The Curious Engineer

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TheExceptionCatcher

theexceptioncatcher.com

Over a decade of progressive professional software development experience in conjunction with more than two decades as a hobbyist developer has pushed me to reduce the burden of support and cost of delivery by writing highly-maintainable software of the highest caliber. This blog is intended to be a

Software / engineering practiceAI / MLDevOps / SRE / infrastructureGo

’15’20’25
Posts
199 from 31 Jan 2011 to 23 Jun 2026
Posting
monthly (11 in the last year)
Kind
personal blog
Feed
https://theexceptioncatcher.com/feed.xml

2026 11

  1. My AI Movie Night Disaster
  2. Connecting Ollama to OpenCode: A Faster Workflow
  3. Vibe Coding
  4. What Comes Next
  5. GitHub Actions: The Hidden Billing Trap
  6. gRPC: Up And Running (2020)
  7. Is This the Future of Software Development? (2026 Predictions)
  8. Getting Started with gRPC: A Practical Example in Go
  9. Best of 2025: Part 3
  10. Best of 2025: Part 2
  11. Best Of 2025

2025 16

  1. Beyond Single Commands: SDKMan's Hidden Environment File Feature
  2. Finding The Owner of An Open Port
  3. Web Serial: The Only Reason I’ll Admit JavaScript Isn’t All Bad
  4. 6 Features You Should Enable On A New OPNsense Installation
  5. How to Ask Questions About YouTube Videos Using Open-WebUI & Ollama (All locally)
  6. Remotely Accessing Your Local AI Services with Wake-on-LAN & a Web Proxy
  7. Kafka in 2025: A Clean Docker Compose Setup Without ZooKeeper
  8. Following Up on 'New Adventures', the progress so far
  9. Project: Page Recommender
  10. Project: 404Browser
  11. Project: FunnyHats (Computer Vision)
  12. Project: Financial Stock Strategy and Simulator
  13. Project Anansi: Ebook organizer and library manager
  14. New Adventures- What's Next?
  15. Assumptions Are Like Legos
  16. Antipatterns

2024 12

  1. Unexpected Scala Functions: groupMap
  2. What is EXIF Data in Photos? How can I view it? How can I automate the removal in my project?
  3. Installing Arch on an Existing Arch Machine, The Easy way
  4. Running local commands in your pre-commit hooks
  5. Git hooks and Pre-commit hooks.
  6. Ins and outs of the Japanese Rail Pass
  7. Using Pipewire and Low volume in Kodi drove me through a dark rabbit hole
  8. 'The good days' of software engineering in 2020-2
  9. I made a low carb peanut butter pie
  10. Building a table
  11. NVidia 545 upgrade issues with Arch
  12. New blog, Switching to Jekyll

2021 1

  1. Docker Life Protip

2020 7

  1. New G8 Template: Kafka Streams
  2. Take a look at that nice tasty (pork) butt
  3. TIL: Checking if an environment variable is set and exists
  4. Help Request: Awesome-kafka
  5. Games that you can play over Zoom/Remotely
  6. It's been a while
  7. Well hello to you ESP32!

2018 7

  1. Looking for Resources on Kafka and Kafka Streams?
  2. I made a new thing: serialization-checker
  3. A suggestion for those who create projects for open source
  4. New Repository: Reactive Summit 2018 Notes
  5. Refactoring the Monolith (A CJUG Lightning Talk)
  6. I built a Tetris Engine in Scala
  7. What have I been learning lately/What Have I been reading lately (March/April 2018)

2017 7

  1. Tips on Traveling to Hong Kong
  2. You can Either Try or not (Scala: Try, Either)
  3. I'm asking for your help. (About this Summer)
  4. Some of the things that I’ve been up to in the last few months (March-June)
  5. Something I love about the builder pattern
  6. What I learned from my trip to Costa Rica and Panama
  7. Response to: Quality vs Quantity and the Ceramic Art Students

