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External Publications

Over my career, I published articles in a variety of different print and online publications. The following list is all articles in reverse chronological order.

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• USB 3.0 Cable Power Switch

  Date: 2025-03-02 | Publication: Instructables | Format: Online While working on microcontroller projects, I found myself repeatedly plugging and unplugging USB cables to power the device. I built a simple USB power switch to make the process easier.

• Industry Analysts Must Get Their Facts Right

  Date: 2021-08-10 | Publication: Medium | Format: Online I read a recent Gartner report and noticed that they published some deliberately misleading and incorrect information in their argument about a particular vendor's product. A later read showed that the repeated the falsehood repeatedly throughout the publication. I wrote this article to highlight the error and, of course, prove why their statements were incorrect.

• But I Don’t Know Dart

  Date: 2021-08-10 | Publication: Medium | Format: Online I did a lot of research this year into Flutter and React Native and every time I mentioned Flutter to a developer, they'd immediately respond that they weren't interested in using Flutter because that meant they'd have to learn Dart (the language Flutter uses). I wrote the article to highlight that I've been an active Flutter developer for more than a year now and I really don't 'know' Dart.

• Submitting Questions on Stack Overflow as a Last Resort

  Date: 2021-04-08 | Publication: Medium | Format: Online In trying to get some help with some development issues, I either received no response to my questions, or Stack Overflow actively deleted my posts for a variety of ridiculous reasons. I wrote this article to share my views on the situation.

• It’s Almost Impossible to Get Real Developer Support Anymore

  Date: 2021-03-31 | Publication: Medium | Format: Online At the time I wrote this, I was doing a lot of cloud development and needed help with some issues I was having. At the time I was very frustrated with how the cloud service providers pushed support out to the community even though I was paying for the services I used. The article promotes my view of how this should work.

• Arduino Programming: Variables, constants, and more

  Date: 2018-03-01 | Publication: Hackspace Magazine | Format: Print This was my last article for Hackspace Magazine; an introduction to variables, constants, and defines on Arduino.

• Make the Switch

  Date: 2018-02-19 | Publication: Make Magazine | Format: Print I've always been fascinated with relays and I love putting them into projects. Whenever I found a relay board for a particular single board computer or microcontroller, I bought it and figured out how to use it. This article came from a proposal I made to Make Magazine about a general article that covered all sorts of relays and relay boards. For the article cover photo, I sent all of my relays and boards to California and the Make team did a professional photo shoot of them all lumped together.

• A Better Way to Exercise Cordova Plugins

  Date: 2018-02-02 | Publication: PhoneGap Blog | Format: Online This was my first (and only) PhoneGap blog post, describing how to build support into your Apache Cordova Plugins for the Cordova Simulate plugin simulator from Microsoft. This was also the topic for my presentation at the very last US PhoneGap day (in 2017).

• Arduino Programming: Reading Data From Devices

  Date: 2018-02-01 | Publication: HackSpace Magazine | Format: Print This article covered measuring information on an Arduino device using simple digital devices and use the data to control hardware - in this case, turning on an LED when the temperature crosses a threshold.

• Reading digital data on the Arduino platform

  Date: 2018-01-01 | Publication: HackSpace Magazine | Format: Print This article highlighted how to read external data on an Arduino, in this case reading the state of a button.

• Add Arduino power to your projects

  Date: 2017-12-01 | Publication: HackSpace Magazine | Format: Print An introduction to Arduino development.

• Pi Zero Visual Appointment Reminder

  Date: 2017-06-01 | Publication: The MagPi Magazine | Format: Print For this project, I took my Pi Remind and modified it for the Pi Zero device (and a much smaller LED array - the Pimoroni Blinkt!). For some reason, the original article was deleted and this one is a reprint under another author's name (with original credit to me).

• Solder Together a Fairy Lights Mason Jar

  Date: 2017-06-01 | Publication: Make Magazine | Format: Print This article shows how to make a July 4th themed (US Independence Holiday) Fairy lights in a mason jar. For this, I used three strands of LEDs (Red, White, and Blue - of course) and a little Arduino code to fade the different strands up and down.

• Arduino (Trinket) Twinkle Lights

  Date: 2017-01-19 | Publication: Hackster.io | Format: Online A variant of my twinkle lights in a jar project

• Tessel Garage Door Controller

  Date: 2017-01-19 | Publication: Hackster.io | Format: Online Describes how to build a remote garage door opener project on the Tessel platform

• Collect and Display Weather Data with a Raspberry Pi

  Date: 2016-11-02 | Publication: Make Magazine | Format: Print I've always been interested in hosting my own weather station, but I've never been interested in plunking down the cash to buy one of the professional stations. For this article, I wired up a Raspberry Pi device and the Astro Pi Sense HAT to build a little inexpensive weather station that posts weather data to Weather Underground.

• Get a Flashing Meeting Reminder with a Raspberry Pi

  Date: 2016-06-14 | Publication: Make Magazine | Format: Print At the time I wrote this, I worked at home (I still do) and I spent a lot of time on the phone talking to colleagues, vendors and customers. My employer used Google Calendar and Gmail but the appointment notification capabilities were not very robust. Well, they’re robust, but not enough to get me to actually show up for calls on time. I often missed notifications when I’m busy doing something else or I notice the notification, but quickly forget about it just a few minutes later and ultimately miss some meetings or join late. I built the project described in this article to give me a visual reminder when I have appointments. Its 2021 and I still use it every day.

• Apache Cordova and Server-Side Technologies

  Date: 2016-02-18 | Publication: InformIT | Format: Online I saw a lot of Stack Overflow questions asking about how to attach an Apache Cordova application to different server-side technologies, so I decided to write an article talking about the different options.

• Which to Use: Cordova or PhoneGap?

  Date: 2016-02-16 | Publication: InformIT | Format: Online I found a reason to refer to this article just last week (July, 2021) because apparently people still don't understand the difference between Apache Cordova and Adobe PhoneGap.

• What's New in Apache Cordova 4?

  Date: 2015-04-29 | Publication: InformIT | Format: Online An introduction to the new features and capabilities in Apache Cordova 4.

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