danwilkerson.com
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- 22 from 2 Nov 2015 to 8 Dec 2024
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- now and then
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- personal blog
2024 3
- Crash diet: finding spare bytes with request logs 2024-12-08 A recent Hacker News post caused a surge in traffic to my website, pushing me over my free-tier Firebase bandwidth limit1. This surprised me because the submission wasn't that popular - a measly ~40 upvotes. I've had traffic surges from HN
- Square Zero: hide silly messages in decorative borders 2024-12-04 I decided to include an Easter Egg in our New Years greeting this year1. If you managed to decipher it, you'd be treated to a retro mini-game based on the card. Can you spot it? If your eye was drawn to the border of the card, congrat
- My "Year In Sport", v2 2024-02-10 Strava continues to hold my statistics hostage, so we're back again with another edition of my My Year In Sport (possibly the final edition). For reference, the first edition lives here, but we'll be pulling in the pertinent bits from last year as we go along. Don't
2023 12
- Writing every month 2023-12-27 Last year, Strava decided to make their end of year recap thing pay-to-play. This led me to writing my own script to pull the same kinds of reports together. and write about my accomplishments1. It just so happened that I posted that on January 31st, planting the seed
- Phocus 2023-11-29 If you're anything like me, the idea of teeing off your smartphone into the fucking sea is an exciting, nearly erotic proposition. I have fantasized about "Office Space"-ing this little demon rectangle so frequently and viscerally that I find myself clenching my fists and curling m
- How I became a vegetarian 2023-10-29 Eight years ago, Ricky Gervais convinced me to become a vegetarian. Not him personally, but something he said. At the time, he was tweeting about a dog meat festival, calling the practice cruel and unethical.... Read more >>
- Getting hitched on the cheap in Pittsburgh 2023-09-30 A few weeks ago, Libby and I celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary. It's a little hard to believe its been five years already. At the time, we had just finished paying off a lot of student loan debt... Read more >>
- The Activities Building in Riverview Park 2023-08-31 Five years ago, Libby and I got hitched in the Activities Building in Riverview Park. We rented it through the City of Pittsburgh Facilities Rental website. There wasn't a lot of information out there about the Activities Building, so I wanted to
- Can a 3D printed keyboard last three years? 2023-07-17 A few years ago, I set out to build my own keyboard. It was a project that taught me a lot about myself - my focus, my tenacity, my interests, my design sensibilities, and so on. The keyboard I built is called the Dactyl, and it combines basical
- How to get paid to learn anything 2023-06-30 One piece of advice I dole out regularly: "Trojan horse the thing you want to learn into whatever it is you've been asked to do." (THTTYWTLIWIIYBATD for short) I wanted to elaborate on that advice a bit today.... Read more >>
- How to register a Kei truck in Pennsylvania 2023-05-30 Kei trucks are a special designation of Japanese car that have very small engines (660cc) and dimensions (~10m^3). Tell 'em, Wikipedia. Whoever coined the idea of "creative constraints" should take a gander at Kei trucks; there's definitely an u
- The Pittsburgh Dirty Dozen 2023-04-30 The Dirty Dozen is a Pittsburgh tradition stretching back forty years. In 1983, local legend (and 2x RAAM winner) Danny Chew set out with his brother Tom and some friends to ride some of the steepest hills the city has to offer.... Read more >>
- Running these streets 2023-03-10 Dr. Tom Murphy VII is a tediumcore performance artist based in Pittburgh with a YouTube channel. His formula is as elegant as it is effective - take a topic, pluck out an interesting nugget of truth, apply the commutative property, unrelentingly follow that reasoning
- The unreasonable effectiveness of Google Apps Script 2023-02-28 Over the course of my career, I've found one tool in my toolkit more useful than any other. It's a service called Google Apps Script, a somewhat obscure suite of functionality provided by Google that allows you do, well, almost anything
- My "Year In Sport" 2023-01-31 This year, Strava has paywalled the yearly recap "Year in Sport" recap they send their users. This is a real bummer because Last years recap inspired me to try and exercise every day in 2022 and I don't want to pay for Strava Premium.... Read more >>
2022 1
2021 4
- Escaping Debt Mountain 2021-04-02 Disclaimer: I'm not a financial professional. If you've been given advice contrary to mine, take it. My advice might be bad for you. We're not filthy rich or anything. In 2010, student loan debt exceeded credit card debt in the United States... Read more >>
- Riding a bike in Pittsburgh 2021-04-02 I get asked about biking in Pittsburgh a lot, so I wrote this post to point folks to who are looking to get started. Getting a Bike I recommend buying a cheap bike before investing in a nicer ride; you may find cycling isn't for you and it'd be a shame to depri
- Cycling 2021-03-27 The wheel shrieked and I bucked over the handlebars, elbows-first into the concrete. With a groan, I peeled myself off the road, blossoming red patches on each arm stinging as street grime swept into road rash.... Read more >>
- Codepen in a URL 2021-02-22 OR: Data URLs are neat Data URLs are cool - embed things directly, cut out a round-trip for images etc, all very nice things. You've probably seen them tucked in a stylesheet somewhere, e.g.: .foo { background-image(url("data:...")) } ... Read more >>