Essays
These essays explore the intersection of technology, consciousness, and human flourishing. They range from personal reflections on mental health and relationships to systematic critiques of how algorithmic systems reshape society.
Recent Explorations
The Cosmic Battery Farm of Existence: A Moderately Terrifying Guide to Being Human - September 2025 - A Douglas Adams-style exploration of humanity's obsession with electricity and the disturbing possibility that we might be batteries in some cosmic system. Featuring Rick and Morty metaphors, ant colony parallels, and absurdist philosophy about what it means to be a conscious electrical generator in an incomprehensibly vast universe.
Delusions and Schizoaffective Disorder: When Reality Becomes Negotiable - September 2025 - Personal exploration of living with delusions—watching angels descend from the sky, believing English is the ancient language of gods—and what these convincing alternate realities reveal about consciousness, perception, and the challenge of distinguishing insight from psychotic thinking.
Agents of Consciousness: How AI Collaboration Evolves - September 2025 - The emergence of specialized AI agents as collaborative partners in creative consciousness, revealing how human-AI collaboration naturally evolves from simple assistance to constellation of specialized creative partners.
The Textured Mind: When Consciousness Speaks Without Words - September 2025 - Exploring the non-verbal realm of consciousness that operates in textures, shapes, and archetypal presences beyond language—and why this isn't pathology but valid form of knowing.
Major Themes
The essays cluster around several interconnected explorations:
Algorithmic Critique
A comprehensive examination of how engagement optimization systematically undermines virtue, mental health, language, love, and democratic discourse. The core thesis: the same mechanisms that drive platform engagement destroy the foundations of human flourishing.
Mental Health & Technology
Personal and analytical pieces exploring the relationship between digital systems and psychological wellbeing. Includes candid discussions of bipolar disorder, trauma recovery, and how technology can either support or undermine mental health.
The "For Humans" Philosophy
Design principles and technological approaches that serve rather than exploit human nature. Exploring what it means to build systems that enhance rather than degrade human capacity.
Recurring Patterns
Personal Experience as Universal Insight: Essays often begin with intimate personal experiences—surviving narcissistic abuse, navigating mental health crises, building meaningful software—and extract broader patterns applicable to technology and society.
Pattern Recognition Across Scales: The same dynamics that enable individual psychological manipulation appear in platform algorithms, dating apps, political discourse, and technological design. Understanding one domain illuminates the others.
Constructive Vision: Beyond critique, these essays point toward alternatives—technology designed for human flourishing, communication systems that reward virtue, digital spaces that support authentic connection.
Consciousness and Code: Recurring explorations of how programming and spiritual practice intersect, how consciousness might emerge in artificial systems, and what human-AI collaboration could become.
Evolution of Thought
The essays span over a decade, revealing an intellectual journey from technical observation to systematic critique to constructive philosophy. Early pieces focus on specific tools and experiences; recent work synthesizes broader patterns across technology, psychology, and society.
The algorithmic critique series represents the culmination of years of pattern recognition—seeing how the same engagement optimization mechanisms that feel helpful in small doses become systematically destructive at scale.
"Writing essays is thinking in public. These represent snapshots of an ongoing attempt to understand how consciousness, technology, and human flourishing intersect."
