{ :curious "programmer" } { }

In this post I work through the creation of rules using the Datomic MusicBrainz sample database. The example queries are grabbed from the Datomic Docs and the Datomic mbrainz sample GitHub pages. If you want to get started with Datomic, check out the first post in...

Get started with the essentials of Datomic from installing Datomic, running a transactor, working with the Datomic console, running the Datomic REPL, creating and restoring a database, creating a schema and furnishing it with data.

The goal of this series is to expose a collection of queries that I find...

I developed corporate programmer using a Ruby-based static-site generator called Jekyll. It transforms Markdown, Liquid, HTML and CSS to a static website so that no is database required.

While I was planning to leave the corporate world, I started rebranding. I wanted a change. A new look. A...

When I first started with Clojure, my mind was foggy and filled with a swarm of buzzwords. There were tools, plugins, libraries, patterns and frameworks with names that were all new to me. This is a blog post of all the buzzwords that I am learning.

I have been a...

I have used Windows for over twenty years. Oh my goodness that's a long bloody time.

Now I've joined the Linux world. It's thrilling. I'm loving it, learning, sharing (and as always - documenting) what I love and learn.

Ubuntu's APT (Advanced Packaging Tool) gives you access to some cool software that...

I was leaving the corporate world behind and needed to rebrand. I had a hard deadline. I had a new job, a new domain and new hosting, I needed a new blog.

I could have rebranded my old blog but I didn't take that approach. In retrospect, it wouldn't have been...

Don't take your knowledge for granted. Share it. Someone could learn something new. It also helps you remember it. Keep a record of what you learn in a blog, memo or even a paperback book. Whatever you choose, jot it down and help your future self and others.

Features! It's all...

There is a page that we want to monitor. It has a lot of valuable information on it and fits nicely on a 4K screen. A ROCK64 device will power this display.

The use case is simple: when the device turns on, the user must log in automatically. A browser must...

My goal for the next two months is to maximize my learning time and try to keep my anxiety as low as possible by stripping out unnecessary concerns. I made some changes that ripped me outside of my comfort zone that initially made me anxious. This is what I did:

Stay...

Stay tuned if you are interested to know what I learned, did and achieved in the past week. Maybe something I did could be of interest to you. Only time will tell. Read on.

Monday

I started the week by saying my goodbyes to the lovely people at MultiChoice. I have learned...

I've been very quite. A year's worth of quiet to be exact. I'm sorry. I'm still here. I still plan on blogging, just a little differently now and maybe shorter posts.

Writing is hard. Saying goodbye is harder. Writing to say goodbye, for me, is downright a terrible combination.

People are like wood, drifting in...

Mark Twain said, "I am an old man and I have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened."

It’s unsustainable to experience many days feeling exhausted, uninspired and anxious. I believe the biggest contributing factor is superficial stress. Stress that is self-made and becomes unbearable because we make it so.

Let’s...

Page 172 of the book Rewire: Changing Your Brain to Break Bad Habits, Overcome Addictions, Conquer Self-Destructive Behavior written by psychotherapist Richard O’Connor says that whatever we pay attention to determines how our brain grows.

This post concludes the series "Rewire Your Brain". What a journey.

I originally started this series to help me overcome...

Germany Kent says that it's a funny thing about life, once you begin to take note of the things you are grateful for, you begin to lose sight of the things that you lack.

In the part 6, Neuroplasticity, we looked at how the chemicals of the brain can change. Changes can be...

Lara Boyd challenges us by asking how do we learn? And why does some of us learn things more easily than others?

In the part 5, The Satir Change Process Model, we looked at how the model can help transform unhealthy behaviors to more positive behaviors by working through the different stages of...

Virginia Satir says that we can learn something new anytime we believe we can. Therefore we can learn to cope with what we are dealing with by readjusting the way we think.

In the part 4, Survival Rules, we look at how we can identify childhood survival rules, analyze them and decide if...

Virginia Satir says that you have learned what you have learned very well. It has helped you survive.

