Brian Cottingham (spiffytech)

Sort by Newest

Life pro tip: Google Maps thinks restaurant reviews from years ago are the "most relevant" reviews. Things change. Restaurants decline, get new owners, etc. Sorting by Newest has proven much more informative for me.

LLMs: The standard is not perfection

Right now, LLMs are shaking up the way we live life and access information. There's a lot of debate around how useful they can be if they'll lie to you. Everything lies to you When I get info from an LLM, I affectionately tell folks "

A better sentiment rating scale

A rating system for the 21st century for board games, restaurants, and movies

How to waterproof a level 1 EV charging cord

I charge my EV at home, but for ✨reasons✨ I use a level 1 charger that's outdoors and exposed to the elements. There are quite a few waterproof chargers, all of which require a plug adapter that's not waterproof. (Not that any of the product listings

How NOT to connect a well pump to an IBC tote

My brother & his partner are up near Asheville, caught in the aftereffects of hurricane Helene. Most pressing for them is that Helene destroyed most of the city's water infrastructure, and it'll be weeks before even non-potable water starts flowing in most parts of the city.

How many SIMs can my Pixel 8 have?

I conduct ✨science✨ to see if my Pixel 8 can be subscribed to 3 cell plans at once

I tried out the Vision Pro

This morning I went down to the Apple store at opening so I could do a demo. I was 50/50 on whether it'd be just me, or a line around the block. An hour ahead of opening there was one other guy there. At quarter-til, when they

🫴🦋 Is this an emoji?

ReadStuffLater uses emojis to tag content †. It's simple, it's fun, and it affords basic content organization without encouraging users to spiral into reinvent-Dewey-Decimal territory. There's just one problem: data validation. When the client tells my server to tag a record, how can the server

Audit log ALL the things?

My app ReadStuffLater fundamentally revolves around scraping web pages with the Microlink API. Sometimes that goes wrong: the target web page has a problem. Or Microlink does. Or the target throws up a captcha or blocks data center IPs or something. I thought I'd done an alright job

A Framework laptop success story

I was recently on my way out the door when I knocked over a glass of water, spilling it across my Framework laptop. I panicked and tried to dab it up, but saw that water had seeped under the keyboard and was leaking out the bottom of the laptop. The

Preserve an element's position in the viewport after a layout shift

My app includes content areas that expand and collapse. A lot like accordions, except they take up the whole page and can be huge. When you open one, whatever's open gets closed, and that makes whatever you just clicked on jump around as the previous content area stops

I used a Monte Carlo simulation to pick my health insurance plan

We have to pick a new health insurance plan this month, and we've had a tough time making the decision. You can't just add up what you'll spend - what each thing costs depends on how much you've already spent! And some