Alex Lockhart

I am a tabletop gamer threw and threw. While roleplaying games and miniature games have accounted for a lot of my play time, board games are certainly my favorite. They promote social interaction, help people break out of their shell, are versatile for many different types of crowds, and great for many kinds of occasions. The board gaming world has seen an explosion in the past decade, and now some 18 thousand board games are ranked on "The Geek". Games have become better produces, with stunning artwork, and streamlined gameplay. However many older games still stand the test of time in a way that other forms of entertainment often struggle to do. With the decade behind us, I wanted to share my own top 10 board games of all time.

Number 10: Splendor
Splendor fits into a unique category of games where the shear brilliance of the game mechanics takes the forefront. Turns are quick and choices are limited, and yet every action you take delicately effects the choices of every ot…

One does not have to go far to find someone ripping on Hollywood for a lack of originality. Remakes, sequels, and movies based on existing material are common place. The current fulcrum of criticism is Disney with their yearly stream of live action remakes and sequels; from 2016's "The Jungle Book" to 2019's "The Lion King". It is argued that Hollywood, and Disney as one of it's representative constituents, should take more creative risks and drive towards originality. A creative and original culture around the largest piece of the entertainment industry would be illustrative of an open minded and creative audience. However when the largest piece of our entertainment industry is risk adverse and lacks originality it shows an audience that is accepting of repeated and rehashed material.

I argue that this is not true.

The key here is, "the largest piece of our entertainment industry". The question is: where should we expect the creative engine …

The phrase, "well that's just a semantic argument" is often repeated. Even when the statement is true, the intended effect is often misguided. It is a phrase which means that an argument is about definitions but is meant to disregard someone's opinion. The implication is that if you are arguing about the definitions of terminology then your argument is unhelpful. This is most certainly not true because terminology is the bridge between the understanding of things and the reality of things.

Any communication, whether written or verbal, is about something. To say it differently, all communication has some substance which underlies it. That substance might be something physical, conceptual, fantastical, or it could even be an outright falsehood. However there is always a substance that the communication is about. This substance is distinct from someones understanding of that substance. Our understanding is in our own minds and can be divergent from someone else's u…

Over the course of time my go to tech stack for web development has changed. At one time it was Ruby on Rails with Heroku, then Firebase and React, then Polymer and lit-html. While all of these had their place and still work brilliantly I have been able to fine tune my go to technologies; finding a more specific niche use case while also broadening capabilities. As I see it these are the major problems to solve in web development:
RenderingHostingSource controlContent managementBusiness logicData storageDelivery Every tech stack will need to have an answer for these problems. The set of technologies that I use falls under the JAMstack paradigm. Here they are listed in same order as the problems they solve: OrisonNetlifyGitHubContentfulNetlify functionsFirebase FirestoreSPA + PWA The beauty of JAMstack is that any one of these seven parts could be replaced by another technology which solves the same problem. On any given project I might use Gatsby instead of Orison, Firebase Hosting ins…

I recently found myself giving time management advice. During this discussion the phrase, "reducing wasted time, redeeming necessary time" came up. I think this encapsulates the two main methods for increasing productivity. Some time syncs are simply wasteful while others are necessary and yet unproductive. In order to increase productivity wasted time needs to be reduced while necessary time syncs need to be redeemed.

However what is wasted time, or for that matter unredeemed time? Firstly, it assumes a goal. If time is wasted then there is an implicit assumption that it failed to do something. So in order for the concept of wasted time to be meaningful we need to have a plan, process, or goal that we are striving towards. When unplanned and unaccounted for interruptions break into those efforts, we can count that time as being wasted. However let's come down out of the theoretical clouds and talk about it with concrete examples.

The easiest example of wasted time are …

I have recently developed a static site generator tool called Orison and for this reason among others I have been trying to "sell" people on static site generators; developers, architects, and non technical folks included. For many people the term "Static Site Generation" is synonymous with "small blog", "personal site", and "trivial use case" instead of phrases like "enterprise scale" and "unbeatable performance".

I am very thankful for everything that Netlify has done to popularize static site generation. However I wander if the naming of the term turns people away. In technical articles, presentations, blog posts, and in person discussion I often use the term "build tool", "build process" or something of that sort to describe the role that the static site generator plays in the JAMstack architecture.

I am curious as to what you have found. Is there a better term that I am missing? Should we in…