The Software Life

5 Thinking Tools & How We Used them to Make Our COVID School Decision

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown me how convenient my life used to be. Shopping, social gatherings, and school starting for my kids were relatively simple situations to plan for. Now, life decisions are much more difficult. I’ve talked with many people who are struggling with issues related to work, school for kids, and differing expectations […]

Four Tips for Starting Your First Development Job Remotely

I recently found myself in a scary situation: graduating from college and starting a new job in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. As if starting a new job and readjusting from college life to work life weren’t stressful enough, I now had to make that adjustment remotely. Fortunately, I found myself starting at a […]

Why You Should Use Component-Based Design in Unity

Traditionally, inheritance is leveraged within object-oriented programming to reuse code without rewriting it. In Unity, however, it’s better to use a composition-based approach. At a high level, components in Unity are just C# scripts that can be added onto a GameObject; they can be designed and implemented in many ways. Building up game features using […]

How to Run the Unifi Controller via LinuxServer.io’s Docker Image

In late 2019, I decided to upgrade my home network to use Ubiquity’s line of Unifi equipment. Hardwiring several access points to cover my sprawled-out, L-shaped ranch house has gone a long way to improving WiFi coverage. I’m also using a fair amount of the Unifi routing and switching equipment. Today, I’ll explain how I […]

The Benefits of Ruthless Collaborative Critique

Communication is difficult. And we’ve all seen reports that needed better peer review, important yet confusing emails, presentations that could have been much, much better, etc. In my experience, many of these situations could have been avoided if the creator had gotten the honest feedback they were asking for. Unfortunately, many people are afraid to […]