Please excuse the ugliness of this site. Just remember, as McCoy said to Kirk so many times, "D*&@!$ Jim! I'm an engineer, not a web designer!"
6 months ago, after performing a great deal of research, I ordered a trackball-equipped custom Dactyl Manuform keyboard from Wylderbuilds (see my previous article for my rationale). 3 months ago, I received the keyboard and I’ve been using it ever since. Overall, it’s been a good experience – I learned a great deal, I’ve had … Continue reading 3 month review of custom Dactyl Manuform Keyboard with Trackball
Printing usable, good-quality keycaps on an FDM 3D printer is very much possible. Despite what you may have heard, a resin printer is not required. However, there are some challenges and practicalities to keep in mind. Here’s what I learned about 3d printing keycaps.
I find it hard to believe, but it is true: another year has wrapped up. With the conclusion of 2023, I’m looking back at some of my free and open-source software accomplishments over those 12 months. My contributions are, once again, all over the place: different languages, industries, technology stacks, and architectural layers. I made … Continue reading 2023 Free / Open Source Software Accomplishments
GitHub Actions and GitLab CI code that you can drop in to your project to automatically, effortlessly use to SCAP scan docker images for compliance with benchmarks from CIS, PCI-DSS, STIG, and more.
Docker image digests are unique, immutable identifiers for container images. This means that two images with different contents will have different digests, even if they have the same name and tag. When you pull an image by its digest, you are guaranteed to get the exact same image every time, regardless of when or by … Continue reading Always Use Docker Image Digests
I previously decided upon a custom Dactyl Manuform with Thumb Cluster Trackball as my next keyboard. Because it’s a custom keyboard, there are a lot of decisions to make: which builder to order from, size, RGB, wired / wireless, thumb cluster configurations, encoders (how many and where to place them), and material (resin or PLA). … Continue reading Ordering a Custom Built Dactyl Manuform Keyboard
I’ve exclusively used Microsoft ergonomic keyboards (first the Natural Ergonomic 4000 then the Sculpt – both of which have been discontinued) for a long time. For a pointing device, I used the Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic Mouse until it failed; I’m now using an Anker vertical mouse. These keyboards and mice have been great. However, I … Continue reading Looking at Some of the Most Popular Ergonomic, Mechanical Keyboards and Selecting One (Spoiler Alert: I Picked The Dactyl Manuform with Trackball)
I recently became a Google Cloud Certified Professional Cloud Architect. This certification expands on my existing extensive array of credentials including 8 AWS certifications, CISSP, and VMware Spring Professional. Which begs the question: why do I have so many certifications and why do I keep getting more? There has been much written about professional certifications … Continue reading Why Do I Keep Getting Certifications?
As 2022 draws to a close, it’s time to take a look back at some of the accomplishments I’ve made in terms of contributing to Free and Open Source Software. This year, as usual, my contributions are widely varied. I made contributions in a number of programming languages from Ruby to Java to C#. In … Continue reading 2022 Free / Open Source Software Accomplishments
Hackathons and coding challenges are intense furnaces throwing immense temporal, technical, and social heat, heat that can be used to forge one’s mettle, pushing one’s limits. It is this process of trial by fire that allows one to grow, personally and professionally. Each of these events is unique, sometimes scarring, but always rewarding. I’ve participated … Continue reading How to Win at Hackathons and Coding Challenges