In Part 3, Distress Tolerance, we learned how to "Distract. Relax. Cope." We identify negative coping mechanisms and avoid self-destructive behaviors so that you break the negative reinforcing loop.

Through Radical Acceptance, Distraction Plans and...

Oliver Goldsmith says that the mind is ever ingenious in making its own distress.

In Part 2 we looked at how we can activate five neuro pathways in order to create new neural networks in the brain. This technique helps us rewire the brain to change our behavior.

In Part 3 we will...

Dr. Hilary Stokes says that we have trillions of brain cells, resulting in thousands (if not millions) of strings of lights (chemical reactions) correlating with our habits in all areas of our life.

In part one, the introduction, we looked at why we need to explore the idea of rewiring the brain. In my...

John Medina said, "what you do and learn in life physically changes what your brain looks like - it literally rewires it."

You are learning something new everyday. Whether it be a new skill, new way of doing something, discovering something you haven't encountered before, exploring a new area or meeting new people and...

"Your beliefs don't make you a better person, our behavior does."

I have a far way to go on my journey. My journey of self-discovery and healing. It's a life-long journey and sometimes it's a real battle. Yes, it becomes absolutely exhausting. I struggle - so many times, yet I push through as...

Nathaniel Hawthorne says that happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.

I've been plagued for years for trying to find purpose in life. This desperation has left me exhausted as I a played a cyclic game. I...

"Know your limits, know when to give, know when to demand, know when to say no, know when enough is enough"

Face your fears, get out of your comfort-zone, do something that you won't normally do. Yes, this is maybe great advice until it becomes debilitating and you falter under the pressures of this...

Mahatma Gandhi says to start changing yourself if you want to change the life around you.

"Change starts with you"... how cliché Clarice. Thanks for that one.

Okay, I really feel I need to deep dive into this topic to make my intentions clear. It is common knowledge yet subtly and very challenging to apply...

"Words are free. It's how you use them, that may cost you." - KushandWizdom

How often do you listen to yourself when you speak? Not just hear your own voice but actually listen to the words that you use.

Do you carefully choose the words you use? This can be in ordinary conversations, debates,...

“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” ― Aristotle

Sometimes I struggle to consciously understand my actions. This makes it hard for me to find out why I react the way I do in certain situations.

In some cases I am proud of how I act but other cases I feel bad...

"The reason why we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind the scenes with everyone else's highlight reel," Steven Furtick

Think of someone successful in the industry who you admire. This person doesn't have to be well known, but to you this person is doing amazing things. Things you probably don't think...

I spoke at Rubyfuza 2017 in Cape Town about how Imposter Syndrome impacts my day-to-day decisions and confidence, affects growth by limiting opportunities and makes me feel unworthy. I wanted to share my experience & perspective of feeling like a fraud with other software professionals.

This was my first conference presentation* in front of a...

“Did I do anything wrong today,” he said, “or has the world always been like this and I've been too wrapped up in myself to notice?” ― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Just over a month ago I:

• started doubting myself;
• felt like I wasn't adding value or achieving much;
• felt uncertain of...

The byte order mark or BOM is an invisible Unicode magic number that can be found at the beginning of a text stream.

We recently changed static HTML on a web page and all Unicode characters displayed incorrectly. This was caused by the missing byte order mark in the UTF-8 file which Windows...

When someone new works on your repository, make sure it is easy to get setup.

Imagine if we didn't have any documentation; if we all adopted the mindset of "I already know this, let others figure it out on their own."

No more books. No more Wikipedia. No more READMEs. No more StackOverflow. No...

"Do you really squeeze more productivity out of yourself by powering through your weariness?", Caroline Webb

To make good decisions you need your mind to be fresh. If you keep grinding through tasks, your brain gets tired and can go on auto-pilot. This can impact your focus, productivity, decision making and mood.

Do you really...

The aim is simple. I wish to boost my overall sense of wellbeing by living a more fulfilling life day-to-day.

