Todd Wolfson - Software Engineer

Startup time investing: Operational processes

2022-07-31T02:00:57.000Z

How I orient around operational processes, when to invest time in them, and when to not

Lessons of a startup engineer

2021-06-24T23:46:37.000Z

Lessons from being a 3x first engineer, former Uber engineer, and working at even more startups

How to build an interactive dancefloor, theoretically

2019-10-24T17:36:37.000Z

Explanation of dancefloor prototype for Cone Down

Cone Down

2019-10-24T07:15:39.000Z

Rundown of construction of a giant upside down ice cream cone art project for Burning Man

Rainbow Bridge

2018-10-12T23:40:46.000Z

Story of how I helped build a giant rainbow at Burning Man

Lantern wall

2018-05-06T05:06:03.000Z

Summary of a lantern wall I recently finished making

Debugging my first circuit

2018-04-08T00:15:14.000Z

My journey debugging and fixing a EL wire circuit

Back in San Francisco

2018-02-18T01:06:49.000Z

Catching up on life events since launching Find Work

Practical applications of the dot product

2017-10-30T06:00:00.000Z

An approachable introduction to the dot product and its uses

Testing the Invisible

2017-03-30T19:07:54.000Z

How to test/prevent elements invisibly blocking other elements

How I Find Work

2017-03-19T05:00:00.000Z

Detailed explanation of my job search, leveraging Find Work

Designing Find Work

2017-03-06T05:00:00.000Z

A behind the scenes look at me building Find Work

Find Work is live!

2017-02-28T05:00:00.000Z

Summary of events leading up to Find Work launch and next steps

Parallel visual testing

2017-01-29T23:57:49.000Z

Comparison of parallelization techniques for visual testing

Utility oriented testing

2016-11-20T00:12:18.000Z

How to make code reusable in Mocha (BDD)

Resumable work

2016-09-13T05:41:03.000Z

Explanation of how to make repositories resumable for yourself and others

Berlin and project updates

2016-06-07T02:15:58.000Z

Information about where to find non-programming related updates.

Timezones for programmers

2016-04-22T06:49:06.000Z

Explanation of how to handle timezones as a programmer.

Design theory: Filled vs hollow icons

2016-03-23T03:24:59.000Z

When redesigning my business card, I discovered a design theory on icons.

The power of tools

2016-02-27T10:00:05.000Z

A reflection on the wonder and power of tools.

Trying something new

2016-02-15T21:38:17.000Z

I have left Underdog.io and am trying something new.

Open source server management

2016-01-21T05:05:56.000Z

Announcement about formalizing and open sourcing my server scripts.

Design for developers

2016-01-02T22:11:53.000Z

An introduction to design, targeted at developers.

Created an AMA

2015-12-28T01:13:37.000Z

I have created an AMA (Ask Me Anything), feel free to ask me questions on it.

Why I am still a software engineer

2015-12-26T03:45:49.000Z

A discussion on the leading factor in my career decisions.

3 stages of learning

2015-12-06T21:39:18.000Z

Theory about the stages we experience when learning a new skill.

Major releases in spritesmith

2015-11-22T22:48:13.000Z

We have updated spritesmith's API and ecosystem. Here's a list of what has changed.

How to stay passionate about open source

2015-11-07T20:35:58.000Z

An overview of how I prevent burnout on open source.

Release: foundry v4

2015-10-17T22:58:41.000Z

An overview of our next iteration of foundry, a modular release library.

Minimizing merge conflicts

2015-08-06T06:31:17.000Z

A guide to a git workflow which minimizes merge conflicts.

Slack's source code is beautiful

2015-07-31T06:18:06.000Z

A salute to the open and hackable source code of Slack's web client.

Learning to forget

2015-06-03T08:21:34.000Z

An introduction to leveraging forgetting as a controlled skill.

Retina sprites are here!

2015-04-21T05:00:00.000Z

spritesmith now supports retina sprites. This is an introduction to using them.

Automate your style

2015-02-06T08:48:44.000Z

Introduction to automatically checking and formatting code style.

Testing with other services

2015-01-11T21:26:10.000Z

Introduction to using eight-track and fixed-server for writing tests with other services.

Moving from PhantomJS to node-webkit

2014-11-23T01:04:40.000Z

Transferring visual regression tests from PhantomJS to node-webkit for better node_modules/ support and more accurate screenshots.

Welcome back

2014-11-06T04:45:20.000Z

I am back from Japan. This is a debreif of my experience and what my plans are.

Taking a break

2014-07-11T01:28:17.000Z

I am taking a 3 month break from everything (e.g. tech, SF, open source) and going to go live in Japan.

Taken for granted: Regression tests

2014-05-29T06:42:55.000Z

There are some "a-ha" moments on the road to becoming a better developer. This article visits one of mine, regression tests.

Release: foundry

2014-03-19T09:11:46.684Z

Release manager for npm, bower, component, PyPI, git tags, and any plugin you can write

Visual regression testing in Travis CI

2014-02-25T09:34:50.000Z

Guide to getting visual regression testing/perceptual diffs set up in Travis CI

Low tech dependency management via grunt tasks

2014-01-19T08:00:00.000Z

An explanation and walkthrough of managing browser dependencies via grunt-zip and grunt-curl.

