the family, and we love him so much! Who’s a good boy? Financial disclosure, I own a [small] number of shares in Dutch Bros ($BROS) ↩︎

There’s an aphorism that’s attributed to Steve Jobs that I’ve often used to spur on my own artistic endeavors: “Real artists ship.” Those three simple words convey a whole host of underlying meaning, and personally I find it incredibly helpful to refocus my own efforts toward the end goal: shipping my art for the world to see. I’ve had several pet projects I’ve been working on, in some cases for multiple years, that I keep tinkering away on with no end in sight. keep reading →

The Mac Studio I ordered the day after launch finally arrived, and it’s been so worth it. It’s been an incredibly fast and responsive desktop, and I love that there’s now an Apple desktop that makes sense if the iMac doesn’t suit your needs (like if you own a Pro Display XDR). I decided to set it up from scratch as a new machine and document all of the things I did on day one to get it configured for my daily workflows, and wanted to write it all down.

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It’s been almost three years since I last wrote about my remote work setup, and a lot has changed in everyone’s lives since then. It was time for me to post some new photos of my home office, and write about some of the things that help me do my best work. But first, let’s talk a little bit about remote work almost two years into the pandemic.

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I wanted to have fun on the internet again. Around a decade ago (wow, time flies!), I remember lots of little landing pages built just for fun. There were no monetization strategies or traffic expectations. These were websites built simply to showcase fun content, play with fun technologies, or a combination of the two.

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A while ago, I got into mechanical keyboards. I was intrigued by a picture posted to Twitter by @garrettmurray. All three of the keyboards he showed were interesting, but the bottom one – the little guy – was the one that caught my eye the most. I had to have it.

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🎙️ clears throat

Is this thing on?

After over five years at Bleacher Report working on sports media technology, it’s time for another adventure. But first, please indulge me in looking back. I’ve worked with so many incredible people at B/R. They’ve helped me grow as an engineer, as a leader, and as a person.

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Recently someone asked me: “what’s a hill in software that you’re willing to die on?”

After thinking for a minute, my answer was that “write once, run anywhere” solutions are almost never worth the compromises. When I first started writing iPhone OS apps (in summer of 2008), I was working with someone who was advocating for a javascript and HTML solution to writing mobile apps, that would allow us to get “near native” appearance and performance without the overhead of learning Objective-C, and the potential payoff of deploying the app to other mobile platforms if it was desired down the line.

Let’s break that down.

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I preordered an M1 MacBook Air as soon as they were available on Apple’s site. Those who know me weren’t surprised I bought one of the new machines – I buy most new Apple products – however, several of my friends asked me why I got the Air instead of the 13" MacBook Pro or even the Mac Mini. At the time, the main reason was to give the retina MacBook Air form factor a try. I was hopeful that the fanless performance of the M1 chip would be comparable to the other machines, but even if it wasn’t I didn’t intend to do much on it that required sustained high performance.

Wow have I been blown away.

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