Gatsby turned out to be too much. But React makes it easy to create your own static site generator.

A while back I rewrote my website using Gatsby which resulted in having to put the website content in the same GIT repository as the Gatsby code. Thus I had to be on a laptop to both write and publi... Keep Reading

Using AWS Lambda to trigger long running jobs.

AWS Lambda has proven to be a powerful piece of infrastructure, capable of taking parts of our apps that were tied to a long running app server, and turn them into scalable, event driven, service or... Keep Reading

Reflections on the role and importance of my grandfathers.

I can still hear the rumble of the tires running over the brick roads. That’s how we knew we were close. It’s hard to gauge time after 10 hours in a car. Once we felt that rumble, no book could hol... Keep Reading

When foreign words become part of the language

The other day while driving, my kids were asking me how to say different words in Chinese. They usually ask about things that they see out the windows, trees, homes, cars, etc… But one of them was t... Keep Reading

DynamoDB is a fully managed NoSQL document database provided by AWS

Two methods in DynamoDB allow us to fetch or write many items at once, `batchGetItem` and `batchWriteItem`. They allow us to fetch or write many items, across multiple tables, in a single call. But ... Keep Reading

DynamoDB is a fully managed NoSQL document database provided by AWS

Most of the methods in DynamoDB take an object as their first parameter, which provides the necessary information to perform the requested operation. These options include things like the table name... Keep Reading

I often hear Chinese is a hard language. But is it really? Why should you learn it?

Usually when I tell people that I speak Chinese, their reaction is to tell me how hard the language seems to be. My response usually consists of an explanation as to why I don’t think it is as hard ... Keep Reading

Most things I've designed looked like I was an engineer. But over time things have improved!

In the last few months, I have spent some time off and on redesigning my website. It originally started as an exercise to practice doing some design work in Figma, and it quickly turned into a full-... Keep Reading

Take some time to be reflective, see what life has taught you.

Today is my last day at Instructure. Over the last week, I have reflected many times on what I have learned through the last 5 years. The company has done a lot to enable me and my family to accompl... Keep Reading

CSS in JS is all the rage, but how do you target nested components?

Using a pattern of CSS overrides in Emotion can enable you to target nested components within a React application. const componentStyles = css`...` <div css={componentStyles}> <MyCompone... Keep Reading