2016 24

  1. From "The Zen Of Akka" By Konrad Malawski: Protip: Logging Formatting
  2. My Christmas Wishlist For Groovy/Java/Scala
  3. "I wanted to like _______, but...."
  4. Things I’ve learned so far this week (6 Dec)
  5. Secure Services - It's not just for REST or SOAP anymore
  6. No Fluff Just Stuff October 2016/Chicago
  7. Akka/Scala vs Groovy for a Periodic Process
  8. (Transitive) Dependency Hell (In Java) Part 1
  9. (Transitive) Dependency Hell Pt2: How it could have been avoided
  10. In Support of Complex Software
  11. Changing Power Adapters Types
  12. Project: Meetup Photo Downloader
  13. A few things that I would like to see in Docker
  14. Educators/Corporate Trainers: Hire professional evaluators
  15. Project: Music Organization System
  16. I really like Docker
  17. Video Posted: "I didn't know that about Groovy!" (Chicago JUG 3 June)
  18. My Second Chicago Java User's Group: I didn't know you could do that with Groovy!
  19. The Scalafication of Java Libraries
  20. Groovy Tip of the Day: Getters and Setters aliases
  21. Simple tip to take better pictures with an Android Phone
  22. Exit Codes: Why Java Gets it Wrong
  23. Notes: Using Betamax in Grails (2.4.x)
  24. I gave a technical talk and so should you

2015 9

  1. How I got my Bot Banned by Twitter
  2. German Food In Chicago
  3. Need to install The PG (Postgres GEM) via Bundler?
  4. Just an Awesome Tip I found on Debugging RestClient in Groovy
  5. Spring Security OAuth- The missing Instructions
  6. Things I've been Learning This Week (13 April 15)
  7. Weirdness with GORM and Inheritance
  8. What Did I do this Week? (26 March)
  9. It's taken more than a year to go from 12000 to 0.

2014 11

  1. Somethings I learned about the Train System in Europe
  2. Awesome Projects That I've found Recently
  3. Should you buy a rail pass in Europe?
  4. Having difficulty getting your NGinix service working on the Digital Ocean install instructions?
  5. Stoicism and "The Obstacle is the Way"
  6. Two book reviews that were not done
  7. I don't like Virtual Machines
  8. Java 8: Presentations, and audience engagement
  9. Seven Databases in Seven Weeks: Postgres
  10. First Thoughts: “Coders at Work” by Peter Seibel
  11. An Easier Way to Deal with Thread.sleep

2013 42

  1. Are all technical books dry and boring?
  2. Today I learned: Use %n rather than \\n in String.format
  3. Pastebin for HTTP Requests.
  4. Kegerators
  5. Installing Maven on Centos 5 or 6/RHEL
  6. Protip of the Day: Always Delay your Email From Being Sent
  7. Apache Wicket MarkupNotFoundException
  8. Whats on your bookshelf?
  9. Installing ArchLinux on an Asus UX31A?
  10. A cool new Argumented Reality Application
  11. Who would benefit from a TrueCrypt API?
  12. Some of the Best and Worse Things of Hotels
  13. Debugging/Depedency Issue with Maven
  14. Well, that's Interesting and Unique: OptaPlanner
  15. Why your PodCast May Irritate It's Listeners
  16. Why I'll buy more Logitech Wireless mice
  17. This Week I Learned [19 May 2013 Edition]
  18. My response to “7 Open Source Projects to cut your teeth on (and the ones to avoid)”
  19. The Problem with Resolutions
  20. Don't let the User Fail
  21. Apache Wicket [In Action]: A Review and How It Relates to the Java World
  22. My Two Cents on Interviewing Software Engineers
  23. 3 Strikes Budget Rental Car: You're Out!
  24. Things I learned a week or so ago
  25. Review: "What Compsci textbooks don't tell you: Real world code sucks"
  26. PSA: Software Development Tip: Clean out your Code Base
  27. Good News Everybody! The Mobile Phone Unlocking Petition Reached it's Goal!
  28. A Skill that All Technical People Can Use (System administrators, Database Administrators, Developers, etc)
  29. A Few Signs That Your Project May Be In Some Serious Trouble
  30. The Pitfalls of Testing
  31. Two Issues I have With IntelliJ: Inconsistent building, and GUIs
  32. Make Mobile Phone Unlocking Legal Again
  33. Getting Over Writer’s Block
  34. Review: The Java Virtual Machine Specification: Second Edition (Java 2 Platform)
  35. Features I'd like to see Added in Wikis
  36. Progress on Tech Resolutions of 2013
  37. New Repository ogg2mp3
  38. Interesting finds of the Week [Week of the 20January 2013]
  39. In Support Of Maven
  40. Groovy in Action: A review
  41. Links I’ve Found Interesting in the Last Week/Technical Things I’ve found Interesting (6 January 2013)
  42. Things I would like to Learn/Experience/Improve-Upon This Year [2013]

