Using Mailgun for a Free Custom Domain Email Address
I’ve been using Gmail for my primary email address for over 13 years. I should thank my sister for making me use my name and not my now embarrassing AIM username. Here’s a look at the welcome email back in 2005. Gmail wasn’t even a year old yet. Gmail has served me well since then, but mostly for fun (and partly because of vanity), I recently set up an email address on my own domain. I ended up go...

Splurge Stopper
Amazon recently ran a developer challenge to build Alexa skills. I only found out about the challenge a few days before it ended, so I decided to build something very small in scope. The theme was life hacks, and one of my personal life hacks for not spending money on things I don’t need or really want is to think about how much money I could have later if I invest it instead. There are caveats to...

Philanthropy for All
A child is drowning in a pond. You could try to save the child, but your clothes will get dirty in the process. Should you do it anyway? This question comes from a philosophy paper called Famine, Affluence, and Morality by Peter Singer. Most people would probably answer with an enthusiastic yes, deciding that the life of the child outweighs the damage to the clothes. Singer encourages us to think...

Great Writing
I learned in elementary school that an essay should have five paragraphs: an introduction, a three paragraph body, and a conclusion that rephrases the introduction. I always struggled to rewrite my introductions with different words. It didn’t occur to me as a kid that it was hard because I was writing fluff. For a long time, I learned rules and guidelines for writing without really thinking for m...

Building Dynamic Firefox Themes
Mozilla is running a contest called the Firefox Quantum Extensions Challenge for building extensions that take advantage of new capabilities in WebExtension APIs. One of the categories is “Best Dynamic Theme.” I love adding color to my setup, so I was pretty motivated to participate. I ended up creating three extensions. Chromatastic Chromatastic (source code) continuously cycles through colors us...