The New Olio

Top Tips for Working Remote

Posted by in Life

It sounds like a dream, but it can quickly become a nightmare. Before you enter the realm of working from home, you have to know—really know—what you’re getting yourself into. And it sounds pretty basic: you work from, well, home. Turns out there’s a lot more to it. I started working remote in at least some capacity several years ago. In fact, many people do, especially developers with side projects on their plate. You spend your weekday and weekend nights in your home office, cranking away at the thing that’ll…read more

The Mentee and the Manatee

Posted by in Life

I never asked to be a mentor. I never wanted—nor do I think anyone wanted me—to be one. But much like getting old, going to the dentist, or laughing at Sail Cat, you can’t really stop it from happening. And as a jaded, hateful person, it was a lot more impactful than I imagined it would be. It wasn’t one of those life-affirming “let’s teach each other about people” situations like from every 90s sitcom, but you obviously learn a lot from the first time you do anything, and that…read more

HTML5 Canvas Particles Revisisted — With Physics!

Posted by in Code

While I wrote a few years ago about HTML5 canvas particle effects, I’ve gotten a lot of questions about the effect I have on my new personal site. No, not the crazy swirling thing on the left—we’ll go over that another time—but the fun little bouncy ball thing. Go ahead and check it out. I’ll wait. Pretty cool, right? It’s written entirely without any framework or library like jQuery or D3.js or Three.js. While they’re pretty handy for compatibility, data visualization, and comprehensive 3D graphics rendering (respectively), I didn’t have…read more

Ember and Django Get Friendly

Posted by in Code

Like a turducken or cherpumple, we’re going to stick Ember right into the guts of Django. Let’s get this out of the way: this is not ideal. Doing something like having Django power just the API through the Django REST Framework and then having Ember do all user-facing things would be smarter. Having the separation is easier for maintenance and clearly defines responsibilities. Unfortunately, real life is rarely ideal. Your website may have some static pages that necessarily need to be served away from the monolithic stature of Ember, but…read more

Doubt in the Time of Zombies

Posted by in Video Games, Writing

Two kinds of people walk free from the burden of doubt: Ryan Gosling and children. Gosling because, well, whatever, he’s Ryan Gosling. Children because they don’t think; they just believe. They are the perfect representation of life in an ideal world of black and white, right and wrong, life and death. If you give them a reason to believe, they surpass any level of faith and take to it as if it were simply knowledge, facts that anyone could look up and tell you that yes, you are right. It’s…read more