Posts

If you are a regular visitor, you know that I normally I update my site with new content on a monthly basis. However the events of the last 24 hours have compelled me to break with tradition and reach out to the wider world as soon as possible. I already hear you asking, “What happened Jay?” Well the modern web happened, that’s what. Since I’m a web developer you are probably operating under the assumption that I’m acquainted with the modern web and it’s basic rules more-so than most. You aren’t wrong. However I am not infallible. That having been said, the events of the last 24 hours have forced me to take a long hard stare at one of my blind spots, produce a full accounting of the horrors that were subsequently revealed to me and react accordingly. ...

Over the past few years, I’ve spent a lot of time speaking to the dangers of our current blind obsession with the cloud and all it has to offer. Professionally I’ve experienced life on both sides of the fence: I’ve seen this problem from the perspective of the cloud provider and from the perspective of the consumer. In both cases I have arrived at the same conclusion: We’ve got a rough road ahead of us. ...

Most who know me have at some time or another heard me profess my love for Retro and Indie gaming. At the heart of this love however is a growing and increasingly cancerous disdain for modern gaming that I have finally decided to no longer ignore. Now I realize this is going to shock some people, especially as I have a rather embarrassingly large Steam library (as of today it contains 943 games). Most of those people don’t know that I that I also have sizable GoG (407 games) and Playstation Store (around 350 games) libraries as well. So okay yeah I’m addicted. But in my defense these purchases have been made over the last decade. In addition a lot of those GoG library purchases are for older games that I played as a kid but never bought back then. So that has been my way of atoning for past sins as I firmly disagree with software piracy in every case where software is being actively sold. But yeah those are huge game libraries. ...

A number of people I know have asked me why I feel so strongly about particular tech issues that I feel compelled to take action. A number of those people have also informed me that my practice of maintaining a ban list of companies and products that I refuse to patron is objectionable to them. They don’t always say it directly, but once you get used to hearing it implied, it becomes easy enough to recognize it. ...

Earlier this year in January, Google publicly toyed with making some changes to its Extension WebRequest API that would effectively kill off reputable ad-blockers. This announcement was met with much sound and fury and Google appeared to fold after a few weeks of controversy and a bit of research on the part of the community. However all of this ultimately signified nothing as Google announced plans to move forward with nearly the exact same plan this week. ...

So for this month’s blog post, I’ve decided to tackle a bit of tech drama that has been brewing for awhile. In case you didn’t know, the Chinese telecom/tech company Huawei has been repeatedly accused by the US government of spying on their customers at the behest of the Chinese government. No supporting evidence has been released to the public. Despite this lack of evidence, this week the Trump Administration has banned Huawei from doing business with any US based entity using an executive order. ...

In today’s irregularly scheduled pontification, I’m going to be addressing a subject that I have been personally struggling with for the majority of my career. When it comes to expectations in software development, I have recently realized that holding oneself to insane standards is not only ill-advised but potentially career ending. If you are a regular reader (which is impossible as I’m never going to be a regular poster) then you have likely already figured out that I am a software developer on the verge of burnout. I’ve been tip toeing along the edge of that chasm for the last five or six years now. In response I have been exploring a variety of possible solutions to the problem. For the most part these solutions have proven to be nothing more than temporary band-aids. Given enough time I always end up longingly gazing into that chasm of ill-repute where ex-software developers congregate. ...

Over the last few years I have chronicled my struggle to maintain my privacy while maintaining an effective online presence. If you are an avid reader, you know that I believe that I am fighting a losing battle. Today marks the beginning of a new chapter as I have finally realized that most people just don’t care and nothing that you or I can do will ever be enough to make them care. ...

People who know me and talk with me, know I’ve been making this claim for years. That means that this post has been years in the making. That is true both in terms of the argument I’m about to make and in the actions Microsoft has taken to create the situation. The reality is that if I had made this argument ten years ago, most people would’ve laughed and stopped reading by the end of the first paragraph. ...

This post is really going to be just a random collection of random updates and thoughts. If you are looking for an overarching theme, I’m sorry to disappoint but there isn’t one. Nevertheless, this might be worth reading anyway. Your call. So yesterday was a painful and stressful but ultimately fruitful day for me in terms of tech. You see I received the parts required to complete my small server project. By some miracle Fedex delivered the parts early in the morning rather than later, so I ended up spending a huge portion of my day on this. However since this final server was meant to act as my file/print server, I decided to deviate a bit and buy a CloudShell2 NAS case for the ODroid XU4Q SBC (Single Board Computer). What a mistake that turned out to be. As it’s first order of business the embedded RAID Controller decided to mirror my backup drive onto my live drive despite the fact I had configured the jumpers to turn off RAID in favor of presenting the two six terabyte drives as separate volumes. ...