Zach's photo with a mustache on a mountain

Hello World!

I don't really advertise the existence of this blog, nor do I have anyone visiting it, and as such, I have not had much motivation to keep the quality very high.

Here be dragons. Expect to see incomplete work, un-editted prose, and half-baked ideas below.

That said, I've been putting more work into it lately, and it may yet become something that I am proud of. Stay tuned!

May 30, 2020 Songwriting: C maj (1)

I've been taking some guitar lessons. Finally trying to learn some stuff like the circle of fifths. My homework this week was to write some chord progressions in C major. This is the first one that sorta feels like it could be a song. It's a little…

  • #music
  • #guitar
  • #acoustic
  • #songwriting
  • #cmaj

November 05, 2019 Exploring Codementor

Last weekend I started using a site called Codementor. OK, what is it? Codementor is a platform which allows people to hire (or be hired) "mentors". There are a few classes of job: 1:1 live help Freelance job Long-term help Code review As far as I…

  • #programming
  • #mentorship

November 02, 2019 On Algorithm Practice

What are algorithms From Wikipedia: In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm is a sequence of instructions, typically to solve a class of problems or perform a computation. Algorithms are unambiguous specifications for performing calculation…

  • #programming
  • #algorithms

October 22, 2019 Data Driven Tests

I think a lot about testing and testing patterns. Testing complex code can sometimes seem like an exercise in futility. It takes hours setting up different frameworks and tools, and hours again creating dummies and mocks and fakes. And at the end…

  • #programming
  • #javascript
  • #testing

October 21, 2019 Ship it! Finally using this site for zach.lysobey.com

It's finally happened. After over a year of lazily working on this website, I've replaced the old WordPress blog I had at http://zach.lysobey.com. It was previously only available via a github.io github pages URL. I've archived the old site at http…

  • #programming
  • #github
  • #deployment
  • #hosting
  • #dns

October 17, 2019 I made my own JS starter template project

I've been having a lot of fun creating a new Template repository in GitHub. I'm calling it . The goal is to have a project that I can copy or fork and eliminate a lot of the boilerplate-creating effort at the inception of new projects. Challenges The…

  • #programming
  • #javascript
  • #github

September 19, 2019 Giving this site a small facelift

Today I spent a little time to give this site a little facelift. Most importantly I restructured the site so that all my posts show up at the home page, and removed the blog page. I also prettied it up a bit. The commits: (display) add shadow to my…

  • #programming
  • #blog

August 30, 2019 Life as an unemployed software developer

I left my job at AlphaPoint, and have been unemployed for most of August. There are more than one or two reasons for this move, and some nuance which I won't be touching on here (ask me if you're really curious). This post is to shed some light on…

  • #programming
  • #personal
  • #blog

August 29, 2019 Having some fun with git commit hashes

I've been brewing a fun idea for a while, and think its time to get a start. Its around git commit hashes and history. I think this idea is best illustrated with an example. Currently, if I look at my git history for this project using it looks…

  • #programming
  • #git
  • #cryptography

July 22, 2019 A fun little CLI utility for writing markdown notes

I just made a fun command-line function to easily create markdown notes from the command line. It creates a new file with a name like , apends a timestamp to it, and opens it in a text editor. The editor defaults to but can also be (for vscode), or…

  • #programming
  • #shell
  • #cli
  • #markdown

July 07, 2019 Building a Blockstack App (part 2)

Make sure to read Part one of this project / blog post first. It's been a couple weeks since I started this project, and haven't really gone back to it since. But here I am! Goals Last time, I went through half of the "Zero to DApp" blockstack…

  • #programming
  • #blockchain
  • #blockstack

June 20, 2019 Building a Blockstack App

Long time no see, Blog. I had a short day at work today (sorta sick), but want to do some OSS stuff. Also this is maybe gonna be my first real project on a new personal computer. I got a 13" MacBook pro, the less-expensive version, no fancy touchbar…

  • #programming
  • #blockchain
  • #blockstack

January 21, 2019 Daily improv: guitar

Another "daily" short improv recording

  • #music
  • #guitar
  • #acoustic
  • #improvisation

January 21, 2019 Leveraging a Contract's ABI in truffle/solidity tests

Recently I've been writing a lot of solidity code for "smart contracts" on the Ethereum blockchain. Specifically using the Truffle framework In this blog post I'm going to talk a bit about writing automated tests for these contracts. I should start…

  • #programming
  • #blockchain
  • #ethereum
  • #testing
  • #solidity
  • #truffle

July 26, 2018 Daily improv: guitar

Another "daily" short improv recording

  • #music
  • #guitar
  • #acoustic
  • #improvisation

July 25, 2018 Cow Logging and Acoustic Metal

Today (the 24th really), I worked from home. And I created some stuff after work! I did my daily YouTube post (some acoustic guitar metal lol) And then I wrote a really odd JavaScript npm module: It's essentially a logger function, but instead of…

  • #programming
  • #shell

July 25, 2018 Daily improv: bass

Another "daily" short improv recording

  • #music
  • #bass
  • #improvisation

July 24, 2018 Code Samples

I can now syntax highlight my code samples in MarkDown blogposts via gatsby-remark-prismjs! PrismJS comes with a bunch of themes out of the box. And there are even more out there. At the time of writing, I am using , but that's subject to change…

  • #programming
  • #gatsby

July 24, 2018 Daily improv: guitar

Another "daily" short improv recording

  • #music
  • #guitar
  • #acoustic
  • #improvisation

July 23, 2018 Daily improv: bass

Another "daily" short improv recording

  • #music
  • #bass
  • #improvisation

July 22, 2018 Daily improv: guitar

Another "daily" short improv recording

  • #music
  • #guitar
  • #acoustic
  • #improvisation

July 21, 2018 Hello World!

This is my first post, just trying out this cool plugin via this tutorial: https://www.gatsbyjs.org/blog/2017-07-19-creating-a-blog-with-gatsby/

  • #programming

July 21, 2018 Daily improv: guitar

Another "daily" short improv recording

  • #music
  • #guitar
  • #acoustic
  • #improvisation

July 17, 2018 Daily improv: bass

Another "daily" short improv recording

  • #music
  • #bass
  • #improvisation

July 15, 2018 Daily improv: bass

Another "daily" short improv recording

  • #music
  • #bass
  • #improvisation

July 14, 2018 Daily improv: guitar

Another "daily" short improv recording This one is actually not so much improv as a song (fragment) I've been messing around for a long time. Working title: "Changes"

  • #music
  • #guitar
  • #acoustic
  • #improvisation

May 01, 2016 Books for a JavaScript developer

NOTE: originally hosted at http://zach.lysobey.com/books-for-a-javascript-developer You Don’t Know JS (book series) Free online: https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&field-keywords=You%20Don%27t%20Know…

  • #javascript
  • #books
  • #programming