Release: sublime-plugin-tests

2013-12-26T08:00:00.000Z

Sublime Text plugin testing framework

Optimal lines again

2013-11-26T08:00:00.000Z

Making relative line length limits usable

UNLICENSE all the things

2013-11-25T08:00:00.000Z

Choosing UNLICENSE over other licenses

Release: gifsockets

2013-11-21T08:00:00.000Z

Stream never-ending animated GIFs

How to linkify Markdown headers

2013-11-03T06:50:00.000Z

Add links to your Markdown headers

Website redesigned and refactored

2013-11-02T07:00:00.000Z

Major refresh to website CSS and backend

Life view: What shapes the self

2013-10-16T09:00:00.000Z

Personal viewpoint on how the self is shaped.

Life view: Free Will

2013-10-16T08:00:00.000Z

Personal viewpoint on Free Will.

Release: git sqwish

2013-10-16T07:00:00.000Z

git squash without repetitive conflicts.

Debugging OSX via Sauce Labs

2013-09-24T07:00:00.000Z

Using Sauce Labs to debug software on OSX.

Debugging Travis CI

2013-09-22T07:00:00.000Z

How to debug Travis CI with Vagrant.

Optimal line length theory

2013-09-08T07:00:00.000Z

Experimenting with relative typographic line length limits applied to code.

Readability: Formalized

2013-08-15T08:00:00.000Z

Defining readability through propositions, theorems, and lemmas.

Sexy bash prompt

2013-08-15T07:00:00.000Z

A bash prompt with colors, git statuses, and git branches.

Develop faster

2013-07-27T07:00:00.000Z

Removing the tedium from creating, developing, and publishing repos.

Abandoned project: Kaleidoscope

2013-07-24T07:00:00.000Z

Abandonment of an in-browser solution for a website-at-a-glance webpage and looking forward to perceptual diffs.

Axioms of maintainability

2013-07-11T07:00:00.000Z

Mathematical definitions and reasoning behind why abstracted code is maintainable code.

A better shell

2013-07-06T07:00:00.000Z

Thoughts on taking steps to make a better shell.

Finding the perfect mix of code coverage

2013-07-04T07:00:00.000Z

Code coverage is the percentage of lines of code touched by a test suite. It is a good metric but API coverage is a new step forward.

Bringing vertical rhythm to code

2013-05-27T08:00:00.000Z

An experiment and attempt at understanding my code patterns.

BDD and the Future

2013-05-27T07:00:00.000Z

A presentation overviewing the history of BDD and some of my experiments.

Why I open source

2013-04-22T09:00:00.000Z

An explanation of my morals/ethics and why I devote my free time to open source.

PhantomJS engine for spritesmith

2013-04-22T08:00:00.000Z

A phantomjs engine is now available for spritesmith, making the cross-platform barrier to entry super-low.

Introducing Find++

2013-04-22T07:00:00.000Z

Find++ is an implementation of search utilites from Notepad++ for Sublime Text 2.

Halo - A modular MVC

2013-03-17T07:00:00.000Z

An introduction to Halo: its good, bad, and ugly parts.

Builder - Build chain for your client side

2013-03-11T09:00:00.000Z

Another overdue introduction -- This time to Builder, a framework for automating common client-side steps.

Spritesheets and variables made easy

2013-03-11T07:00:00.000Z

A long overdue introduction to Spritesmith and its components.

Open letter to gruntjs

2013-02-15T08:00:00.000Z

The following letter is about my thoughts and complaints of the recent gruntjs upgrade from 0.3 to 0.4.

Subtle anti-patterns

2012-11-17T08:00:00.000Z

Warning: This article is more opinionated than other ones.

Node Knockout 2012

2012-11-14T08:00:00.000Z

This weekend, 3 coworkers and I, participated in Node Knockout, a 48 hour node.js based hackathon.

JSMin with sourcemaps

2012-10-07T07:00:00.000Z

Introducing JSMin with sourcemaps -- available as a node module and as a grunt plugin.

BDD pipe dreams

2012-09-09T07:00:00.000Z

Below are my most recent pipe dreams for BDD. While the example is based on testing a UI, it is applicable to anything as does BDD.

Why your client-side framework deserves a build chain

2012-07-04T07:00:00.000Z

A screencast on my thoughts on client-side frameworks.

Open sourced website and CSS Off

2012-06-16T07:00:00.000Z

I have open sourced both my website (available here) and my entry for the the CSS Off (available here).

Introducing jojo

2012-06-11T07:00:00.000Z

Introducing jojo, the 10 second blog-engine for hackers (in javascript). Jojo is heavily based on and insprired by toto.

Catch up - CSS Off

2012-03-25T07:00:00.000Z

This is a partial continuation of my previous catch up post. I finally got my CSS Off score; 61/100 points and 66th of 417 place.

Hands-Free Refresh Anywhere - File Watcher et al.