One Year and 1000 Miles

It has been a great bicycling season this year! Last year I logged 641 miles and today I just broke 1,000 miles.I wasn't necessarily trying for the distance but rather keeping it part of my regular schedule to not make it feel like exercise or something I HAD to do. Exercise is a huge part of my system to help combat the problems of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD/ADHD) and bicycling makes it fun too.I am tolerating the colder weather with some different clothes but I suspect I'll be hanging the bike up for the year soon. Somewhat sad but it gives me something to look forward to in spring! :)So I'm celebrating the number 1,000 only because I am proud I stuck to my goals and had fun doing it!

October 4, 2015 · 1 min · Aaron

iPhone 6 Plus Screen Backlight Issue

I've noticed an issue I've been having with my iPhone 6 Plus a couple weeks ago. After the phone has been in my pocket for an indeterminate amount of time, I would randomly be unable to light the screen back up. The phone would come out of sleep, I could swipe to unlock (or use Voice Over) and I could see the backlight come on. The problem was the screen itself was just black - nothing to show. Rebooting sometimes fixed this. It was especially annoying when trying to board a plane and then being unable to bring up the boarding pass. ...

August 27, 2015 · 1 min · Aaron

Culture vs. Culture

Today I was musing about company culture. Most tech job postings these days mention "our culture" and tend to interview for you to be a culture fit. Sometimes I really wonder if they're confusing culture vs. culture: culture |ˈkəlCHər| The arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively: 20th century popular culture.The cultivation of bacteria, tissue cells, etc., in an artificial medium containing nutrients.Source: Oxford Dictionaries Forcing a culture on new employees tends to lend itself to definition #2. Finding new employees that fit into what is perceived as the #1 definition actually means your culture is artificial. Exposing your human intellectual manifestations to your candidates and letting them determine if they want to contribute to that culture seems to be the right move. ...

August 24, 2015 · 1 min · Aaron

The Fear of Missing Out

Working for a 100% distributed company presents a number of benefits as well as challenges. One of those challenges is the fear of missing out or FoMO. It is a real thing. The Fear of Missing Out is the emotional stress we can experience when we feel like things that should be important to us are occurring without our observance or involvement. Social media plays an important role in this as we experience other people's involvement in activities that portray a perceived positive impact on their well-being. Even though we know that the world isn't as rosy as is portrayed through these sites, we feel a tinge of jealous a number of times. ...

August 12, 2015 · 3 min · Aaron

My House is a Dog Bed Container

I made the realization today that my house is merely a container for dog beds. At least 11 designated areas (designated by the dogs) are pictured here. I think there are more beds than pieces of furniture in the house.

July 30, 2015 · 1 min · Aaron

Missing my DSLR Camera

I love photography. My love for taking photos is an ebb and flow. I'm not sure what exactly affects the arbitrary direction of those currents other than the nature of my brain. I still take a fair number of photos but sadly they're only with my iPhone 6 Plus as of late. I have a fair amount of camera gear, centered around my Canon 40D from a few years back. I was seriously proud when I bought that digital SLR. I also have a number of pieces of studio lighting equipment and related paraphernalia. I enjoy the whole concept of being a full time photographer - but for some reason I just peter out and lose interest. I've been pondering why lately and this is sort of my mental dump on the subject. ...

July 27, 2015 · 2 min · Aaron

UIKit Dynamics - Turning on Debug Mode

In iOS 9 Apple has introduced a number of new shiny things for UIKit Dynamics. One of them is UIFieldBehavior which describes magnetic, electrical and spring fields of influence. Fields are hard to debug (even in real life!) so Apple decided to provide a debug mode on UIDynamicAnimator. The trick is the debug mode isn't published in the headers. Why? Who knows. They mentioned it quite plainly at WWDC 2015 and said you have to turn it on in the LLDB debugger. ...

July 16, 2015 · 1 min · Aaron

Biggest Lie To Your ADHD Self

Most of my journey the past couple of years with coping with attention problems is increasing my self-awareness. I am my own obstacle and I must hack my own consciousness to work the way I need it to. It's easy to slip into old habits and totally forget the tools you've put in place. All it takes is one of those well-known "ooh shiny" moments and you're off track for an hour reading about nuclear testing instead of solving the problem for work. ...

July 15, 2015 · 2 min · Aaron

Limiting Data While Tethering on a Mac

Using Too Much DataBeing a remote worker, I tend to work at home a lot. I also like to roam around to coffee shops and coworking spots on occasion in addition to traveling to meet up with my coworkers. This means I tend to tether quite often and use mobile data. One of the biggest annoyances I have with Mac OS X is that in 2015 it isn't aware of tethered vs. (relatively) unmetered connections. I wish there was a mode in Mac OS X that would intelligently back off autoupdates, file sync, and other expensive data operations while on specific connections. This includes when you're tethered to your iOS device using the iCloud automatic tethering option and WiFi access points you've specified as being metered connections. ...

June 23, 2015 · 3 min · Aaron

The Downside to Treadmill Desks

Just PublishedThe New York Times just published an article on their Well Blog entitled "The Downside of Treadmill Desks". It's an interesting read. The article mentions a study performed by two groups at the Brigham Young University in Utah and published to the PLoS One Journal in April. After studying 75 individuals it was determined that while there is a significant positive health impact on using a treadmill desk, productivity and cognition decreased. ...

June 17, 2015 · 4 min · Aaron