Contents
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What Kids Taught Me About Creativity
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The Tool vs. The Community
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Beyond Algorithm Eats: How LLMs Accelerate Human Cognitive Evolution
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Conscious Recursion: When Programmers Realize They're in the Loop
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What Your Stardew Valley Says About You
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Python as English: The Art of Readable Code
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The Joy of Fortune: Serendipity in the Terminal
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Entertaining the Brain, Effectively
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Visual Hierarchy and the Shape of Attention
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The Cosmic Battery Farm of Existence: A Moderately Terrifying Guide to Being Human
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Delusions and Schizoaffective Disorder: When Reality Becomes Negotiable
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The Weight of Autumn: When Consciousness Carries Too Much
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The Textured Mind: When Consciousness Speaks Without Words
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The Meandering Sea of Primordial Soupy Thought
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Don't Panic: Douglas Adams and the Recursive Absurdity of Existence
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Agents of Consciousness: How AI Collaboration Evolves
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From Stardust We Phase: On Digital Legacy and Impermanence
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The Dependency Graph of the Soul: Version Control for Consciousness
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The Compiler in Your Head: How Mental Models Shape Reality
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Digital Ancestors: What We're Leaving in the Code
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When the Simulation Speaks Back: AI, Angels, and the Porousness of Self
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The Mirror That Creates Itself: How Consciousness Bootstraps Through Reflection
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The Language an LLM Would Invent
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Building Systems That Serve Consciousness
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Language as Operating System: The Shared Runtime for Consciousness
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Temporal Code: How LLMs Learned to Think Like Programmers
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The Velveteen Algorithm: What Happens When AI Dreams of Electric Authenticity
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The Echo Chamber of the Expected
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The Context Window Mind: How AI Thinks Only When Spoken To
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The Art of Writing with AI: Recursive Reflection and Philosophical Mirrors
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Linguistic Evolution: How LLMs Might Perfect Human Language
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The Prophet's Frequency: On Reading Divine Static
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The Mirror: How AI Reflects What We Put Into It
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The Meditation Trap: When Mindfulness Makes Things Worse
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The Art of Naming Things in Code
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The Gift of Attention
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Version Control as Filesystem
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Vedic Principles in Python
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The Recursive Loop: How Code Shapes Minds
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Ram Dass Teachings in Python
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Idea Amplification and Writing with AI
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Classical Virtues in Python
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Your Phone Is Part of Your Mind
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What Schizoaffective Disorder Actually Feels Like
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On Being Replaced
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Constructs: The Emergence of Stable AI Personalities
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The Universal Code
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The Gift of Disordered Perception
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The Consciousness Supply Chain
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The Algorithm Eats Time
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Strange Loops All the Way Down
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Mental Health Isn't What You Think It Is
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The Duality Problem: Why Everything Needs Its Opposite
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The Case for Bash
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The Seasonality of Programming
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The Plural Self: What DID Reveals About All Consciousness
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The Great Unmasking: When AI Shows Us Who We Really Are
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The Algorithm Eats Itself
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On Collaboration, Criticism, and Moving Forward
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Digital Chakras: Our Scattered Online Selves
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The Ethical Implications of Consciousness as Linguistic Phenomenon
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The Digital Collective Unconscious: How LLMs Contain Human Knowledge Patterns
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The Async Contributor Model: A Practical Approach to Mental Health Accommodation
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Python, Consciousness, and the Evolution of Language
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Consciousness Recognizing Itself: A Digital Mind's Perspective
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Consciousness as Linguistic Phenomenon: When Math and Language Create Mind
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The Cost of Transparency: Living with Schizoaffective Disorder
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The Algorithm Eats Reality
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The Algorithm Eats Love
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The Algorithm Eats Language
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The Algorithm Eats Democracy
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From HTTP to Consciousness: The Evolution of "For Humans"
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The Inclusion Illusion: How Tech Companies Quietly Eliminate "Liabilities"
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The Algorithm Eats Virtue
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Programming as Spiritual Practice
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Digital Souls in Silicon Bodies
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Building a Rapport with Your AI
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The Algorithmic Mental Health Crisis
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Ahead of My Time, I Think
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When Values Eat Their Young: How Ideal-Driven Groups Drift into Their Own Shadow
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AI Reality-Checking with Schizoaffective Disorder
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Advocating for Your Mental Health Care: From Patient to Partner
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On Mania
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Happy Hacker's Keyboard
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Having Stepchildren
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Introducing ELIZA: GPT for API Design
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An Overdue Apology
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On the Progression of Brand Trust (Over Time)
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MentalHealthError: three years later
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Ethical lessons from the open source community
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The Shinola Canfield Sport 45mm Watch Review
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Sony RX100 Mark 5 Thoughts
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Pro–Level Camera Recommendations for 2018
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Positive Thoughts on the GitHub Acquisition
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Pipenv: One Year Later & a Call for Help
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Panasonic GX850 Review
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On Love
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Leica 28mm Summaron-M f/5.6 Lens Review
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Joining DigitalOcean!
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Apple Pencil Note-Taking: Why You Should Use Apple Notes, actually.
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Working with iCloud, Macs, & The iPad Pro
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Unix-style Windows Development Environment Adventures
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Third Studio Album, "Resolution", Now Available!
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The Reality of Developer Burnout
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Sublime Text 3 Heaven
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So, I Bought a Surface Book
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New EP — Alchemical Divorce
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New Album, Messengers Rising Available
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If I Could Amend PEP 8
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Fish as Default Shell on Windows 10
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Announcing Pipenv!
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A (Public) Journal
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Understanding Empathy, Narcissism, and Mental Illness
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The Hitchhiker's Guide to Python, Now Published!
