Because .com Wasn't Available

This was originally a Facebook post, but I'm preserving it here in a slightly longer format due to the transient nature of Facebook. August 2016 was the hottest August ever . So was July. And June. And so on for the last 11 months. Here’s a scary animation . No country is taking this seriously , and if we continue on our current path the Earth will be uninhabitable in 100-200 years. Global warming may seem easy to ignore, because the effects appear far off and irrelevant to people living in first world countries. Climate change denial (or even acceptance without behavior modification) is perhaps the most extreme example of Hyperbolic Discounting  in the history of the human race. Partly this is because it can seem impossible to make any changes yourself that will have an impact. I hope I can convince you otherwise. I’m sure you’ve heard about global warming causing stronger storms , rising sea levels , and a variety of other long term downsides that may or may not impact yo...

My second Pluralsight course, Composer: Getting Started , just went live! This is another course that's loosely based on a talk I've given in the past, with a lot more of the details fleshed out. The course covers the following topics: The Basics of Composer Including Third Party Code Autoloading Your Code Composer Scripts Publishing Your Own Composer Package Check it out on Pluralsight today, and let me know what you think!

I've just published my first Pluralsight Course:  High Performance PHP ! I've spoken about this topic a number of times in the past, so it seemed like a good fit for my first foray into the screen casting world. This course also has much more that PHP optimizations in it. The five modules are: Optimizing PHP Code Choosing and Configuring a Web Server Database Optimization Performance and Load Testing Investigating Performance Tradeoffs of PHP Frameworks Modules two, three and four are largely language agnostic, so even if you aren't using PHP you can get a lot out of this course. Here's a demo clip going over the different MySQL forks and how best to configure MySQL: I hope you enjoy the course, and I'd love to hear any feedback you have! Watch the full course here .

When I left Etsy at the end of February, it was because I wanted to join something small where I could have a lot of impact. I did that, becoming a co-founder/CTO at a three person startup in Boston in the online grocery space. Unfortunately that business didn't work out, and closed its doors for good on April 6th. That left me wondering what to do next, and I spent the month of April talking to a lot of companies and exploring opportunities. I wanted to stick with my original plan of joining a small company, but I decided to make post-Series A companies my main focus, to take away some of the risk that I experienced at a seed stage, pre-product company. I was introduced to Attend by a friend, and the company fit all of my criteria. It has a popular product in the market, has around 30 employees (~5 full-time engineers), just raised a Series A , is in growth mode, and has a great team. There's a ton of potential for me to learn technically there and grow as a leader. Attend ...

February 27th was my last day at Etsy, concluding 2.5 years as a remote employee (more on what's next in a future post). A lot has been written about remote work, including a recent book , but I wanted to talk about my own experience and some of the lessons that I learned over the past few years. Overall Etsy does a great job with remote employees, and it continues to get better. During my last couple of weeks at Etsy they were rolling out a new policy that added a number of additional benefits for remotes (including the ability to bring your spouse with you to the main Etsy office in Brooklyn for a week once a year). All that said, at the end of the day I believe that how much you enjoy working remotely is more a function of your personality than the perks that your company provides. Generally I think there's a correlation between how introverted you are and how much you enjoy remoteness. Here's how I put it in my last lecture at Etsy, discussing how my expectations  m...

I've decided to narrow the focus of this blog, exclusively covering the following topics: Software Engineering Web Technologies Web Performance My Career  All of fitness related posts (pushupdates, GORUCK events, etc.) are moving to my new blog at fitness.jkle.in . I realize that the overlap between people who care about web technology and people who care about my crazy fitness goals is vanishingly small, so head over there and subscribe if you are interested in the latter.

I completed my first GORUCK event on 9/13, a Light in Boston. We covered about 8 miles in 5 hours and I was carrying roughly 30 pounds. Overall it met my expectations as a challenging event, although with significantly less focus on calisthenics than I expected. The vast majority of our time was spent rucking around Boston, with minimal time spent doing push-ups, flutter kicks, etc. My class met at the Soldiers and Sailors Monument in the center of Boston Common, although we quickly had to move to the garden nearby to avoid a marijuana legalization festival. Our cadre checked everyone in, opened our rucks to check that we had the right amount of weight, and had us form up to listen to a little background on GORUCK. This particular event was special because it was a 9/11 commemorative event, so we spent extra time talking about the events of that day and why the cadre chose to serve in the military. We were informed that this “would not be a normal Light” and to “get ready for a dif...