In my Mind

There's always something going on.

Too many ideas and not enough time.

Writing public notes of some thing I've thought about takes less time than completing all of them. So I'll see if I can keep this list making sense.

Good Countries

I'd like to visualize the data for goodcountries.org on a map to make it sexier and easier for people to look at. If you don't know what I'm talking about, first check out the TED talk that introduced me to this data and then their website.

Roomba lawn mower

Yes these things exist, but I think they're crazy expensive and it seems like I should be able to build one using a regular lawn mower and a Raspberry Pi. I don't consider myself a builder/maker, but I can write the software. I haven't started on this but, if this sounds like something you'd like to try then contact me and we'll if something gets going.

Teaching more & Learning more

One of the things I miss from grad school is teaching. Naturally, there are also things that I'm interested in learning, and having someone to learn it with sometimes can motivate people. What if we have a trading space where people could trade lessons. I'd gladly teach someone to code if they help me get better at Sm4sh! ;-)

Tech I like

Python

I can say that this is probably my favorite programming language. It continues to be my go-to language to hack with on fun project even though I very rarely use it at work (I work a Amazon)

Angular JS

I've been using angular since April 2014 and I've come to like it quite a bit. Although opinionated, I like the clean separation of concerns, bi-directional binding and the feel of single page applications.

Git

I've been a git fan for the last 10 years and I love how it eventually took over as the default soruce control system in so many places.

D3js

I like visualizing data, and I wish I spent more time working with it. Although it might feel a little unintuitive when you first learn D3, I like how it keeps track of what's entering the chart, already in it, or leaving with its enter-update-exit pattern. It really does help you focus on the data and spend less time on corner cases that might affect the chart.