I decided it was time to consciously unpack why I feel overwhelmed:

• The city feels rushed. The negative effects of traffic while people are rushing to get somewhere on time can be a terrible...

I am proud to announce that my article got published on A List Apart giving me the chance to share my career experiences with the community.

My article — "Finding Opportunities in the Mistakes We Make" got published on A List Apart on 2 August 2016. I'd like to share the steps I took...

A fun way to practice and familiarize yourself with development tools, workflows, patterns and practices.

Wikipedia states that a code kata is an exercise in programming which helps a programmer hone their skills through practice and repetition.

The term was probably first coined by Dave Thomas, co-author of the book The Pragmatic Programmer, in a...

"I am an old man and I have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened." by Mark Twain

As software developers we have a lot of things that build unnecessary stress and anxiety in each day of our profession - just to mention a few and in no particular order:

• Collaborating...

Everything I did today was done with intent and slower than usual. I was mindful.

Today I had complete control of my day and my emotions because I was mindful.

I walked mindfully. I spoke mindfully. I thought mindfully. I listened mindfully. I stood mindfully. I ate mindfully. This is something I have never...

Communication is essential to minimize stress and get the support a team needs to be successful.

We are seven days into our two week sprint and our burndown is flat-lining. Until today, this sprint felt like a terrible storm that would never clear up.

Naturally a flat-lining burndown raises red flags and causes concern...

Having allies that are exposed to just as much red-tape as you can give you the confidence and guidance you need.

Sometimes you have to tackle many obstacles to get something done at a corporate. Many refer to such obstacles as red-tape.

This can be anything from proxy or network related constraints to unaligned environment...

Get the support you need to make the product and operating the product a success.

Teams cannot focus on sprint work when there are multiple communication channels filtering into the team at any given point in time.

Be the change you want to see even if it doesn't change anything right away.

An ego is a person's sense of self-esteem or self-importance. It can be detrimental to a person and those around them if received negatively.

I'm sure you've experienced the ego and superiority complex within the software development community.

It becomes...

Accelerate your learning by sharing what you learn with others while you are learning it.

Experts aren't people who know absolutely everything in their field of expertise. Take GPs for example, they provide educated guesses based on textbook learnings and through their real world experiences. Scientists are constantly disproving previously proved theories. We are people...

If you are new to fiddles, it's an online code playground that let's you quickly experiment, visualize results and share code without having to start up an IDE, editor or server of some sort.

They are generally free and include features such as syntax highlighting, results preview, reference dependencies, sharing, code forking and embedding demonstrations...

The HTML5 specification has introduced more elements to aid us with semantic markup. I've discussed some of the design changes as well as the introduction of structural elements.

Note: There are many books, articles, wikis and posts relating to these elements. I wanted to document my research by combining the semantics, usage and code samples...

In 2005 Google sampled (link since removed) over a billion documents. This highlighted popular class names, elements, attributes and other related metadata.

The data surfaced many structural requirements related to div's with classes of nav, header, footer, sidebar etc.

As HTML5 is not intended to be used to markup documents...

Elements, attributes, and attribute values are semantic according to the HTML5 Specification.

These definitions allow HTML processors, such as Web browsers, screen readers or search engines, to present and use documents and applications in a wide variety of contexts that the author might not have considered.

This enables a single document to be used by:

• Different...

Improve your craft, write the cleanest code you know how at that point in time, learn from your mistakes (and that of others) and always aim to improve.

I think looking at the plumbing behind many designs could make one stay up for weeks. Now, when I refer to designs in this case...

Discover the simulation power behind the Device Mode feature in Google Chrome.

Chrome DevTools has a feature called Device Mode since Chrome 49. This feature extends some previous features by allowing you to simulate different devices and capabilities. Possible use cases include:

• Visual aid for designing a mobile-first and / or responsive web site
• Verify...

It's important to know that having an engaging community presence is far more beneficial than experience alone.

Think how the web has evolved. There are so many technologies that it is impossible to know everything.

Yet recruiting is largely based on experience, instead of the ability to learn something new quickly. Although the former is...