One - Jud Valeski's blog

Google's Waning Search Utility

While Search results have been degrading steadily over the past few years, they have fallen off of a cliff since chatgpt came online. AI has empowered SEO people to nearly perfectly game Google's Search crawling and indexing algorithms. Ad-littered, machine generated, gobbledygook text dominates the first several pages

Defunct WellnessFX & Your Data

If you were a longtime WellnessFX user like me, the recent shutdown of the service was quite disruptive. It was a good way to view blood draw biomarker data and understand important thresholds for healthy living. I exported all of my data (CSV) before the service went offline and have

Plunge Cold Water Exposure

Here's a quick tour of my experience with cold water exposure after jumping on the latest trend. Exposure to Cold Water Exposure A couple of years ago my son and I were vacationing in Mexico at a resort that had a "cold plunge" pool. I'

software

Dear Mobile App Developers

Obviously Apple and Google have done a good job building out the IP stack for mobile devices (I still can't believe Steve Jobs tricked AT&T into allowing them access to the data pipe back in the day), but, I thought things would have evolved further than

Reading Online Content Offline

A couple of months ago I bought a reMarkable device [https://remarkable.com/] for reading (I’m sure they have competitors… I didn’t comparison shop). It’s actually built for document editing, markup, and collaboration, but, I just wanted a standard paper-sized e-ink device that would let me read

Car Entertainment System Miss-fires

With the kiddos at driving ages we've been doing car entertainment/stereo exploration. While it's been a fun walk down memory lane (I used to be really into sound-systems), it's also been a reminder of how poorly technology deployment can go. Between a continued

restaurants

Customers, Hug A Restaurant Worker

Closures and stimulus checks have hulled out the restaurant industry. In talking with restauranteurs, I estimate that a third, to half, of all the staff you see working at a restaurant (front and back of the house) have never worked in a restaurant before. Restaurants are desperate for staff. McDonalds

boulder

Spring & Boulder's Trails post-COVID Lockdown

This is an open letter of mine to Boulder's Parks and Rec department. Dear Boulder Parks and Recreation Department, As COVID subsides, hopefully for good, our trail systems are going to be innundated with people getting out and enjoying themselves. As this coincides with our erratic Spring-time weather,

email

Blogger: New Post Email Notifications

It turns out blog migration is hard. I wanted to move from my 2nd generation platform, Blogger, where this blog has been hosted for fifteen years or so, over to Ghost, in order to gain email notification support when I made a new post. However, the export format from Blogger

iPhone 12 mini & Optical Zoom

If you're like me and had been longing for an iPhone 4S sized iPhone for the past several years, you were stoked when the iPhone 12 mini arrived on the scene a couple of months ago. Unfortunately, the iCamera lens setup in the mini doesn't support

technology

Education In Isolation

I have two kiddos (17 (M) and 14 (F)) in public High School. I have a nephew (10) and niece (7) in public Elementary. Needless to say the “education from home” amidst this COVID crisis has been troubling. In talking with my brother, it sounds like Elementary education has being

company

Tech Company B-Corp Certification Surprise

I found myself down the B-Corp Certification exploration rabbit hole. Now that the certification craze dust has settled a bit (remember a few years ago when everyone wanted to be B-Corp Certified?) we have some industry data around what it all means in practice. Definitions There are two "B

home automation

Voice UI

I've been using Alexa, and Siri for awhile now. I gave Google Home a try for a few months, but dumped it (not enough integrations with IoT devices). The promise of voice landed with the dead thud I thought it would. That said, there have been a few

food

Tipping and “The Apps”

I’m reaching fatigue levels with all the delivery apps out there. From ride-sharing, to food delivery, the veil between me and the laborer’s “tip” is getting old. While “The Apps” play with their margins by tweaking “services charges,” “convenience fees,” and “gratuities/tips,” the connection I thought I

travel

Finally Deleted Uber

This was a very long breakup. I need some space to write it all down. The Last Straw Last night I deleted Uber from my phone. After waiting for forty minutes at LAX, I watched my car drive by as the app told me “ride cancelled.” In the end, I’

notifications

!Notifications

A week ago I disabled all notifications across all of my devices. Life is better this way. It's been an interesting experience that reminds me of life before mobile devices. How did we ever think it would be a good idea to sound that little email "ding,

machine learning

Machine Play: Again

I updated my system for sending SMS notifications when my deck furniture’s covers get blown off in the wind. My original post [/machine-play] talked about version one of the system. I’ve since made a handful of refinements to simplify things. * I ditched the Amcrest camera in favor of

machine learning

Machine Play

Preamble The only really cool software things that have come along in the past several years have been a rise of the machines in the form of Machine Learning, and serverless/microservice/Kubernetes clouds. The former is a complete framework game changer for humans, and the latter just a really

ios

Taking Charge Of My Attention

Over the past few weeks I’ve experimented with leaving my Phone at home when I head out for the day. The release of iOS Screen Time shocked me. Having a look at my raw usage data around how much I was using my devices/apps pushed me into trying

honey

Honey in Boulder

Our Boulder office foyer.Earlier this year I joined Honey [https://www.joinhoney.com/] in order to help them scale product and development beyond their headquarters in Los Angeles. The company is growing rapidly and in a look toward the future, it wanted to distribute and diversify its ability to

mapping

Navigation & Route Hacking

While the AI/Machine-Learning battle is likely over in the long run [https://gizmodo.com/self-taught-ai-masters-rubik-s-cube-in-just-44-hours-1826918072] , I'm surprised municipalities haven't figured out real-world hacks to game all the mapping/routing apps away from the frustrated neighborhoods getting clogged with traffic. Waze/Google Maps/Apple Maps/etc

My Brush With Technology In The Classrom At Scale

The 2017/2018 Boulder Valley School District (BVSD) school year has come to a close, and with it the DTAC [http://bvsd-cio.blogspot.com/2017/02/district-technology-advisory-committee.html] group is wrapping up for the year. I will not be pursing a role on the committee this next cycle (thought I

browser

The Connectivity Fallacy & $(window).load(function())

While the Network as a whole is borderline miraculous, the reality of its connection quality is far from it. Connectivity sucks, even in private-industry led first-world connection environments. Fiber backhauls are generally pretty good, but "last-mile" services suck. The issue is usually around latency, but bandwidth throughput is

photography

Day In Pictures: Greenland Trip

Greenland adventure with incredible photographers and fellow adventurers. I finally learned to play with Tonal Curves in Lightroom for color correction, and was able to untangle my thoughts around the relationship between focus depth-of-field and focal length (thanks Chris!). I guess I should stop being surprised at the adventurous nature

Amazon Alexa And Rewiring My Brain

I took Amazon's Whole Foods bait the other day and bought an Echo and a Dot while buying groceries (yup... weird). Here are my first impressions after about a week's worth of use. I set Alexa up in a new space that doesn't have