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i spin bits for fun and profit; watch out for my megabyte

[kevinowocki-blog]

As a Software Engineer, I want to get rid of lower back pain, so I can focus on what else in my life is important.

As a Software Engineer, I want to get rid of lower back pain, so I can focus on what else in my life is important.

Since 2013, I’ve had problems with lower back pain.  As a software engineer, and not one with great posture, I spend 6 – 10 hours per day at a desk slinging code, and it’s begun to take it’s toll on my mood & wellbeing.  Over the summer of 2016, I decided I’m not doing myself any favors by ignoring the problem and that living with this pain was affecting my quality of life. I decided to take a…

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Snapchat slow? Tips to fix slow Snapchat load times

Snapchat slow? Tips to fix slow Snapchat load times

For the last several years, Snapchat has been a rising star on the mobile application scene.  Even though it is now one of the top iPhone apps in the world, it can still be slow for some users.

The problem might be that your phone’s data connection is slow ….

Your data connection may be the problem.   Try:

Switching to a wifi connection that’s working for other computers.

Do an iPhone speed test—…

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Photography Portfolio

I migrated my photography portfolio from wordpress to photoshelter.  I’ve been shooting enough recently, that it was time to move to some pro-level tools.  Check it out at http://photography.owocki.com/ or by clicking on the  gratuitously large screenshot below:

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StartupCTO.io A few months ago, I wrote about a podcast I started, called Exec Podcast -- We are a podcast capturing conversations about startup engineering leadership.  

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Side Project: Photo Workflow Tools

Side Project: Photo Workflow Tools

I started a side project to automate paro automate (or gracefully degrade into just being more efficient) my photography batch post-processing process.

One of the first elements of my photography workflow is to select which photos are worth post-process. To do so, I need to select which of my set of photos to promote to a ‘best’ subset. This is what it looked like before:

This is what it looks…

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`du` for AWS S3

`du` for AWS S3

I built and open sourced a tool called s3_disk_util last week.  It’s meant to help cleanup disk space on your AWS bucket.  Its very similar to the linux command `du`, but for s3.

Here’s how it works: kevinowocki@local /Users/kevinowocki/Desktop/s3_disk_utils~ % python3 du.py --depth=1 --bucket=BUCKETNAME BUCKETNAME (Cloudwatch bucket size estimate: 22.7GiB) / : 22.7GiB - DIR1/ : 22.6GiB -…

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VR Space Mini Golf

VR Space Mini Golf

Had a VR Hackathon today with some friends who have an HTC Vive.  We built a VR Physics Puzzle Game. It’s pretty incredible what you can do with Unity and SteamVR in a day.

Demo below:

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Slack EmojiBot

Couldn’t sleep last night, so I started futzing with an experiment I’ve been noodling on.  It’s called Slack EmojiBot and I built it last night.

It’s a bot that adds custom emojis your slack team; inline in Slack. 🤔👌 No more putzing around in your web browser.

Supports all of the below inline in slack. 👇

Searching google images. 📷

Uploading images to slack’s (IMHO hard to find) emoji admin. 🚀

Her…

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Boulder Startup Week 2016

Boulder Startup Week 2016

Boulder Startup Week wrapped up a couple weeks ago. Boy, what a week! These were some of my favorite events.

How to CTO

The format of this event was 3-4 local CTOs interviewed by Miles Matthias. It was great to hear what some of the up & coming engineering leaders in Boulder are doing.  Audio of these talks will be posted on Exec Podcast.

Building Virtual Reality

From Boulder Startup Week’s…

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Where is the fire around this fire?

Where is the fire around this fire?

A few years ago, I was at a small bluegrass music festival in the mountains of Colorado.  Nestled in a ridge next to a winding river, you could see a square mile of tents during the day, and you could see the milky way after the sun went down.  Late at night, after the music had ended, the festival attendees would circle around campfires near their tents for warmth.

Our camp was visible on a…

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Social Anxiety

Today is my brothers 27th birthday.  Or, it would have been, if he had not committed suicide in December 2014.

My brother suffered from unamangeable anxiety & depression.  I’m remembering his life, his illness, and his death, as I read the Spring 2016 edition of Tricycle magazine.

Social anxiety comes from being focused on “how we are doing” in this world.  We are constantly judging our own…

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Coding Music 2016

I love music, I love coding and I love coding to music.   To stay in flow mode, I’ve found that coding music must:

Not have lyrics in it.  Something about lyrical music interferes with my ability to reason algorithmically.

Not be overpowering.  I haven’t found that I’m able to focus when listening to metal or hard rock.

Some assorted coding favorites from this year:  (To see last years favorites,

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Oculus Rift cv1

At CES this year, I stumbled into getting an Oculus Rift cv1 demo.  I had heard that the quickest way to turn a VR skeptic into a VR believer is a demo.  Turns out I was no different.

The Demo

Two things that carried the demo:

Presence– The device really tricks your brain into thinking you are in the virtual environment.  I think that this is a combination of the fluid movement when turning your…

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Exec Podcast

About a year ago, my friend Miles and I started organizing informal monthly lunches for startup engineering leaders in Boulder (contact me if you’re not on the list).

I’m past the point in my career where there’s much upside to showing up to a random networking happy hour, and have found a informal lunch with high caliber people to be a nice alternative.  These lunches have evolved into a fertile…

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Future of Tech track @ Boulder Startup Week 2016 I am running the future of tech track at Boulder Startup Week 2016 (May 16-20th).  Topics include VR/AR, cryptocurrency, machine learning, chatops, advanced photography, etc.  The schedule was just posted.  I hope to see you there!

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Practical Mindhacking

Since I was a teenager, I’ve been interested in learning how things work.  For years, that meant learning how computers worked.  When I did my first meditation retreat, I started to take that intellectual curiosity and turn it towards my mind.  Basically the pursuit of an ever more lucid understanding of the following questions:

Why do I think the things I do?

Why do I feel the things I do?

With…

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Why Open Source a High Frequency Trader?

Why Open Source a High Frequency Trader?

I built a cryptocurrency trading framework in January, and open sourced it as ‘pytrader’ 2 weeks ago.  Among the wave of interest, there were a handful of cynics:

npx writes, on HN:

I can’t imagine why anyone would actually want to release a profitable trader. Isn’t this kind of a tautologically dumb thing to do? .. I just can’t see any motivation to make it profitable and then issue a pull…

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