First Explorations of Twitter Verification API

December 29, 2021

Twitter just announced that they are re-launching their verification program, and now you can check whether you are eligible directly from your Twitter account settings. Neat! Which naturally made me curious as to what they used behind the scenes, since in previous instances of the process they used a form that likely was manually reviewed. Before I dive in, I want to call out - no, I am not important enough to be verified, nor do I care about getting the blue tick.

Careers Are Not Marathons Or Sprints

December 27, 2021

Not too long ago, I was reading Charlie Kindel's "You're Thinking of Your Career Trajectory Wrong" and it reminded me of yet another trope that somehow is very commonplace, at least in the tech industry - your career is not a sprint, it's a marathon. It comes from a well-intentioned desire to communicate the fact that careers should be looked at through the long-term lens, which makes sense - we rarely hear the story of someone being right out of college and then becoming a Vice President of Product at a Fortune 500. It's all about the long game. But it also sets a lot of folks for failure early on.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Software You Rent

December 19, 2021

The recent saga with the botched remake of the Grand Theft Auto Trilogy reminded me of the topic of this blog post, and I figured - what better time than now to get it out of my brain and into an array of bits. The topic today is rented software. Writing this I really feel like "old man yelling at (software) cloud," but maybe by some miracle it'll grab the attention of those making these kinds of decisions.

Hidden Xbox APIs: Backing Up Media Captures

December 10, 2021

Recently my Xbox started yelling at me every time I started taking a new game capture, reminding me that the storage for my account is full on the Xbox Live network. When I first got it, I thought that it had something to do with the fact that I am blocking outbound telemetry requests through PiHole, and all of a sudden, my local cache filled up.

Behind The Spotify Wrapped API Scenes

December 2, 2021

Every year (unless you're one of those Apple Music people) music fans rejoice to get their Spotify Wrapped, or - the musical year in review. It's a fun way to explore the most frequently listened to songs and artists. And every year up until this one, if memory serves me right, the experience could be viewed in the browser. And then, I paid the site a visit in the year 2021.

GitHub Issues Graph with Netlify and GraphQL

November 26, 2021

The other day, Clint Rutkas (yes, that Clint Rutkas) tweeted about a potential scenario that GitHub does not have built-in, but that could be useful for folks that want to have a deeper look at the performance of their repositories - identifying "center of gravity" issues. What that means is essentially finding issues that are cross-referenced the most from other issues.

Using Netlify API Authentication for Static Site Builds

November 18, 2021

What's the most painful part of building anything with APIs? According to a tweet question I asked recently, one of the common themes was "authentication." Surprise, surprise - we're making that experience a bit easier with Netlify API Authentication by completely removing the step of handling the OAuth process "by hand."

Setting A Blank New Tab on Microsoft Edge

November 15, 2021

It's ridiculous that I have to write it, but it looks like there is no hope in this being an actual feature of the Microsoft Edge web browser - setting a blank new tab. Not a tab with minimal ads, but just one that is blank. You know, the thing that you could set in Firefox for ages.

Joining Netlify

October 23, 2021

If you asked me 20 years back as to what I want to do with my life, I'd probably answer with something like "build stuff with computers." From the early days of my career, to some of the more recent adventures, I tried to find teams where I can be very hands-on with the tech stack and build, build, build.

Signing GitHub Commits With YubiKey

August 28, 2021

I got into the habit of signing my GitHub commits. It’s awesome - anyone that looks at my repositories is able to tell that it really came from my account (and not someone just using my email). As an added bonus, I get a fancy badge associated with my commits, which makes me feel special (since I am not really “verified” anywhere else).