2012 35

  1. Init.d Script for codeBeamer MR
  2. Massive IntelliJ Sale
  3. Rant on Web Interfaces: Quick Context Menus
  4. Some of the Articles/Links/Video That I found Interesting in the Last Week
  5. Varying your Reading Materials
  6. Whats wrong with Wikis (Well One Aspect)
  7. Tips for Travelling (Updated 22 Nov)
  8. Really Cool Things I've Learned This Week (R, Random Numbers, Java, Hypervisiors, and fan maintenance)
  9. Part 2 of 2: How To Make Your Life Easier As A Tech Worker (IT/Software Engineering/System Administrator): Motivation
  10. Part 1 of 2: How To Make Your Life Easier As A Tech Worker (IT/Software Engineering/System Administrator): Automation
  11. SSH Mastery, A Book Review
  12. Stackoverflow Is A Difficult Community to Participate In
  13. Don't trust your Technical Documentation Staff to write Quickstart guides and Tutorials, Hire a Professional.
  14. Interactive Customer Service: How to fix Airlines' Broken Phone Service
  15. New Equipment and Switching Workstations
  16. How to get rid of Screen Scrapers from your Website
  17. How difficult is it to sell an open source solution?
  18. The Linguistics of Webservices
  19. APIs: A Strategy Guide
  20. "Wanted Java Developer" could you be a little more ambiguous?
  21. "10 Ten Reasons why You're Programming Wrong" -- How to bore/annoy your audience
  22. My first attempt at open source: PageRecommender
  23. Review: "Test-Driven Development" by Kent Beck [The creator of JUnit]
  24. Regular Expressions Tester
  25. Well That Was Silly Of Me, Issues with Sed....
  26. A Tool That Would Be Rather Nice To Have
  27. Computer Science Classes I Would Like To See Offered
  28. I’m a student, what [language, framework, API, concept] should I learn?
  29. Lost the Passion for Software Development?
  30. Technical Writing for Programmers
  31. Suggestions for Authors of Technical Books
  32. Trends with Low Powered Clients [Tablets, and Smartphones]
  33. CrossOver Linux Professional
  34. What Have I been up to lately? Erlang, Scala, Clojure, Ruby, IO, Haskell, and Prolog Oh MY!
  35. The saying “Foreign Carriers are better than domestic” Sounds True until you try Lufthansa.

2011 17

  1. Immutable Objects (Article 3 of 3)
  2. Immutable Objects (Article 2 of 3)
  3. Immutable Objects (Article 1 of 3)
  4. Things I Wish Existed a Long Time ago: Unit Test Reporting
  5. Fixing Classpath Issues with JasperReports, J2EE, and Maven
  6. Train Stations
  7. Update to NC - High Speed Rail
  8. "The World Has Changed"
  9. Selling Technology Solutions to the Classroom
  10. Letter To Rep Killian (R) on the bill "No High-Speed Rail Money from Federal Gov't."
  11. Review: "Fooled By Randomness" by N. Taleb
  12. Emerging QT/KDE On Gentoo
  13. Why Data Visualization is the Wrong Solution and How to Fix It
  14. Restaurant Review: The Thai House of Charlotte
  15. Privacy Activists, Rejoice! ZeoDecoderViewer is in alpha!
  16. What's to come
  17. fist psot!