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• Joomla Article Conversion to Markdown

  Posted November 23, 2022  in Content Management Systems, Static Site Generators
  As I prepared to migrate this site from Joomla! 3 to something built on a Static Site Generator, I created a utility to help me migrate the site data (database-driven) to individual markdown files for each article. This post describes that utility.

• Site Upgrade Coming

  Posted November 11, 2022  in Content Management Systems
  This site ran on Joomla! for more that ten years and it became time to migrate the site to something else. This post announces the planned migration.

• Apache Cordova API Cookbook Site Retired

  Posted February 9, 2022  in Mobile Development
  My Apache Cordova API Cookbook came out years ago and Cordova's moved a long way from the version 4 covered in the book. In this post, I announce that I retired the book's landing page.

• Apache Cordova 4 Programming Site Retired

  Posted February 9, 2022  in Mobile Development
  My Apache Cordova 4 Programming book came out years ago and Cordova's moved a long way from the version 4 covered in the book. In this post, I announce that I retired the book's landing page.

• Accurately Calculating Progress in Goodreads

  Posted January 9, 2022  in Miscellaneous
  I track the books I read in Goodreads, and this post describes a solution I created to deal with an annoying problem with Goodreads page counts and how they differ dramatically from reality. In this case I highlight a web app I created to convert a reader's current page to one adjusted for an inaccurate total page count in Goodreads.

• Looking at the Blues Wireless Platform

  Posted October 10, 2021  in Internet of Things (IoT)
  I discovered the Blues Wireless platform and started playing around with it. A conference buddy went to work there and he hooked me up with some devices. Its a low power consumption data collection platform (essentially) with ten years of data. This post describes my initial impressions of the platform.

• Andy Doro Word Clock Update

  Posted August 10, 2021  in Internet of Things (IoT)
  I recently discovered Andy Doro's Word Clock and I love the project. I built one for my self then started looking at the code for ways to improve it. I made a bunch of changes to the code and, once Andy added a license to the project repository, forked it and published my own version of it.

• Implementing Custom Pipes in Ionic

  Posted July 19, 2021  in Web Development
  Pipes are a really cool feature in Angular and Ionic and I had an opportunity to build one of my own and this post describes what I did and points you to the code.

• Using the Arduino NTPClient Library

  Posted July 18, 2021  in Internet of Things (IoT)
  I have a version of Andy Doro’s Word Clock running in my house. I had some issues with the real-time clock (RTC) keeping time correctly, so I decided to rebuild the clock using a Wi-Fi enabled device and the Network Time Protocol (NTP) to keep my clock’s local time synchronized with reality.

• Word Clock Time Issues

  Posted July 14, 2021  in Internet of Things (IoT)
  The clock's been running in our guest bathroom for more than a year now and I recently noticed that the clock wasn't keeping time very well. It was about 20 minutes fast. The original project is based on the Adafruit Trinket device which doesn't have a Wi-Fi connection, so it can't get it's time through Network Time Protocol (NTP). Instead, sets the clock to the compile date/time for the currently running sketch.

• Simplifying Moddable Deployments

  Posted May 21, 2021  in Internet of Things (IoT)
  Moddable is one of the JavaScript based microcontroller I've been working with lately and these guys are really serious about their JavaScript. I encountered some inefficiencies with their CLI tooling so I built a wrapper that simplifies its operation.

• Moddable, Windows, & Visual Studio Code

  Posted May 20, 2021  in Internet of Things (IoT)
  I spent some time recently setting up a development environment for the Moddable platform (JavaScript microcontrollers). Since I'm on Windows and the docs were a little confusing, I setup my environment then wrote about it here so others could learn how to configure their environments.

• Displaying Build Information in ReactJS

  Posted May 15, 2021  in Web Development
  I've been doing a lot of React development lately and I wanted the ability to display the app version number in the app. Now that I have the Ionic Build Info utility I described in the previous post, I copied that project and created a version of it that works for React as well.

• JavaScript Microcontrollers

  Posted May 14, 2021  in Internet of Things (IoT)
  I've been working with microcontrollers for a long time and there is a new trend around JavaScript-based microcontrollers (my favorite) and I wrote this post to introduce some of the ones I'm playing around with.

• Displaying Build Information in Ionic Applications

  Posted May 14, 2021  in Web Development
  I was building an Ionic app and I wanted to display the app version in the app without having to hard code it as a constant in the app. Recognizing that the app's `package.json` file contained the app version and I could update it when I needed outside of the app, I built a little utility that writes a data file to the ionic project with build information that can be displayed anywhere in the app.

• Reviewing the Wrong Book

  Posted April 20, 2021  in Miscellaneous
  I read a review of one of my books on Amazon today and I'm always surprised by what different people want from books. In this case I had to respond because it felt like the reviewer wasn't reviewing my book.

• Firebase Functions Deploy Helper

  Posted April 3, 2021  in Miscellaneous
  Between jobs, I spent most of my free time working for a startup building a sales automation tool in the cloud. I built the application on Firebase and encountered some problems deploying my Functions project reliably. To fix this, I created a utility that allows me to batch deployment updates to Firebase.

• Talking Myself Out of a Job

  Posted April 2, 2021  in Miscellaneous
  I had some interesting experiences looking for a new job this time. My favorite one was an interview with an Engineering VP at one of the largest software companies in the world. He took a completely different approach in reading up about me before the interview and he made me completely rethink what kind of job I was looking for.

• Starting a New Job Monday

  Posted April 1, 2021  in Miscellaneous
  After being out of work since September, I finally found a new job and this is my announcement that I finally found work.

• Interesting Domain Registration Scam

  Posted January 12, 2021  in Miscellaneous
  I'm always amused by the random scams I get from time to time. and a long time ago I started documenting them here. This one's about a site contact form submission letting me know my domain registration would be terminated soon. So scary.

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