mrtomservo

Location: San Diego, California

Remote: Enthusiastically

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, TypeScript, Vue.js, PHP, Python, SQL, MySQL, XML, JSON, Markdown, WordPress, Prismic, AWS, AWS Lambda, Cloudflare Workers, DigitalOcean, Linux, macOS, Git, DNS, Schema markup, Lighthouse, foundation models, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), agentic workflows

Résumé/CV: https://honestcode.com/cv.txt

Email: 505b72718fc9@honestcode.com

Forward-deployable digital problem solver with more than 25 years of experience taking web applications and technical systems from ambiguous business need to production. Combines full-stack development, cloud architecture, product design, and clear communication to build useful, dependable solutions across varied organizations and industries. Led a portfolio of a dozen concurrent customer websites, from discovery and implementation through deployment and production support. Deep familiarity with JavaScript, TypeScript, Vue.js, PHP, WordPress, APIs, and AWS/Linux work with a background in design, accessibility, technical SEO, content operations, and clear communication across technical and nontechnical teams.

This was a long time ago, and I could be paraphrasing, but I recall someone (who knew about such things) saying the Space Shuttle was famous for having "the grace and aerodynamic properties of a pair of pliers."

I've been a Kagi user since 2022, and a paying user since January 2024, and I can say that I have not thought about another search engine in as much time. Absolutely worth the $10 per month.

Using a browser that defaults to another search engine is jarring. I see screenshots of what Google search results look like now, and it's like seeing the neighborhood you grew up in with shuttered storefronts and mouldering houses.

In my experience, in natural environments that contain a vertical paper towel holder, Torqueroligiverasacculum Genera finds a nest and potential mating area underneath.

I wonder if unchecked capital accumulation combined with cutting the social safety net and major public works will lead to commerce without customers: An economy built on consumption where nobody has the money to consume.

You've got the crux already:

> Stories are being weaponised by populists who thrive on fear and capitalists who benefit from monetising it. The best storytellers are winning attention and winning power and keeping their power by telling even better stories.

It is increasingly costly to reach an audience (especially one of the size that would be required to have a "shared ground") not only in the sense of cash money, but also the attention cost of convincing that audience that those "better stories" (perhaps more shocking, outraging, etc.) they've been told might not be actually true.

News is becoming yet another industry that rewards the first mover -- write that first shocking headline, and all the other outlets have to work 10 or 100 times as hard to correct it later.

This is a press release from a company that markets an AI relationship platform.

It sounds a bit like Canabalt, maybe? https://canabalt.com

While fun to look at, it becomes gibberish for assistive software like screen readers.

I've mentioned this here and elsewhere, but it's an app where you specify a word or phrase, and get a notification when someone else is nearby and has the same word or phrase set. Seems like a nice starter app. Good luck on your journey!

I live in a city with a large number of unhoused people. I think I would use unlimited resources to buy and renovate old buildings[1] downtown to build housing, and fund support services on-site to help people escape homelessness and addiction.

I would want to solve this because unhoused people are suffering, and downtown (as a neighborhood) has been sort of hollowed out by business choosing to leave for practical reasons (WFH) and because of the perception of "too many" unhoused people. I love downtown, it's just not a pleasant place to spend time, especially at night.

I do not have the resources nor the political acumen for these kinds of initiatives, and I think it would take a great deal of resources to not only buy the land but demolish or renovate the buildings. It would create a lot of jobs (construction at first) but I think there's a large amount of activation energy required to get started.

[1]: https://www.cbs8.com/article/news/local/legal-action-taken-a...

I love my 0.7mm Zebra Sarasa Clips (dark blue). I buy the refills to put in other pens. The ink dries nearly instantly. Not fancy, but a great workhorse pen.

Could it have been https://poolsuite.net?

This is the first earthquake where I got a ShakeAlert notification _before_ the shaking started. I had a good two seconds to think before I felt it, and that's pretty cool, all things considered.

I did notice some character encoding issues, but this is very helpful and handy, thank you!

https://pure.md/https://unionize.fyi

I agree -- color bars pre-printed on tractor-feed paper would have used a Pantone ink, maybe a tint of 290 for blue, or 358 for green. Mills wouldn't have likely used a C+M+Y build: Why pay for three inks (and the potential for misregistration) when you can just use one? There might have even been a special machine to print the lines at regular intervals, and not run through a traditional offset printing press.

Pantone inks in specific, and printed colors in general, don't convert precisely to RGB. Ambient light reflects off paper to your eyeballs; a screen beams light into your eyeballs.

It's a nice little nostalgic thought exercise, though.

