jonmagic.com

Grim is a simple gem for extracting (reaping) a page from a pdf and converting it to an image as well as extract the text from the page as a string.

Want to be a better programmer and a better person?

While in San Francisco on our long overdue honeymoon I learned a valuable lesson from our waiter at the Farallon restaurant.

Ever curious about what the software stack for programs you use looks like?

Are you using Heroku and want to run a program not included in the Heroku environment?

While at RailsConf earlier this year we decided that it would be wise to move Speaker Deck to Heroku and S3, and we finally made it happen. # History Speaker Deck has been my labor of love since June 1st of last year.

Today was an awesome day at work.

Changing the way you live your life sounds weird, and drastic, but I have to admit that I’m really starting to enjoy it.

I’ve been emotionally up and down a lot the past few months and a lot of it has had to do with work.

Recognizing someone’s hard work and thanking them for it is always worth it.

I’ve been planning on building a 55 gallon smoker for almost a year and a half now, but the time and resources just haven’t been there.

Balancing your home and work life can be terribly difficult, especially when you love your job. # Shut It Off Last night my wife and I went on a date, first out to dinner and then to grab a movie to watch at home.

Sharing in the vision and energy of your team is a key factor to success and happiness at work. # Putting Your Dreams On Hold When I started at OrderedList there was one product I was really passionate about because I had done most of the work on it.

Being the new guy in your workplace can be intimidating.

I was contracted to build a fairly simple phototherapy treatment time calculator app for one of our clients recently, and in the process learned A LOT about developing for the iPhone and Android using html/css/javascript.

As you know I’m taking a new job.

How a butler was born.

This summer my wife and I planned a trip to Boston for our best friend’s wedding.

We’re just now back from a great trip to Boston MA, Concord NH, and Milton VT.

I’m predicting the death of free in the next one or two years.

While Asterisk provides a simple way to replace sendmail when sending voicemails, the incoming fax portion of Asterisk is not so easily reconfigured.

Just wanted to post a little something while I’m still here at BarCampGR, an attendee driven conference.

This article is for small business owners, and even better, for their IT guy/gal… If you are looking at upgrading your phone system, and want to upgrade inexpensively but have a clear upgrade path for the future, I’m going to outline how to build what I b…

My cousin and his wife Karen (i.e.

My uncle has been bugging me to help him with writing some software for awhile now, and this last weekend he sent me another email with a new idea, to help him in his business.

# Whiskey Glazed Pork Chops 1/2 cup Jack Daniel’s Tennessee whiskey 1/2 apple cider 2 tablespoons of light brown sugar 1 tablespoon dijon mustard 1/8 teaspoon of cayenne pepper 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract 4 teaspoons cider vinegar 4 bone-in, center-cut p…

If you are using a Rhino Equipment card as your PSTN or digital interface to the telco, and need help setting it up on your Asterisk-based PBX, look no further!

One of my clients wants his employees to be able to use Twitter, but there were some strict requirements involved, and I couldn’t find a Twitter client for Windows that met all of those requirements, so I decided to write my own Twitter client.

What IT guys do when their bored from JonMagic on Vimeo.

Nat and I smoked pork spare ribs over this Memorial weekend, and they were so yummy.

If you are a software developer working on software for small to medium businesses, then there is a 70% chance (my unscientific calculation) that you’ll run into Quickbooks at some point.

There are a few steps in getting the latest Mephisto (0.8.2 at the time of this writing) working on the shared host Site5.

This last weekend I took my wife to Chicago for her birthday, and her best friend flew in from Boston to join us.

When I first got started in computers professionally (while still in highschool) I never dreamed I would be a partner in a company that did business internationally.

I’ve been thinking about using Disqus for awhile now and finally decided to bite the bullet when I realized I just couldn’t get the features I wanted out of Mephisto’s built in comment system.

I know it’s not really spring yet, but I can’t help but get my hopes up.

Saturday I had barely returned home to Indiana (from MI) when Natalie called me.

Wow, I must have more friends this year than ever!

This is a post from my old blog that I’ve put up for solidarity.

Thanks to Daniel for creating a nifty new jquery plugin for me!

Ok, so last weekend I totally botched the brisket.

Two weekends ago Natalie bought us a smoker (for smoking meat you silly).

I’ll probably get in trouble for this, but I decided to release it anyways… I’ve been working on some software for running my company and needed a nice GUI, implemented in HTML/CSS/JS.

Last year I got married.

I’ve had a hard time with this question lately, and it has been coming up time and time again.

My worst nightmare happened last night, and I didn’t even know it until late this morning.

Man, I was just thinking the other day about all the content I’ve lost over the years switching blogging platforms.

I’ve been using laptops for almost 7 years now, which means I haven’t really had the need for a desk in the last 7 years (I travel a lot for my job).

Ok, I broke down and purchased the next couple of upgrades for my gaming PC… The first is actually one I linked to on the last gaming pc rig post, the PNY Geforce 9600 GT with 512mb… The second is this little puppy, so I don’t run out of juice 😃 I’ll post…

Ok, so that’s not quite true, I did play some Counter-Strike and stuff last year, but last night and today I really got back into gaming.