Screenshop - My Team’s Comedy Hack Day App

Comedy Hack Day was a pretty freaking cool experience all around and made better by the following: With my background in both tech and comedy (writing), I’ve been dying to do Comedy Hack Day for a while now and just couldn’t make it work with my schedule. My team (the three of us just randomly formed in the chaos) worked our asses off to get a demo and an iOS app (I had to learn Objective C on the fly) just in time.

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Android Wear and an Update on My First Android App

Over the Christmas holiday I dove in head first with Android Wear, and by that I mean I both bought a watch and developed an app (which of course, means it’s a stupid silly app as that is all that I make in my free time). So now, two months later, I figured it would be a good point to step back and see if it was a good move or just a project for my time off of work.

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I Got a 3D Printer

I’m one of those 3D printer guys now. It happened a few weeks ago when my Solidoodle Press finally arrived only after a quick 3 - 4 month delay. Since then I’ve printed something right after plugging it in that looked awesome…but then I learned that it looked “OK”…then I learned how to calibrate it…then I learned how to switch to better software…then I learned how frustrating 5 or 6 failed prints in a row are…then I learned how to install Windows on a Mac so I can install different 3D printing software…then I learned that Windows wasn’t so bad if it helped me to stop making weird plastic things I throw in the trash…then I learned that looking for the next thing to print is exhausting.

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Not So Unlimited Vacation Policy

I was catching up on Marco Arment’s writing (marco.org) recently and his link from December 14th caught my eye. Arment links to a piece talking about the lie that is the common startup benefit of “unlimited” vacation days (From Open (Unlimited) to Minimum Vacation Policy). It’s a good piece and certinaly worth a read but Arment’s comments are what specifically caught my eye:

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That Has to Change

The New York Times has a nice, but short, profile on the CTO of the United States of America and the lede stood out to me in particular: President Obama’s top technology adviser cringes when she hears highly educated adults say how bad they are at science and math, particularly when they do so in front of children.

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Sentence Saver for Beats Music

Ever since I made my little Clojure wrapper for the Beats Music API, I was on the lookout for a companion project where I actually use the library the make an app. I know, a totally 100% novel idea. I just deployed a little web app I’m calling the Sentence Saver for Beats Music, and it solves the problem of being able to enjoy the Beats Music “The Sentence” feature (basically their radio feature) while offline by giving you the ability to request a sentence and then having those tracks made in to a playlist.

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