I'm often guilty of producing this error from my Rails controllers: I know the gist of why it occurs, but there are a few wrinkles that seem…

I learned something today that I thought I'd write about. I was looking into an error where a user put more than 255 characters in a certain…

Hill Climbing is a mathematical process to find the top of a curve, or "hill". The basic algorithm is as follows: Take a step in a certain…

In the fall of 2018, my wife and I took a three-month sabbatical from work. Here's what I noticed: It's hard to overstate how much burden is…

I recently met with a junior developer who was seeking web development career advice. When we met, she had clearly done her research on me…

When learning a new programming language, I like the idea of having a familiar program or algorithm to reimplement in the new language. My…

Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of needs is a valuable mental model describing the progression of needs, which he classically applied to…

I wrote a little code to analyze technologies in demand with new startups. I used the AngelList job board as my source and was able to pull…

The association is required by default in Rails 5. If I have a User/Profile relationship, I cannot create a Profile that doesn't belong to…

Bundler gives us a convenient method to check for gems that have an available update: . It's wise to update gems one at a time, running the…

Ruby kept its recent tradition of releasing a new version as a little gift for us devs on Christmas - Ruby 2.4 is out. This tradition goes…

Much of the buzz around AI centers around the AI's ability to be creative. The recent AlphaGo victory over grandmaster Lee Sedol was not…

2016 was a fantastic year! I made my goal of writing 25 blog posts, which I'm quite proud of as I had fallen short several years running…

One of the best pieces of advice I ever heard was from a professional musician that had done very well in the extremely tough and overly…

Have you ever wanted to pull a commit from a different repo into your current repo? It's not something I do often, but in the case where…

A great way to improve as a developer is to spend time with quality code. See how other developers solve issues. Dig into code you don't…

Is it not the height of conceit to think that your app is changing the world? "Changing the World" is simply a euphemism for making a ton of…

Count me as a developer that knew there was a difference between control-c and control-z, but couldn't tell you the details of the…

I've been spending time lately developing better processes for how to think about my job, how to think about the products I'm building, and…

One of the most important questions to ask yourself as a web developer is if you enjoy working on a single product, or across multiple…

The biggest objection I hear from developers that aren't on the TDD bandwagon is that writing tests takes too much time. Yes, writing tests…

I often hear the terms computer scientist and developer or programmer used interchangeably. They're actually quite different. I think…

It's our best iPhone ever! No kidding. Was there ever a question? Is there a chance that the newest model of anything will be worse than…

Rails dropped its dependency on jQuery, rewriting all of it's unobtrusive JavaScript methods in pure JS. This change will be released as…

Here's a little testing trick I use while working in Rails. When I'm trying to find areas of code that are missing test coverage, I like to…

There's a trend in the programming world that bothers me. A technology or product will get popular because it solves a problem well. Then…

My wife asked me a question that got me thinking about my skills as a developer. She said, "My co-worker's son is really good at programming…

thoughtbot put out a nice form linting tool to help diagnose common form issues. There's a bit of overlap between this and our common ADA…

I've been working a bit with Rails Internationalization (I18n) this week, here's what I learned: Many gems will add their own I18n locale…

The Rails helper falls back to just a textbox on Firefox and Safari (and IE?). Git maintains an index of remote branches, even those that…

Understanding dates, times, and timezones in Ruby and how it's applied in Rails is tricky. This is my go-to post when it comes to refreshing…

Rails strips out the 'target' attribute on an anchor tag as part of its sanitation. To allow 'target', you can whitelist it, but be sure to…

The SOLID principles of object-oriented programming define a set of guidelines that help produce well-written, maintainable software. The "O…

The last several years I have set goals, some of which I met, and some of which I did not. I like the practice of setting goals for the…

2015 was a wild ride. I took a new job as a Rails Developer with Commerce Kitchen, and became a father for the first time. Looking back on…

I like coding style guides. Having a consistent style removes that little bit of friction that writing code in multiple styles creates. This…

Today was my final day at Colorado PERA, my employer for the past 5 years. I've decided to take a position with Commerce Kitchen as a Rails…

As someone who loves Ember but doesn't get to use it on a daily basis, I find myself relearning concepts frequently. Here is my list of…

I like fast sites. I also like to keep track of how changes to my code affect the page load time. There are many tools to record page load…

For Jekyll sites, here's how I approach including the Google Analytics script in production, but not development. Jekyll sets a variable for…

2014 was the first year where I religiously tracked where I spent my freelance time, which includes nights and weekends work, outside of my…

Once again, the new year is upon us and it's time to layout my professional goals for the year ahead. As I like to say, this is my time to…

This post is a reflection on my 2014 goals, where I succeeded, and where I came up short. I worked harder in 2014 than in any other year in…

I believe that writing is an essential skill. Like writing code, pure writing is a skill to be worked on continuously. Clear writing…

As a web developer, most of my work is not only completely digital, but it's ephemeral - lasting only a few years, if I'm lucky. At times…

While a static site is a perfect fit for the combination of my skill set, and the requirements of enlightenedpixel.com, it certainly isn't a…

I recently converted this site, enlightenedpixel.com, from WordPress to a Jekyll static site, and I'm very, very happy with the result…

I use my bank's ATMs for a few things - I pull out cash, and I deposit checks. When I get cash, it's always the same amount. When I…

It takes some serious creativity to capture snowboarding in a new way. Jacob Sutton nails it. Glowing Man HD from Jacob Sutton on Vimeo.

It's often said that the fastest input device is still the keyboard.  I thought I'd share a use-case where the iPad is actually a faster…

I was listening to an interview with Aaron Walter from Mailchimp and he said something that really struck a chord with me.  He drew an…

My trademark strength has always been the ability to play in both the technical world, and the business development world. There are…

"What is an enlightened pixel, is that some kind of web thing?" says the teller at my local business bank.  I didn't have a clever reply, so…

One of the main projects that I have been working on is the conversion of Adobe Flex/Flash applications into a standards based approach with…