Joe Pettit
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Software engineer, product maker, cat data, avgeek, photographer
2020
Practical Elixir Macro Examples
While I haven't written about it here yet, much of my past year has been spent learning and writing Elixir. As I have started to delve beyond surface-level language features I have found topics that are not
May 6
· 2 min read
2019
Docuie
Docuie allows you to create documentation projects as well as pages and headings to create a hierarchy for your users.
May 23
· 1 min read
2017
Paypal Billing Agreements with Paypal-Checkout
While a number of other payment processors have sprung up in recent years, Paypal continues to remain one of the de facto standards because of its relative prevalence and its ability to tokenize personal information. Many users have come to
Dec 8
· 4 min read
2017
Free Will and the Brain
Introduction One of my all time favorite topics is the brain, but more specifically, how the brain's operation results in the human condition. Recently I have been reading about the dichotomy between the conscious and unconscious mind. The
Nov 25
· 4 min read
2017
On the Topic of Death
I have been fortunate in that I made it through 26 years of life before I lost somebody very close to me. This streak ended yesterday, May 23rd, 2017 when my grandmother passed in her sleep. Death is not something
May 24
· 3 min read
2017
Gut Feelings
Recently, I have spent a great deal of time pondering the nature of what we call gut feelings. Personally, many of my decisions have been primarily guided by what I would describe as a gut feeling - but what is a
Mar 8
· 3 min read
2017
Another year down (2016)
It is that time of year again, time to reflect on what has happened over the past year, where I succeeded and where I failed, and more importantly set goals for the coming year. I, like many of you, had
Jan 1
· 4 min read
2016
Pivotal Moments
Another year is coming to an end, thankfully. Like most others, I have had a rather dreadful year, bidding 2016 farewell will be quite satisfying. The end of the year always makes me reflect on how things went over the
Dec 30
· 1 min read
2016
Break In
I mentioned in my other post about some events that fundamentally changed my view on the world. Here, I wanted to dive into one event in particular, the break in I experienced in early August this year. Not long after
Dec 11
· 3 min read
2016
People, Not Things
Every now and again you encounter a series of events that fundamentally changes the way you view the world. For me, the past few months have held a number of events that have definitely change my view substantially. Looking back,
Dec 11
· 1 min read
2016
Co-Founders
I have learned so much about the startup life over the past couple years. I worked with a larger startup, a smaller one, and several that I can call my own. I learned how funding works, how marketing works, how
May 25
· 3 min read
2016
Statusy
After starting Bitkumo I quickly came to the realization that hosted status pages were far too expensive for what they were. The main players right now want upwards of $30-40 per month for what is mostly a static website.
Mar 20
· 1 min read
2015
Another year down (2015)
I always seem to find myself reflecting upon the year during the holidays - where I was this time last year and where I am now. This year has been pretty good to me overall. I've gone on several
Dec 23
· 4 min read
2015
Getting Started: Callbacks and Promises
Coming from Python, Node.js quickly blew my mind with the whole concept of asychronous stuff. I don't think I actually understood managing things asynchronously for a few months after I started writing Javascript (lets be honest, I
Nov 2
· 4 min read
2015
Node-Libvirt: Promisification
After adding a couple things to Node-Libvirt one of the maintainers pointed out my original article on Node-Libvirt referenced the old callback style of using the library so I wanted to take a moment to write up a
Aug 25
· 2 min read
2015
Getting Started: Node-Libvirt (Hypervisor/Domains)
Recently I've been doing a fair amount of work with the libvirt API, specifically using the Node.js bindings found here. The bindings are great and work as expected but I was rather disappointed in the lack of
Jul 12
· 3 min read
2015
About SpacePanel
SpacePanel started as a learning experience primarily - I wanted to learn the in's and out's of virtualization using libvirt. Given the nature of the project, that basic goal was quickly met. However, during the early stages
May 26
· 2 min read
2015
Getting Started with Bookshelf.js
I recently started a project where I was tasked to use Bookshelf.js to interact with the database. The library its self is pretty handy, it is built on top of Knex.js, a great query builder that works with
Apr 19
· 3 min read
2015
3D Print All the Things
I finally decided to take the plunge and jump on the 3D printing bandwagon. My new 3D printer was delivered Thursday last week (03/19). I settled on the Da Vinci 2.0 Duo after a fair amount of reading.
Mar 23
· 3 min read
2015
Physical Buttons for Zigbee Lights
Since I purchased my SmartThings hub a few months ago I've been all about adding new sensors, lights and other smart things to my apartment. Most recently I have been experimenting with the GE Link Light Bulbs. Overall
Mar 11
· 3 min read
2015
SpacePanel Crowd-Funding
SpacePanel development is continuing to move forward - that being said, I'm super excited to announce the next step in making SpacePanel amazing, the SpacePanel Indiegogo Campaign! We are looking to raise $5,000 to go towards continuing to
Mar 2
· 1 min read
2015
SpacePanel Update
I've been pleasantly surprised with the amount of positive response I received after introducing Space in a previous post, so much so that it really inspired me to keep working on the project. Over the past week, I&
Feb 12
· 1 min read
2015
Python + libvirt
When I first started working on Space I knew I would need to use something like libvirt to make all of the calls to the hypervisor its self. I had heard of libvirt several times during my tenure in the
Feb 7
· 4 min read
2015
SpacePanel
One of my goals for 2015 was to learn more about virtualization - for me, learning requires a little reading and a ton of doing. I'd like to introduce my latest project that is a result of the aforementioned
Feb 5
· 1 min read
2015
SmartThings & My 'Smart Home'
If you've known me for more than a few moments you'll know one of my favorite uses of tech is home automation. I believe one's home should work for them and that living in
Jan 11
· 3 min read
2014
Another year down
I'm a firm believer in always moving forward. Every day I strive to learn something new, improve an existing skill, or otherwise advance myself in some fashion. That being said, I really enjoy New Year's as
Dec 31
· 2 min read
2014
remote
I was recently tasked with making a simple drop a pin style application that integrates with Google Maps to visually represent locations of remote team members. I started work on that project today - I've called it remote. remote
Dec 27
· 1 min read
2014
Ruby
With my new job I've decided it's time to diversify my programming language portfolio and start learning some Ruby. Up until now I've written most things in PHP, then Python (with Flask) so I&
Dec 27
· 1 min read
2014
ptpb
I've tried a few different times to make a decent command line pastebin - each ended up being super bloated and slow. I think I've finally succeeded in that goal though - with the help of Zack Buhman
Dec 21
· 1 min read
2014
Weather Station
I love learning new things, I also love monitoring things, so I decided to marry these two concepts and make a weather station from scratch. The project initially started using a number of guides, primarily a few adafruit guides like:
Dec 16
· 2 min read
2014
Asking a Question
I think I speak for most people who have done support in saying one of my biggest pet peeves is not knowing how to ask a question. From my experience, this usually manifests in one of several ways: * The person
Dec 16
· 1 min read
2014
My First Post
Hi there, this is my first post. This blog will likely contain some random posts about relatively random topics I run into during my day to day life as a support giver at Digital Ocean. I'm fairly passionate
Dec 16
· 1 min read
