I'm really excited that 2020 is over! This was the hardest year of my life so far. It was also the first one that was worse and not better than all the previous ones, which I'm really hoping is not a new trend. When I thought about it a bit I realized I still did a lot of cool things and learned a lot this year though. […12 min read]
Update: I recently switched to using Github Actions to run my tests because I started getting git auth failures trying to fetch git deps on CircleCI. Learning the random YAML magic required to set up a github action was marginally less awful than faffing with ssh keys on circle. You can see the result in this commit. The actual steps to set up codecov for your project are the same. […3 min read]
One of my goals for 2020 was to stop using Google's products. There are a lot of reasons why, but that's not the point of this post. I found out about Nextcloud last month and it turns out it's a great replacement for a lot of Google. I don't actually use all of its features, but I've migrated my calendar, reminders, contacts, bookmarks, video calls, photos, and news feeds and I'm really happy with it so far. […12 min read]
I went to a virtual conference this weekend called BarCamp Philly and had a really good time. The way they ran the conference was new to me. They somehow made the experience feel enjoyable and inspiring, which I thought was really impressive because I've had a hard time getting excited about virtual conferences this year. I've been to a dozen or so since everything got cancelled back in the spring, and this was the first time I stayed until the end and left feeling more energized than drained, fired up with lots of new ideas and inspiration and even a new acquaintance, which is super exciting to me because I find it so hard to meet new people during a pandemic. […11 min read]
When I started hanging in out in religious circles in my late twenties for the first time in my life, I had a lot to learn. Not just about the diversity and depth of different religions, but also about the culture. There are certain words that mean different things in a religious context, and other ones that don't really exist outside of one at all. This a brief overview of some of the language I've picked up over the past few years. These definitions are all based on actual personal experiences from about two dozen different churches/synagogues/groups, so of course as such are entirely anecdotal. This isn't meant to be an academic or universal description of religious terminology, just some new words and ways language is used differently in religious contexts that I found interesting and which might be useful if you ever find yourself in a similar situation. […4 min read]
This is the first post in a series on things the 2020 pandemic has taught me. It's been by far the weirdest and hardest thing I've experienced so far in my life. It was a real struggle to figure out how to operate in this new kind of world, but after about half a year I feel like I'm finally starting to get my bearings. Some days feel normal again, and I can mostly do the things I used to enjoy before the pandemic hit. Now that I have some presence of mind back I realized the experience has actually taught me several important things. The first is that journalism is important. […4 min read]
I grew up as an outsider to religion. I never considered it a worthwhile pursuit and spent quite a few years as an outspoken critic. As an adult I began to explore it for myself, and I now have what I would count as a spiritual life. I still find most of what religions teach very hard to believe, but I've also found a lot of value in them. My secular education left me desperately unprepared for the hardships of adulthood and, like many people who turn to religion, when life sent me seeking answers I ended up in church. Spoiler alert: I didn't find any answers, but I did find wisdom and traditions that I now believe have great potential. […10 min read]
What are our ethical obligations to each other? It's a complicated question. Living in a civilised society implies abiding by a set of shared rules. Some are explicit like laws and contracts, some are implicit like cultural norms, and some are disputed. Whether we have an obligation to care for others, and if so to what extent, often ends up being debated as a political issue, but at its core it's a philosophical question. […10 min read]
I first got into programming because I wanted to make my own websites. Back then all it took was two files, an index.html and a style sheet. I recently decided to take up blogging again and started looking around for a simple static site generator. There are a couple of reasons why I avoided some other approaches. […4 min read]