Mike's Blog (page 3)

DisplayLink Docks and Ubuntu

07 Aug 2021 · Technology

Can you use a DisplayLink dock with Ubuntu? And, more importantly, should you? I recently researched this for a dock I wanted to buy for myself, and here’s what I found.

My New Bash Prompt (PS1)

28 Jun 2021 · Programming

I recently spent some time improving my bash prompt. I already had a lightly customized prompt, but wanted to see if I could find something I liked that provided even more information.

Scalaing Club Leaderboard Infrastructure for Millions of Users

26 May 2021 · on The Strava Engineering Blog

Sometimes, we work on shiny new features that (we hope) athletes will notice and love. Other times, we need to work on back-end improvements that are unlikely to be noticed at all, but are usually just as important as the other things we work on. Some recent work I did for our club leaderboards fell into the latter category — unlikely to be noticed, but really important for the scalability and reliability of strava.com.

My Dotfiles Story: A Journey to Chezmoi

12 May 2021 · Technology

When you’re a developer (or perhaps even a normal power-user), you seem to acquire a bunch of custom config, scripts, and tools over time. Often, these are little snippets. A one-liner command alias that you paste into ~/.bashrc. A custom format for your PS1 prompt. A default setting for Vim.

How to Install Pi-hole on the Orange Pi Zero

11 May 2021 · Technology

I’ve already written a review of the Orange Pi Zero. As it turns out, this little board is perfect for running your own Pi-hole! It’s probably even better than a Raspberry Pi! The cheapest Raspberry Pi you can get with a wired ethernet connection is the Raspberry Pi 1 Model B+, which is listed for $28.95 at PiShop.us (as of May 2021). In contrast, you can get an Orange Pi Zero 512MB for $16.99 + ~$4.00 shipping from AliExpress, or a couple dollars more with a case. (You can also find these items on Amazon, but shipping is more expensive there.) In total, you can save about 30% compared to the Raspberry Pi! Of course, the Raspberry Pi model Zero W might be cheaper, but isn’t a good choice for a Pi-hole – it loses some network stability and speed because of its wireless connection. The Orange Pi Zero, on the other hand, has a wired ethernet connection and performs great!

Learning to Program by Making a Game

06 Dec 2020 · Technology

This year, Computer Science Education Week will be December 7-13, 2020. In honor of CS Education Week, I wanted to write this blog post about the first computer game I wrote, and what I learned along the way. I was about thirteen, and this story picks up near where I left off in my previous blog post about my first computer program. When I wrote that blog post in 2017, I was working mostly from memory. Since then, I actually found an old floppy disk with my game on it. And finding that old floppy disk got me thinking about about how much I learned from writing computer games in my childhood, and how much others might be able to learn from writing their own first computer games today.

Building Local Legends

28 Oct 2020 · on The Strava Engineering Blog

In late 2019, Strava’s product development team began forming ideas about a new way to compete on Strava. Strava segments have always provided a way to recognize athletic achievement through a form of racing. Now, we wanted to also recognize the grit that goes into training. Those athletes who are out on the trail every day, rain or shine, striving for more. Local Legends is the result of these ideas, recognizing the athlete who’s completed a segment the most times in the last 90 days. I was lucky enough to play an important role in building this feature, and in this blog post, I want to tell the story of how we developed Local Legends and explore some of the technical challenges we faced along the way.

Unsubscribe Me: How to Disconnect from Internet Chaos

23 Oct 2020 · Technology

The Social Dilemma came out about a month ago and got a lot of people thinking about the influence the internet and social media have on their daily lives. I’m a programmer, and I’ve worked for an internet advertising company, so none of this was new information to me. But for a lot of the American public, watching The Social Dilemma was an eye-opening experience into the ways that internet companies try to track and manipulate people. Many of my friends used words like “unsettling” and “eerie” to describe how they felt after seeing the film, but most of them also weren’t really sure what to do about it. They weren’t sure how to make positive changes in their own lives.

How To Set Up a Ruby Dev Environment on Ubuntu Linux

27 Sep 2020 · Software Development

Setting up a development environment correctly might not seem like a big deal at first, but an incorrectly set-up environment can cause a lot of problems down the road if you’re not careful. In my experience, the internet’s full of solutions – both good and bad – for environment problems, but often does a poor job of explaining why a solution’s good or bad. And installing Ruby can be tricky if you’ve never done it before. So here’s my advice.

How to Install Custom Firmware on Your Xiaomi M365 E-Scooter

05 Jul 2020 · Tutorials

The Xiaomi m365 (also known as the Xiaomi Mi) is one of the most highly-rated electric scooters available. If you’ve ever rented a Lyft or a Bird scooter, the design will look very familiar. This electric scooter is fun to ride and great for commuting! But one of the best things about the m365 scooter is that you can modify the firmware to suit your own preferences! It’s easy to do and should only take 20 or 30 minutes. Let’s get started!