Matt Lewis - Kestrel Development

How to Ask a Good Question

When you have a problem with a software project or library, often the best way to ask for help is through text. Different projects offer support in different ways, such

My blog now lives on Gemini, too

If you're already on Gemini, you can visit my blog on Gemini right now! Project Gemini (Gemini link) is an exciting new project! It aims to bring together some of

Building multi-architecture Docker images on CircleCI

I spent a couple of hours today working to build my Docker images for ARM and x64 machines in my hosted CI provider, CircleCI. Here is the solution I came

Designing Data-Intensive Applications Cheat Sheet

This is a summary I wrote of each chapter of the excellent Designing Data-Intensive Applications (affiliate link) book. I use this to prepare for remote job interviews in infrastructure and

My Tips for Traveling Light

Disclaimer: I use Amazon referral links in this post. Using links on this page to purchase items may result in me receiving an affiliate bonus. I have not been otherwise

SRE for Backpackers

Last week, I took some time away from work to travel back to Minnesota and camp in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA) with my friends. When I was growing

Required Viewing: Tech Talks

I recommend these tech talks to everyone I know in software. They've been deeply influential in my engineering practices, and I think about them often when I'm working to write

On The User Interview

As engineers, we often have grand ideas of fantastic things we could build to solve everyone's problems. We spend a couple of months building and deploying a prototype that we're

My Site Reliability Resources

This is my list of resources for folks who want to learn more about site reliability engineering, embracing risk, and building observable systems. Last updated 2020-08-27. * Site Reliability Engineering: Embracing

Burner Phones for Activists

If you participate in street activism and attend actions, you probably understand the value of having a smartphone on you with an active data plan. The Signal secure messenger runs

An Opinionated Guide to Fixie Commuters

Two months ago, I picked up a basic little road bike and turned it into a fixie commuter. What's so great about a fixie? They're simple Fixed-gear bikes are way

I'm Scared of Learning Hard Stuff

My first job gave me the confidence to learn more on my own, but also taught me to learn in a way that I’m still trying to recover from. Here's how I’m learning how to learn in a way that will make me a better engineer and leader.

How to get stuff from Craigslist at ridiculous prices

Here's my strategy to getting the used stuff I want at insane prices. I've used this to buy bicycles, motorcycles, home furniture, and kitchen equipment. If the thing you're looking

Finding a Career You Love: Lessons Learned From My Job Hunt

I'm writing this article for someone who works in tech and is looking for a new job, but wants to be somewhat selective and build stuff they believe in. If

You got LaTeX in my Markdown!

Working title: You got Markdown in my LaTeX! I hate writing documents in Microsoft Word and Apple Pages. I spend way too much time fiddling with formatting, page layout, and typesetting before everything looks the way I want it. And writing math equations, even

Building an iOS Cocoapod that uses the Dropbox Sync API

One of the frameworks we're building at Punch Through Design links to Dropbox to help users access their files from both iOS and their computer. Dropbox provides a very useful Sync SDK for iOS that makes it easy to access Dropbox accounts. Installing the

Submitting a Python CLI Tool to PyPI

Last week, I built a command-line tool, csvtomd, to help me write documentation for my personal and work projects. Building Markdown tables by hand can be tedious and often involves lots of manual spacing tweaks to make the source code look just as good

Week One with iOS

It's really not that bad. I think I might prefer it to Android soon. * Interface Builder and Storyboards are nicer than Android's XML layouts, but you have the learning curve of the message-passing component linking GUI. I was really annoyed with iOS for using

LED crowd visualizations suck, and here's how to make them better

This post is a WIP outline. Feel free to read it if you'd like. People love attending fireworks events and laser light shows. It's awe-inspiring to see coordinated events happen on a scale so much larger than a single person. It's even more incredible

Analyzing 8 years of my music history with SQL

Ever heard an album or a song for the first time and loved it so much you played it on repeat for three days straight? I wanted to dig into my listening history to find out which songs I loved, got sick of, and

Throwback Thursday: My First Sorting Algorithm

I just rediscovered some code I wrote for the University of Minnesota's "Structure of Computer Programming I", a course I took three years ago. CSCI 1901 focused mostly on learning Scheme with everyone's favorite Scheme textbook, the venerable SICP from MIT. To get better

So You Want To Make Your Images Responsive

Your website looks like it's from '06. Your images look blurry when those kids pull up your site on their fancy new Retina MacBooks and iPad Airs. What do? 1. Wait for srcset to come out 2. Implement srcset-polyfill with code that isn't production-ready

How To Make An EE Cry With One Animated GIF

Auto route, yo. (Check out the HTML5 video here.)

Installing Kaleidoscope Integration (KSdiff build 89) With Kaleidoscope 2.0.0

The other day I was using the fantastic file diff application Kaleidoscope, and I wanted to integrate the diff functionality with my SVN client. Kaleidoscope provides a terminal tool called KSdiff that integrates the GUI Kaleidoscope application with other programs. However, after installing KSdiff

Downloading Your Google Location History With The Google API Python Client Library

tl;dr If you want to get started with your Latitude data right away, check out my gist at the bottom. I've started a new project! I'm investigating ways to share my life with others electronically, with little to no conscious effort on my