Revamp

It’s been over three years since I’ve made any changes to this site :grimacing:. Here are a handful of recent changes that seemed worth documenting. Read more...

Framer

Prototyping is easily my favorite part of the design process. It’s the best opportunity to test your vision for an actual product experience (and better understand any assumptions, hypotheses, and decisions made along the way). Plus it’s fun to build out your ideas with a little movement and personality. Read more...

UX Learning

I recently went through Joel Marsh’s crash course on UX fundamentals. It’s an extremely introductory, high-level guide…but definitely a useful and worthwhile exercise. Read more...

Sketchin'

Sketch is really, really, really awesome. It’s a simple, useful, and surprisingly powerful design tool. Here are a few things I built with it recently… Read more...

SpiceGuide

So…I have a food blog now. And yeah, it’s extremely cliché…but who cares? I’m pretty sure worse things happen on the internet. Read more...

The Road

I’m reading a fantastic pretty good book called I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes. Today this quote jumped out at me: Read more...

Year in Review - 2015

This is the first time I’ve ever written something like this…so I’ll start as simply as I can: I made enormous personal and professional strides in 2015, and I am so lucky and thankful to continue leading such a fun, crazy, and experience-rich life. I have a loving family, amazing (and hilarious) friends, and a seemingly endless supply of challenges and adventures around me. I’m excited for the road ahead…but it’s worth taking a moment to jot down the goodies from 2015. Here we go… Read more...

Try a Float Tank

Also known as a “sensory deprivation chamber” (which sounds terrifying) or an isolation tank (which isn’t much better). Read more...

Poems

We are constantly entrenched in the practical use of language. Sometimes it’s nice to step away from that and appreciate its artistic expression as well. Read more...

Social Media

Today I had a simple, yet totally profound interaction on Twitter. Here’s what happened: While reading Dan Olsen’s The Lean Product Playbook I found myself with a lot of unanswered questions — primarily around his central case study (which is used to illustrate his lean process with an actual product). I tried Google… Nothing. Then I thought, why not just ask him? Read more...

Meetups

Last night I headed up to Galvanize Boulder to check out the Colorado Product Meetup. Quick version: they crushed it — super fun, well organized, and a friendly/smart/diverse crowd. I’m looking forward to the next event and learning from more product folks down the road. Read more...

Mockups

While working on concepts for a recent side project I decided it would be a good time to dig deeper into wireframing/prototyping with Balsamiq Mockups. Read more...

Local Home Page

When I started rebuilding this site I also took some time to clean up (and properly establish) all my dev stuff — organizing old projects, establishing backup/deploy processes, and reworking my local dev environment. Read more...

The Mom Test

…is one of the most helpful and insightful business books I’ve read. If you’re reading this and have any interest in building a new idea (or gathering better feedback in general) definitely pick it up now. Read more...

The Mysterious

[Full disclosure, this post is all over the place] — Last night I went on a mini TED binge and somehow ended on the path of public speaking (and confidence in general). Throughout The 7 Secrets of the Greatest Speakers in History, Robert Greene compiles some incredible speeches to discuss why (and how) the speeches themselves served as tipping points in American history. Read more...

Golf Swing Epiphanies

Learning (or building upon) any skill typically comes with a series of epiphanies — a collection of AHA! moments that push you closer and closer to mastery. Read more...

Rails Tutorial - Chapter 8 (Part 1 of 2)

I’ll be honest, I had to go through this chapter twice just to get it. It’s a beast. And the concepts are much more complex than previous chapters. Part of the reason I’m posting notes throughout this tutorial is to ensure it sticks. Read more...

Snowboarding --> Skiing

Last year I began the process of switching from :snowboarder: to :ski: — trying out new equipment, falling a lot, harnessing my inner Jerry. Like anything else it required a bit of patience (and some pain) but I’m excited to get back up there and get better. Read more...

Climbing

I developed a new obsession today at Movement Denver. Alison and I decided to take a belay class (super intro beginner class) to see if it’s something we might want to get into… We f*cking loved it. We’re going back tomorrow to take the belay test so we can hook each other up (literally) whenever we want. Read more...

Rails Tutorial - Chapter 6

Before I get to the meat of this I have to note the significance of today, October 21, 2015, which is the day Marty McFly arrives in the future and we’re introduced to all kinds of iconic inventions like hoverboards and self-lacing shoes. My favorite tribute is (predictably) golf-related… :golf: Read more...

Principles

While flying from DEN to DFW today I began reading Principles — a short “book” on management (and life) by Ray Dalio, founder & CEO of Bridgewater Associates. Read more...

Rails Tutorial - Chapter 5

This chapter was pretty basic. It did start to bring the app to life visually…and there were certainly some tricky exercises surrounding application helpers, etc. Read more...

Rails Tutorial - Chapter 4

Ah, time to indroduce the real “intro to programming” section. This chapter1 is entirely about ruby…which is probably where most folks realize they’re either all in…or lose interest completely. This is a continuation of lessons learned from Michael Hartl’s Rails Tutorial. Feel free to review my Chapter 3 notes as well. ↩ Read more...

IFLG Phase 1

The 2015 Presidents Cup is taking place (right now) at the Jack Nicklaus club in Incheon, South Korea. This is the first time the cup has been held anywhere in Asia — which is cool for SO MANY reasons. Read more...

Scrum Findings

As far as learning goes…I’m all over the place lately. Yesterday I dove deep into git concepts, before that I was expoloring ruby/rails…and today I predictably have more notes to share on yet another (albeit certainly related) topic. Read more...

Git Notes 001

I use an alias in my ~/.gitconfig called git hist1, which looks like this: Admittedly I stole much of this from the GitImmersion tutorial and then again on coderwall.com. ↩ Read more...

Rails Tutorial - Chapter 3

On the surface I haven’t really done anything with the app yet. It’s basically just four simple pages—but there’s quite a bit going on beneath the surface and I’m really enjoying the progression. Read more...

Learning Hartl's Rails Tutorial

Some years ago (~fall 2010)—before I knew anything at all about web development—I attempted to run through Michael Hartl’s famous ruby on rails tutorial. This became one of my first introductions to a handful of technologies: command line, git, code deployment, and programming in general. Awesome stuff for sure, but certainly more than I could chew at the time. Read more...