Posts

I quit my job and focused full-time on side projects for four months. Here's what I learned during this time and what I plan to do next.

I like watching TV. Get out of here, books.

🔗 shopify.engineering

🔗 shopify.engineering

Here is a list of things I want to do.

I've been working at Shopify for one year now. Here's what I've learned.

🔗 product.voxmedia.com

🔗 blog.cloudflare.com

I talk about building my new website with some fun new technologies.

🔗 product.voxmedia.com

🔗 product.voxmedia.com

🔗 product.voxmedia.com

I'd love to have you become a member! And share it with others.

It's starting to become a problem.

🔗 product.voxmedia.com

I built Fresa, a library that makes WordPress development more enjoyable using object-oriented standards and fluent, expressive interfaces.

Let's build a realtime chat application using Laravel 5.4 and VueJS, and then we'll test it with Laravel Dusk!

Learn about the "just enough" principle I borrowed from Erika Hall and how I apply it to my web development process.

As an active CodePen user, I've been wanting to host a CodePen meetup in my area for a while. In the spring of 2016, I decided to bite the bullet and enlist the help of my pals Justin Lobaito and Ryan Young to plan Iowa's first CodePen meetup! Spoiler alert: It was really great.

I'm working on a project which contains a collection of 40 to 50 items. None of the items have photos or other distinguishing visual indicator, so I wondered... Could I add a difference in color based on the date of each item in the collection?

I go on a week-long challenge to only use Vim as my text/code editor. Goodbye, Sublime Text! See you never! Totally kidding.

When's the last time you noticed somebody's shoes? Nobody looks at your shoes. I write about how it relates to life and keeping up appearances.

How much traffic is a lot of traffic for a DigitalOcean droplet? I test out a couple different heavy traffic scenarios with CloudFlare and WordPress.

When you're building out a website with full-width background images, you've probably run into an issue with resolution and size. Screens are getting huge, and images keep getting larger. But how large is too large for images?

Did you know there exists a native HTML solution to those beloved Autocomplete widgets? It's called datalist, and you can use it today (sort of).

I took part in a worldwide Hackathon called Static Showdown. It was a lot of fun, and here is a writeup about it (with a link to the game we made).

If you know anything about me, you probably know that I'm madly in love with MailChimp. Their email templates are responsive out of the box, and their drag-and-drop editor is to die for. But what about when you can't use MailChimp?

I've made a lot of changes to my web development workflow recently, and doing so made me reflect on how much my process has changed in the last 12 years. I have written these changes down for you here.

I've been doing a lot in the command line lately, so I've gotten to use the tar command quite a bit. Here are a few useful tips that helped me get started.

I'm kind of obsessed with film composers. Here's a reason why Hans Zimmer and Mozart are awesome.

While redesigning this site, I was inspired by Dave Rupert's About page. Dave has built a responsive HTML timeline, and I thought, "Hey, that's pretty neat." After playing around with the design, I decided I wanted to integrate it into my Wordpress site. Here's how I went about it.

Care to see a sneak peek of the trailer for the 48 Hour Film Project film in which I took part?

I announce the next step in my career.

In which I discuss the merits of hip-hop music. The good, the bad. Lil Wayne to André 3000.

In which I discuss the role of directors in recent Disney/Pixar films and how they can change.

In which I describe my thoughts on Alzheimer's disease, my grandmother, and the power of music.

My first week at KCCI: A day with Steve Karlin, "Next Gen News," WHY we do what we do, learning the ropes of producing, and an introduction to investigative reporting.

This was forwarded to me by one of my professors regarding ABC News' recent decision to lay off a number of employees and move toward the use of multi-functioning journalists.

I was recently asked to attend a leadership conference in Brookston, Indiana as a representative of my social fraternity Beta Theta Pi. These are my thoughts on the experience.

I speak about my experiences with several organizations, originally published in my band fraternity district newsletter.

I discuss how the ISUtv website has been launched and what went into developing the site.

What goes into redesigning a higher education website? Find out what I did.

We definitely had some interesting visitors in Ames this summer. Read what I thought.

This is a review of the trip I took to Rome from July 3 through July 5, sent to my parents and published in The Stratford Courier. Enjoy.

An in-depth look at the construction of a scholarship database for the Office of Student Financial Aid at ISU.

This might sound weird, but I've been thinking about something on a near-daily basis: the use of the word "media."

It took me a year, but I finally did it: I switched from Iowa State University's Webmail program to Google's Gmail. I can't believe how beneficial the switch ended up being!