Site Update

Long overdue, but my personal site is finally updated. Dependabot had been quietly filing alerts, which have been reviewed and resolved across the repo.

Out of date and needing updates

I regularly joke that my job is “I just do meetings” and talk to people, but that seems to be the reality. I live by my calendar where free time, focus time, and lunch time are jealously guarded. However, I...

Hiring, Firing, and Analysis Paralysis

I have started this post several times over the past few years. Some of the hardest decisions I’ve faced as a manager have been directly related to the structure of my team(s). These are the people that you support, work...

Super Secret Messages

One of the many things I enjoy is playing tabletop RPGs. Since I wanted to utilize secret messages containing information and clues, I decided to write a quick program to do it for me. This puzzle_script program encodes messages using...

Somehow I Manage

The reference to Michael Scott’s blank self-help book, titled Somehow I Manage, from The Office TV show is intentional. I’ve officially been in a management roll for just over a year and I regularly feel like I’m winging it. On...

Background Noise

Do you have your camera on in remote meetings? What’s in your background? Do you blur or use filters?

The Ability to Stand Up

With working from home being the new norm, I made a small upgrade to my home office.

Site Update

The latest change is the addiition of category links in the site header. This improves navigation and allows all related posts to be displayed on a single page. To support this, a significant portion of the site had minor edits...

Working Remote and the Post Covid-19 Workplace

Getting Organized with Asana

I recently tasked myself with finding a better way to be organized, both personally and as a family. Over the years I’ve used (and actively use) a variety of programs to take notes, sync across multiple devices, and share information....

Formatting Ellapsed Time in Python

The following code snippet is a quick way to format raw ellapsed time (ms) into a readable format.

Job Search - Resources, Information, and Advice

This post contains information that I’ve found useful when planning to take the next steps in my career. I’ve personally gone through this process several times, have interviewed a wide variety of candidates, and assisted friends and colleagues with their...

Testing in Python

Up until now, I’ve predominately used Python as a scripting and utility language. My current reading topics include how to structure python projects, ensure that they’re self contained (refuse to add the project filepath to the system PATH), add testing,...

Site Update

The last several months have been incredibly busy and there’s a noticeable lapse in my posting. While this site is mostly an ‘online diary,’ my goal is to practice posting regularly as mentioned in Staying on Top. My focus will...

How to go insane in one week

I’ve had several post ideas over the last few months, but have been swamped with a few major life events. The biggest being relocating across the country a second time in the span of a year and a half. My...

Austin Robotics Meetup - August 2018

This month’s meetup was hosted at MaidBot where their sculpture of discarded parts was on full display.

Advances in Technology

I live in front of my computers and my home office is setup with three displays. The difference in heat emitted by the two older LCD monitors is significantly higher than my LED monitor and creates a pocket of warm...

Staying on top...career, technology, and best practices

One thing that’s been in the back of my mind is “how to stay on top of my career?” More importantly, what should I be doing or could be doing better?

DZ60 Keyboard Build

Austin Robotics Meetup - July 2018

Beer, robots, friendly faces, etc. Seems to be a recurring theme!

Learning LaTeX

I was recently discussing my resume with one of my good friends and he mentioned how he used LaTeX for formatting. It was a pretty easy sell over fighting with word processors to maintain alignment and spacing every time I...

What Is Six Sigma

Last week I made two mistakes. First, I asked my boss what the offsite training he attended was. Second, I asked “What is Six Sigma?” which prompted him to point to a stack of books. Being a smart person, I...

Austin Robotics Meetup - June 2018

I had a great time at this month’s meetup, hosted by Maidbot. I saw several familiar faces, met new people, and jumped in and out of conversations covering a variety of technologies. Plus, there were food trucks and plenty of...

Embedded Systems Security

Customizable Dial Widget

Are you developing a C++/Qt GUI and need to display data using analog dials?

Getting Started with Uncrustify

Maintaining the style of your code is manageable if it’s just you, but how do you handle commits from an entire team? If you haven’t used a code beautifier, such as Uncrustify, they’re extremely useful tools that keep your codebase...

New Soldering Station

I have several projects coming up and finally decided to upgrade from a cheap soldering iron to a proper temperature controlled unit. I read way too many reviews, watched comparison videos on youtube, and finally settled on the Hakko FX-888....

Austin Robotics Meetup - May 2018

This was the first time I managed to attend the Robotics & AI Meetup hosted by Diligent Robotics. I had a great time, met a number of extremely creative people, and learned about a variety of projects and interests.

New look. New feel.

Welcome to the new patrickhenson.com!