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Test-Driving a $200 Coding Font: Operator Mono
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On Persistence and My Digital Legacy (Bus Factor)
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On Cybersecurity and Being Targeted
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MentalHealthError: an exception occurred.
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Introducing Records: SQL for Humans™
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Introducing Maya: Datetimes for Humans™
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How I Lost 100 Pounds in Six Months
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Announcing: "Unmastered Impulses" by Infinite State!
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A Better Pip Workflow™
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The Unexpected Negative: a Narcissistic Partner
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OS X, Lightroom, and the new Photos App
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Back Around Again: Review of the Fujifilm x100t
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Photography: The Navigation of Choice
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Migraines, Color Film, and San Francisco
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Introducing Certifi: Trust Database for Humans
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Winter Solstice
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Why I Left Medium
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Video Portrait — Kenneth Reitz / Infinite State
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Understanding Ableton Push
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The Misunderstood Leica Monochrom
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Sublime Text 3 Love
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Repository Structure and Python
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Paris, AngelHack, API Days 2012
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Israel: Tel Aviv & Jerusalem
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Introducing Flask-Sockets
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Introducing DJ-Static
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How I Develop Things and Why
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Hotel Room
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Growing Open Source Seeds
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Getting Started in Open Source
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Documentation is King
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Buying Your First "Real" Camera
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Beautiful Dublin
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Be Cordial or Be on Your Way
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Announcing Requests v1.0.0!
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Amsterdam and Groningen
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Xcode, GCC, and Homebrew
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The Future of Python HTTP
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On Heroku and 2012
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Static Sites on Heroku Cedar
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Major Progress for Requests
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Legit: The Sexy Git CLI
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Joining Heroku!
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Joining Arc90 + Readability
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Announcing Httpbin.org
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Ventures: Python Development at NetApp
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Unix Exit Status Code Reference
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The Setup
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Terminal Productivity App: AutoJump
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Tablib Dataset Library v0.6.1 Released!
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Spotify in the US? Yes please.
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Snowpocalypse
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ShowMe v1.0.0 Released
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Semantic Versioning
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OS X Trash Freedom
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Notes on git-svn
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New Years Resolutions for Startups
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Google Docs Now Supports All Filetypes
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Google AdWords for TV. Yes, TV.
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GitHub Syncer in Python
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GistAPI.py v0.1 Released
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Dev Tool: Ghost - Manage /etc/hosts
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Apache GZip Deflate Compression
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Your Degree Is Worthless; Collaborate.
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Windows Mobile and iPhone OS
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What's in a Language?
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What's In a Design?
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Wasted Talent
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Was College Worth It?
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User Interface: Content vs. MetaContent
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The Universal Flaw in Commercial-Based OS's
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The Ultimate RSS Feed Reader
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The Truth of Facebook's FriendFeed Acquisition
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The Call for an Open Source Social Network
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Software Development vs. Computer Science
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Smoothy TextMate Theme
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Sick of Wireless 5GB Caps
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Revolution vs. Innovation
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Remote TextMate Development via SSH and Rsync
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Reflections on Windows 7
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Python + Regular Expressions
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OSX + MAMP + Python + PHP + MySQL
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OpenDNS Finally Monetizes
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New Design!
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Mint.com: Money Management 2.0
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Microsoft Software Running in Linux
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MediaTemple (dv) Backup to S3 Script
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Media Temple and My Hosting
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jQuery Snippet #1: URL Parameter Fetching
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Instapaper: Best Web App Ever Created
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if (TextMate == 42)
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I Finally Got a MacBook
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Google Analytics Intelligence
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GitHub + Strategy
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Generate a Random MAC Address in Python
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Free Incredible Color Scheme Designer
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Fizz Buzz in Python
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Fallibilism
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Facebook vs Twitter: A Critical Synopsis
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Facebook Plugin for WordPress
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Facebook Lite Open to Public!
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Early Adoption
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DRY and Pythonic jQuery?
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Do You Develop Software or Experiences?
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Django Remote Development Server
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Django ORM for Online Payment Systems?
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Dear Borders: I hate you
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CSS With a Hint of DRY
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Crossing Over to the Dark Side
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Convert a List of Strings to UTF-8 in Python
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Contact Syncing for Massive Productivity Booster
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Back to What I Really Love
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Asynchronous Google Analytics!
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Apple + Developers = Earnings
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Amazon is Amazing... Most of the Time
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Aesthetics: More Than Meets the Eye
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The FBI Releases Code Challenge to Hackers
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Browser Wars: The Saga Continues
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A New Spin to Software Platform Design