> Ricks, a native of the Ninth Ward, later told NBC Nightly News that he wrote the bulletin based on his previous experiences with Betsy and Camille. [...] The bulletin, and the rosary that Ricks clutched as he and his fellow forecasters weathered the storm in their office, are both now in the National Museum of American History.[19]

This is a personal anecdote, and just one data point, but still. I work on websites for customers, and frequently I'll need to (for example) iterate through some spreadsheet data, or convert a big object of this format to some other format. These are tedious tasks that don't take a _huge_ amount of time, but instead of grinding on a particular function for 30 minutes, I have a workable thing I can tweak in five minutes. I'd say this helps me "code faster and better."

Does it make the end product better? Not really: I would have gotten there with a function written by me or some LLM. But like everything I've been asked to do my professional career, it allows me to do more with less. More dumb functions in less time.

I made a decent pizza sauce last night with help from ChatGPT: https://chatgpt.com/share/f8bb2dfb-6e14-4678-bbca-f5a338a490...

My uncle was the head of the projection department at Paramount Pictures for a long time, and he knew I liked Star Trek growing up. When we went to visit once, he gave me a VHS tape of Forbidden Planet, only saying I'd like the part that showed them decelerating, which used the same film technique as the transporter on the original Star Trek. Of course, I think I wore out that VHS tape by watching it, and especially enjoyed Leslie Nielsen's performance, who at the time was starring in the Naked Gun pictures. Anyway, Forbidden Planet is an absolute gem and holds a special place in my heart.

I understand Robby had a presence in other features too.

This has been my experience as well. My wife has end-stage kidney disease, and we have found that the system works (for us!) when we stay within our hospital system. We don't travel much, we keep to within a certain radius of the hospital we trust, and we make sure any new specialists are inside or at least connected to the same (Epic) system. That has solved the "no interface" issue and the issues described in the "Traditional life in the ruins of systematicity" segment.

We are also blessed to have a kidney specialist that, as part of this system, has some tenure and traction in this hospital system, and is -- in my opinion -- an incredible doctor and hospitalist who proactively navigates these systems on our behalf. I 100-percent realize that this doctor does not exist everywhere, and we are incredibly fortunate to have him on "our team".

In any setting -- ER/ED, inpatient, outpatient, clinic, urgent care -- when you talk with doctors and nurses, answer their questions, no matter how repetitive. Be kind, and understand that the person you're talking with _now_ has exactly 20 seconds of experience with your case and influence over a very small part of the system.

The phrase that has gotten me farthest is "Hey, I'm a dum dum, but." For example, everyone along the way was ready to tell me why what she had _wasn't_ a seizure, and I wasn't going to argue with them, but what I said instead was "I'm a dum dum, but it really looked like a seizure to me. Her fists clenched, I tried to unclench them but I couldn't. I rolled her onto her side because Seizure Protocol. She said herself she lost control of her muscle movements."

The best thing you can do (like the post author) is be an active, participating advocate for your loved one, the patient: Every. Single. Time.

Every year I go to the slightly-fancy supermarket in town and buy some gift cards for the people I can't think of presents for. Everyone buys food, and it's fun to find it in your wallet and have an excuse to go and get a nice block of cheese or a deli sandwich.

I was interested to try this out. I downloaded the app, and obtaining the mID was presented as an application process. The first step was to scan both sides of my driver license. The second step was to submit to a scan of my face, where the screen flashed various colors to determine if I was a live person (somehow, maybe it measured my irises or something). Once that was complete, I was very quickly (if not immediately approved), and could download the mID to my iPhone.

Note that this does not appear to integrate with Apple’s digital driver license program in the Wallet app. [1]

1: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/23/apple-lets-you-store-your-dr...

As someone who has had a (brain stem) stroke, and also as someone with close family members that have/had dementia, thank you for your work.

I use the Just Press Record[1] app on my watch, and it transcribes the audio automatically. They're not anything sensitive or confidential, so the convenience is nice.

1: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/just-press-record/id1033342465

You might be interested in the history of grawlix: https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2457

Related: The earliest typographically-bleeped f-word? http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003253.h...

That’s a little like asking “do you have a sense of how much a car costs?” It’s a difficult question to answer without more detail.

I design both user experiences and visual ... things ... too. I'm able to sit down in an afternoon and convert a page _if_ I have some guidance: For example, if the customer already has "their" colors and "their" fonts -- meaning, they have an existing visual system -- then yes!

Coming up with that visual language is more work. Typically companies like to be unique (but not too weird) so while you can identify "best practices" among larger brands, most of your time is identifying what makes them different, and finding the best way to highlight those features visually. There tends to be some back and forth with this, and there are a lot of feelings to navigate, especially if the customer has strong preferences about how things look.

Color, layout, heirarchy, history and perception are all part of a good design education! It's worth your while to find art and artists that you like, and find how they solve problems. Paul Rand and Massimo Vignelli are two significant personal influences, and they have written extensively (or had things written about them) about their process and thinking.

(Edit: I spelled Massimo Vignelli's name wrong, oops)