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.

Elevating Celery: A Velvety Celery Soup Recipe

April 12, 2025

Celery is often relegated to a supporting role in cooking: the background component in soups and stocks or a vehicle for dips. This soup turns that dynamic on its head, showcasing celery as the primary flavor in a velvety, satisfying dish that might just change how you think about this underappreciated vegetable. The Recipe What makes this soup special isn’t some complex technique or rare ingredie...

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TRL vs Other Maturity Models: A Comparative Analysis

April 11, 2025

“So which framework should we use?” a colleague might ask when confronted with the many options for assessing technology maturity. If you’ve ever tried to navigate frameworks like TRLs, CMM, MVP, and Lean Startup, the abundance of acronyms and methodologies can be overwhelming. Let’s explore these four common approaches to determine when each might be most valuable. Four Approaches to Technology M...

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OrdinalEncoder: When Order Matters in Categorical Data

April 10, 2025

In our previous post, we explored one-hot encoding, which creates binary columns for each category. But what if your categorical variable has a natural order, or you need a more compact representation? That’s where ordinal encoding comes in. Today, we’ll dive into the OrdinalEncoder from the category_encoders library - a simple yet powerful tool for handling categorical data. The Concept: Mapping ...

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Measuring Success: EOS Metrics for Technology Organizations

April 9, 2025

This is Part 5 of our Building with EOS series. Check out Part 1 for the fundamentals of EOS, Part 2 for core components, Part 3 for tech implementation, and Part 4 for enhancing product development. “What gets measured gets managed,” they say. But in tech companies, figuring out exactly what to measure can feel like trying to count clouds. Should you track lines of code? User satisfaction? System...

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Makefiles: The Unsung Hero of Python Development

April 8, 2025

I’ve been building Python libraries for years, and there’s one tool that consistently makes my life easier: the humble Makefile. Yes, that decades-old build automation tool from the C world. It might seem old school, but it’s become an essential part of my Python development workflow, and today I want to show you why. What’s a Makefile Anyway? If you’re coming from a pure Python background, you mi...

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Atlanta Creek Restoration: Reviving Waterways for Wildlife & Community

April 7, 2025

As a cyclist who has traversed Atlanta’s urban landscape for years, I’ve had a front-row seat to the remarkable transformation of our city’s creeks. Pedaling along the evolving trails that trace Peachtree Creek, Nancy Creek, Tanyard Creek, and Proctor Creek has given me a unique perspective on these waterways. What once felt like forgotten backwaters, concrete channels I’d grudgingly ride past to ...

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Modern Python Package Publishing: PyGeoHash's New CI/CD Pipeline

April 6, 2025

Gone are the days of manually building wheels and uploading them to PyPI - we now have a fully automated pipeline using GitHub Actions and PyPI’s Trusted Publisher system. Let me walk you through how we set this up, because it’s pretty cool. The Old Way vs The New Way Back in the day (like, last month), releasing PyGeoHash went something like this: Build the source distribution locally Build wheel...

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Crafting Fermented Hot Sauce: A Tangy, Flavorful Adventure

April 5, 2025

Fermented hot sauce has a depth and complexity that far surpasses the vinegar-based varieties on supermarket shelves. Through lacto-fermentation (the same process that creates sauerkraut and kimchi), simple peppers transform into a tangy, funky, and deeply flavorful condiment. The best part? It’s surprisingly easy to make at home with minimal ingredients and equipment. The Recipe This is a basic t...

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Military-Style Decision Making: A Secret for Business Choices

April 4, 2025

Let’s face it - making big decisions is hard. Leaders either get paralyzed by analysis or rush into poorly-conceived actions. The problem? Most of us never learned a systematic approach to decision-making. The Military Gets Decision-Making Right Military leadership has refined decision frameworks for centuries with lives on the line. Their approach isn’t about rigid procedures - it’s about making ...

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PyGeoHash Gets Type Hints: A Journey into Modern Python

April 3, 2025

I’ve been on a bit of a maintenance kick lately with PyGeoHash, and the latest update brings something I’m particularly excited about: comprehensive type hints and a new types module. If you’ve been following along, you know I’ve been working on modernizing PyGeoHash, and this is another big step in that direction. What’s New? The latest PR adds two major features to PyGeoHash: Type Hints Througho...

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