Articles

Many documents here were written knowing that the content would quickly become obsolete or written as historical retrospective.

Some were written for projects that have concluded and have since been adapted for a general audience.

Funded By Revenue (or Consulting as analogy while bootstrapping your B2B SaaS), 2020
Properly framing how to think and talk about a business model while bootstrapping your Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) company builds upon "consulting" as an analogy.
With three straight-forward steps, build revenue while increasing the scope of automation. After that, there would be no further need for "consulting".
Being funded by revenue means you take as little seed funding as possible and ideally none at all.
I/O Event Loops Using mio in Rust, 2019
The least one needs to know of event-loop semantics such as for using the Metal I/O library, mio, with the Rust programming language
Effective serde By Writing Less Rust Code, 2019
This was presented at the Vancouver Rust programming language meeting of 17 April 2019 and covers a powerful library, where paradoxically one benefits by writing less code overall.
A Gentle Introduction To Natural Language Processing, 2018
People understand text from writings and conversations, but this can be difficult for computers.
This explains how the technology of Natural Language Processing (NLP) works by building upon what you already know.
It assumes only that you are able to read an English language document.
This gets progressively deeper into useful methods (and ultimately deploying into production, for those so inclined). Go as deep as you like. Annotated references at the end are intended as a jumping-off point for learning more, doing more.
TL;DR: Perusing just the Annotated References will help get you from zero to full deployment in production, yet reading the whole document will help you get the most out of that short list of NLP resources.
New Entrepreneur Checklist & Sanity-Check, 2018
When starting a new business with an on-line presence, these are things to consider even if your website offers little more than being a shingle or sign in front of the front door.
Consider this the least you need to know and do— as part of doing business today. Each section could be expanded into an entire book.
Solar Storms, Solar Flares & Cosmic Rays, 2018
A solar storm is the common name given to a variety events emanating from the Sun. One is a coronal mass ejection. Here's a list of resources regarding the different types of solar storms and cosmic rays.
Includes: general information, physics perspective, historical details, impact on health and remedies.
Seattle Peoples' Internet, 1992-1999, retrospective from 2017
A co-operative Internet Service Provider offering 24-hour dedicated access in the era of 28.8kbps dial-up
Improve SEO Ranking, 2017 (revised: 2018, 2019)
Help people find your content, and do this by accommodating where they are likely to initiate their search. Then, help the spyders and algorithms across the various platforms, so these beasts in turn can help the people you are trying to reach.
These are tips and tricks from successful Search Engine Optimization (SEO), including tips for automated Social Media integration for further reach.
With Bitcoin, "You Are The Bank", 2016 (revised 2017, 2018)
In many references to cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, "You are the bank," will be commonly found.
Using a table, this article attempts to put that statement into context. But at end of the day, you still must make up your own mind about it.
Getting talent into Canada, 2016
As a nation, Canada already assists and facilitates technology startups through various incentives and programs.
A proposal outlined here could help more startups as well.
This is a call to action with little effort required by startup incubators and accelerators but also calls for acknowledgement by Immigration authorities that *existing* policies may be used in this way.
To be clear: government policy remains unmodified.
(This piece was written upon invitation from someone at a Government Canada office, a contact made at Vancouver Startup Week 2016.)
Raspberry Pi As Music Jukebox Using MPD, 2014
Ideally, when you want to hear music everything should just work, but what it means to "just work" is different for each person.
For those wanting high quality sound with reasonably straight-forward setup and willing to spend more for components beyond merely docking a portable music player or mobile phone.
Following a bit of background on current options and decisions made, gritty details about software configuration and off-the-shelf components are given. Most may be followed by someone with cursory knowledge of Linux command-line access.
Contributed Lisp manipulation of C structures to WikiBooks, 2007
Still relevant a decade later and likely for decades to come...
From presentation at LispSea (Seattle Lisp users group)
Note that content within Wikibooks may change due to administrators and other members there, and this link has been revised at least twice since being contributed.
Authoring Stories For Metarealm, 2004 (revised 2017)
How to build a compelling experience for open-course, shared, interactive, persistent Virtual Environments including Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality & Mixed Reality
Contributing Your Grain Of Sand To The Computer Security Mandala, 2004
Once upon a time, people didn't realize that marketers wanted your personal information.
Here's a quaint rant from yesteryear suggesting a security posture for your home electronics— back when it was still possible to opt-out.
Certificate Authority With Multi-Tier Signing Hierarchy, 2003
Enterprise level “best practices” of building and operating a Certificate Authority using OpenSSL and accommodating future use of cryptographic hardware.
This is the least you need to know and uses Borne shell scripts for the least you need to implement.
Custom Shader Tutorial for Softimage XSI & Mental Ray, 2003
Learn the least you need to know to author a custom shader for Mental Ray 3.1 and have it function within Softimage XSI 3.0.
Download: tutorial with source code, or see Github
Using A Five Button Mouse For 3D Modeling & Animation, 2002
There is a problem for those relying upon the classic style three button mouse for users of Blender, Softimage, etc. The bottom line: get a newer 4-5 button mouse with a driver supporting button remapping, reprogramming, etc.
Creating Content: Lessons Learned From Filmmakers, Pixel-Pushers & Audiences, 2002
After seeing other artists struggle with their role in a collaboration or trying to discover where or how to begin their own projects— this was the essence of my advice given to many just starting their careers.
Demo Reel Presentation, 2002
You're an artist becoming professional, and you want the job. You have visual content for your portfolio. But how do you get your work noticed so you get the job?
Need For DV Specialization, March 2002 (annotated May 2003)
In the context of filmmaking, there are lessons that the digital video (DV) community can learn from the early days in the personal computer industry.
Application Credentials: Multiple levels of Anonymous versus Identity access controls and credentials, 1999
Being a participant with a verifiable identity has advantages as much as operating anonymously permits privacy. Support for both is provided by the ability to alternate between two modes seamlessly.
The default mode for anonymity requires zero credentials. When credentials are required, the participant must then leave or present the proper level.
The basic modes are anonymous versus identity. Each contain multiple levels with progressively more private information.
Additional levels may be introduced between those presented here. This is merely a starting point.
Hardcore Hosting, 1997
Originally written as a non-proprietary 1997 memo for a high-level friend inside IBM:
This was the result of on-going research based upon contacts within the entire industry.
In 1997, a book was drafted based on this paper but never published because I belived it to have been too late to be timely. The .com era then peaked three years later in early 2000— oops!
At least IBM's Universal Server Farm was influenced by this paper. The first USF was the technical basis of the IBM/Qwest partnership announced in 2000.
Criteria For Building A Powerful Machine, 1994-2000
For high-end computers for everything from graphics workstations to web servers, this was my advice as a former CAD consultant and Unix systems adminstrator.
The specification details, of course, changed over the years, but the general approach and core technologies remained the same for those six years.
Copyright © 1994-2020 Daniel Joseph Pezely
Each may be licensed via Creative Commons Attribution.