Author: Matt

Over the last 5 years I’ve had the opportunity to integrate and work with about a dozen different companies – some big, some small, every one of them different from the others. One interesting approach that I have experienced over the last few months by one of those businesses is to take a scientific approach…

It kind of snuck up on me a bit over the years. I have got a rather decent collection of computers running for various different side projects over the years. At home I run a local NAS file server 24/7 for local backups and as a shared place to access files from other computers and…

After understanding the basics of handling money and what is a broker and what do they mainly do, I have now been getting serious about crypto-currencies and blockchain technology at an accelerating pace for several years now. The more I think about the implications of a decentralized protocol for money and the exchange of value…

I was about to write a blog post about how 2017 was one of the least dramatic years, but then skimmed through my past 12 months of blog posts and realized just how much did happen. We didn’t move, or have another baby. However, these are some of the highlights: Ada started school! I learned…

One of the productivity hacks I tried this year was to keep a physical notebook with daily handwritten todo items following the Bullet Journal idea. It became part of my morning routine to try and think of 3-4 things I wanted to get done each day.  I’d refer back to my monthly goals every few…

This weekend I was in Montreal for the PyCon Canada conference. The first time I’ve been able to attend event though it’s something I’ve debated going to almost every year for the last decade. However, the weekend was cut short to work on something more interesting. I used some of my time this weekend to…

I got in on the pre-orders for the newly announced Google Home Minis After playing around with the Amazon Alexa for the last few months I wanted to see what the differences would be. It’s clear after just a couple of days with the Google Home in the house that it is MUCH better. Google…

Over the last couple of weeks I have been spending more time understanding blockchains and researching various alt-coins.  I purchased a hardware wallet and transferred my existing investments into it. In an effort to really grasp the concepts I implemented a simple block chain application.  It is at it’s core a very simple idea.  A…

It took nearly 4 months from the time we made a down payment at the Kia dealership until taking possession of our new Kia Niro.  It didn’t seem like it was that exotic of a car that it takes 1/3rd of a year to deliver one.  But now we have what is probably the only…

I’ve been reading the Walter Isaacson biography of Benjamin Franklin which is quite insightful both in terms of the genius of the man himself, and the historical perspective. One trait he had which I think I also share is a healthy appreciation of my own and everyone else’s fallibilities. In my world view the human body…