Two weeks ago I started work at Amazon Web Services. AWS is Amazon's cloud computing platform, which provides processing power to individuals and organizations that don't want to maintain their own server fleets. I'll be working on Amazon Silk, which is the browser for the Kindle Fire, Amazon's tablet device.

That Silk is a part of AWS is both ( Read more... )

I've been puzzling over how best to display photos from Flickr. On my home page, I show my most recent six photos, which helps keep things fresh for search engines and visitors. The problem is that I generally only upload a photoset every month or two, so the same six photos remain up for a couple months, before switching out for a new set of six ( Read more... )

Sarah and I drink a lot of roasted oolong tea, and we're starting to think we should find a yixing clay teapot to devote to the category. Tea wisdom suggests that brewing the same kind of tea in a clay pot time after time will help bring out aspects of the tea that you don't get brewing in a gaiwan (our preferred method at home). These pots are an ( Read more... )

Today and yesterday I tackled my Gmail inbox: at least 6600 messages from the past eight years.

Most mornings when I wake up, I am met by four to ten mass emails. Most of them are from mailing lists, scheduled to be sent at midnight somewhere in the world. These are things that I've signed up for, that I want to be aware of (programming news, ( Read more... )

This year, instead of buying each other Christmas presents, Sarah and I decided to plan a trip to Vancouver. We found a Groupon for a nice hotel, and bought round-trip train tickets, and the night before leaving, we packed. The train up was lovely. It was an overcast morning, with all manner of birds out the window: ducks, seagulls and crows, and a ( Read more... )

My redesign is live. I spent quite a bit of time with this design as a showcase of my knowledge of modern web design. The previous design was around 6 years old, so it was well past time for a facelift. Let me know what you think!

http://azureabstraction.com/

Here is a summary of the features of the new design:

• HTML5 - I used header, sectioning ( Read more... )

I've been working hard on a redesign of my home page for a couple weeks. I started with a few quick sketches, then created wireframes in Fireworks. I've now built a functional page, which I will push live as soon as I'm done revising the copy and making a few other small refinements. As a teaser, here is the wireframe image.


( Read more... )

I had almost despaired of getting any good snow this winter. Saturday teased us with a brief flurry in Wallingford, which dropped about an inch on the plastic chairs outside of Irwin's Bakery. Monday sent more snow at us, and for a day the tantalizing possibility of "Snowmageddon" hung in the air, before being downgraded. But after the snow began ( Read more... )

I like candles. I like their bright dot of flame, not overwhelming like an exposed lightbulb, but small and flickering, uncertain and alive. They evoke elemental forces, powers that both threaten and comfort.

Large candles bother me. They always seem to demand: consume me. I start to light them out of obligation rather than to create ambiance. I ( Read more... )

I've been thinking about the focus of this blog for some time now. My website is a combination of personal and professional, but this blog has remained solidly personal. In the past I've put off writing technical articles on here. I wanted to wait until I had some method of segregating the content so that people who didn't want to hear about my ( Read more... )