Exploring Ideas: A Blog on Technology, Startups, Food, and More
Welcome to my blog where I share thoughts and insights on technology, startups, and life in Atlanta. Browse through the articles below or explore by topic.
Traditional Flour Tortillas with Lard
November 25, 2019
These flour tortillas are made the traditional way with lard (manteca), which gives them their characteristic flakiness and tender texture. While you can substitute vegetable shortening, I wouldn’t. Ingredients 3 cups (375g) all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon baking powder ⅓ cup (75g) lard, room temperature 1 cup (240ml) warm water Extra flour for rolling Method Make the Dough: Whisk tog...
Homemade Chicken Sausage with Basil and Thyme
August 15, 2019
Making sausage at home might seem daunting, but with the right equipment and some patience, it’s a rewarding project that gives you complete control over the ingredients and flavors. This chicken sausage, brightened with fresh basil and tomatoes, is lighter than traditional pork sausages but doesn’t sacrifice on flavor. It’s adapted from Rhulman’s recipe, which is a great resource for making sausa...
Trail Report: Basque MTB in Hondarribia
May 1, 2019
Sometimes the best way to get back into something is to dive in head first. That’s exactly what I did with this week-long guided mountain biking tour in the Basque Country of Spain with BasqueMTB, based out of Hondarribia. Despite not being in the best shape at the time, this trip served as the perfect kick in the ass to get back in the saddle as it were. The format was just forgiving enough: each...
Reflecting on 2018: A Year of Growth and Transitions
December 25, 2018
I haven’t posted a ton this year. It turns out, though, that this has been a symptom of having a very eventful year more-so than of disinterest. Some of you may have seen that earlier this year my startup, Predikto, was acquired by United Technologies. The acquisition was covered in UTC’s news center and the Wall Street Journal. The process of building and running a company is difficult and stress...
Category Encoders v1.2.8 Release
June 4, 2018
Been a while since a release, but category encoders has continued to advance with the help of lots of great contributors. I’ve just released v1.2.8, with primarily bugfixes, as well as some new features allowing a user to optionally add the category names in the output column names of some encoders. Check out the new release on PyPI. Or just: pip install -U category_encoders There are some open is...
TechEmergence Podcast and Atlanta AI Article
June 3, 2018
I recently had the opportunity to join Daniel Faggella on the TechEmergence podcast to discuss predictive maintenance and the growing AI ecosystem in Atlanta. The conversation covered a range of topics from industrial applications of AI to the unique characteristics of Atlanta’s technology community. Predictive Maintenance Discussion We explored several key aspects of predictive maintenance in ind...
Rethinking Innovation Labs: Bridging Promises and Reality
April 16, 2018
Innovation labs have become increasingly popular in large corporations over the past decade. These dedicated spaces and teams are meant to foster creativity, drive innovation, and help companies stay competitive in rapidly evolving markets. But their effectiveness and value proposition deserve careful scrutiny. The Promise Innovation labs promise to be the answer to disruption - a way for large co...
On Discipline of Creation
April 7, 2018
Engineering is at its core a creative endeavor. Entrepreneurship as well. To excel at either is to be fundamentally good at consistently creating solutions to problems, at creating semantic understandings of problems, and to communicate one’s work well. The Need for Creative Training It is critical for engineers and entrepreneurs to train their creativity. Like any skill there is some degree of ta...
Data Engineering Podcast
February 20, 2018
I recently had the opportunity to join Tobias Macey on the Data Engineering Podcast to discuss my work at Predikto and share insights about data engineering in the industrial IoT space. We covered a range of topics including predictive maintenance, the challenges of working with industrial data, and the evolution of data engineering practices in heavy industry. Key Discussion Points The unique cha...
Category Encoders published in JOSS
January 26, 2018
The Journal of Open Source Software (JOSS) is a formal academic peer-reviewed journal (ISSN 2475-9066), intended to be “developer friendly”. What does that really mean? If you have a project on github, that has some novel value, and is well written, then in probably 30-40 minutes of working time, you can put together a submission. The reviews all take place in github issues, and I got some helpful...
Subscribe to the Newsletter
Get the latest posts and insights delivered straight to your inbox.