Category: Uncategorized

Last year, I posted an overview of the tools that Silverpine uses, and I thought it might be interesting to revisit our toolset and compare with where we are versus where we were. Many of the tools continue to be the same, but there are a few changes. Read on for the details!

Communication Tools

• Slack

Without a doubt, Slack is the single most valuable tool for us as a distributed company. One thing that has changed over the past year, however, is that almost all of our clients have now adopted Slack as well. This has been a great improvement as we can now utilize shared channels between workspaces which greatly reduces clutter and overhead. This has allowed us to stay mostly within the Silverpine Slack workspace which makes everything simpler and cleaner in terms of organization and tracking conversations both internal, and external. If you’re new to Slack, or have yet to try it out, I have a few posts here and here to help you get going.

• Zoom

Looking back to where we were last year, it’s clear that teleconferencing technology and tools have rapidly improved. This is one of the few silver linings of Covid. I’ve never held video conferencing software in very high regard, but I can definitely say that the tools have gone from incredibly awful to “ok”. And to that end, Zoom has definitely moved the quality/easy of use bar further and faster than the competitors. We will see if Zoom can keep the crown in the coming year as Teams and other platforms try to leapfrog it. For now, however, Zoom is the best, easiest to use tool for video conferencing for our business.

• Dropbox Pro

Last year, we standardized on Dropbox Pro for file sharing and quite honestly, it’s been so seamless to our workflows that I sometimes forget about it. I’m still surprised that Apple or Google haven’t acquired Dropbox yet, but I have no complaints. It just works.

• Google Workspace

We use Gmail for our email, and thereby get all of Google Workspace (formerly known as G Suite). I said before that I’m not even sure where I would look to replace the email side of the tools, and that still applies. This past year, however, we have also started using more of the other Workspace tools (Sheets, Docs, etc) but we definitely haven’t standardized. Most of the tools are convenient simply because they are ever-present, but if you need to create a document with a significant amount of formatting, you’ll want to look elsewhere.

Development Tools

• GitHub

We have looked at a few alternatives to Github (like BitBucket) but at this point, GitHub is pretty much the de facto standard for source control systems. I will admit that I was a little nervous when Microsoft acquired them, but quite frankly, their service has improved to the point that we now use them for both source control and for our automated build system through GitHub Actions. Their cost model is also very helpful to us now that it’s seat based rather than project based.

• Tower

The choice of a git tool can be fairly controversial, and we will never mandate a particular app/tool, but we have found that, overall, Tower is a very good, stable, and constantly improving product. They have versions for both Mac and Windows, and their licensing model makes it easy for us to provide seats to any of our engineers that want to use it. I wouldn’t say that it’s a perfect piece of software, but it’s definitely better than using the command line. We’re not barbarians!

• MantisHub

Of all the tools on this list, MantisHub is the one that I’m the least confident that we will still be using a year from now. MantisHub is a fairly inexpensive, hosted, bug tracking system that’s based on the open source Mantis platform. It has replaced Lighthouse which we previously used. We made the decision to replace Lighthouse because it has fallen into abandonware status, and lately hasn’t been able to provide the workflow that we need. I wouldn’t say that I love MantisHub, but it’s not as heavy as Jira and definitely less expensive. We are continually looking to improve our bug tracking system so if you have one that you like, I’d love to hear about it.

Design Tools

• Sketch

Sketch has owned the “non-Photoshop” tool space for years, and it remains the default/standard for our designers. Sketch is a familiar, comfortable, design tool that does what it needs to do. The licensing and cost model work amazingly well for an agency and while I wish that their administrative tools were easier to use when managing seats, it’s not something we have to do often. While we were still a Sketch shop this past year, it’s possible that the winds of change are blowing. We’ve been having internal conversations recently about switching to Figma which has quickly emerged as the cool, new kid on the block. I’ve used Figma a bit and its collaboration tools blow Sketch out of the water (at least at the time of this writing.)

• Zeplin

I believe I overlooked our use of Zeplin in my previous tool list. That is a fairly significant oversight on my part! We’ve been using Zeplin for years now and I don’t see that changing any time soon. Zeplin is a very robust tool that engineers and designers can use to easily export image assets out of Sketch (or Figma) and import directly into project workspaces. Zeplin provides that “last mile” in the asset pipeline and supports exporting for web, iOS or Android, each of which have differing format requirements. We love Zeplin!

• InVision

A critical part of our development process with clients is our prototyping phase. We work extensively with them to help them understand how the UI that we are designing will translate into UX. Particularly when working on mobile platforms, the interface really needs to “feel” right, and InVision is the prototyping tool that we utilize.

Operational/Finance Tools

• Quickbooks

Like nearly every other small business in the U.S. we use Quickbooks to manage our finances. I don’t have a lot of good things to say other than the fact that our CPA prefers us to use Quickbooks.

• Squarespace

Silverpine’s web content is fairly static, and in general our web traffic is very low. I think it’s mostly visited by people who are curious about who we are in the hopes of potentially partnering with us on a project. To that end, we don’t really need much in terms of web hosting, so we use Squarespace. One of the best things I can say about Squarespace is that it is easy to get a decent looking web page up, quickly. They have a plethora of templates and basic customization is very easy. If you start wanting to get fancy, though, it gets incredibly clunky, quickly. It’s also slightly expensive in comparison to some of its competitors. That being said, we’ve been using it for years now without too many complaints.

• Harvest

One new addition/change to our set of tools is that this past year we dropped Blinksale and replaced it with Harvest for invoicing clients. A lot of people use Harvest for time tracking, but it also has a good set of invoicing tools and reports. Both Blinksale and Harvest are good tools and are fairly similar in terms of cost, but Blinksale seems to cater its tools more towards freelancers and less towards agencies. Harvest seems to do a better job of catering to both groups, and it’s made our invoicing processes much easier this past year.

• Gusto

People like to get paid. That seems to be a nearly universal truth, and for us, Gusto is how that happens. We’ve been using Gusto for quite a while now and they have done a fantastic job at continuing to roll out new features and products that really complement their core offering, which is payroll. We use Gusto for both employees and contractors, and I haven’t heard a single issue about it. Gusto does a really good job at tracking taxes and tax reporting for federal, state and most local requirements and many times they will pro-actively alert us about upcoming changes. On top of that, their customer service is very responsive so when we do have questions about things, they get back to us quickly with real answers. Gusto is fantastic.

We received notification today that our trademark on “Silverpine” was registered with the USPTO. We first filed for application back in August, so it’s been a long time coming. While it’s certainly not critical to our business operations, it’s nice to have protection around our brand. I’ll have to get used to writing Silverpine® from now on though.

Disclaimer:
This post comes from my old blog back in 2004. I’m reposting it here so that I don’t lose the content. The source was hand-written HTML so the formatting probably appears a bit off.

About seven years ago I wrote some code to do Mu-Law and A-Law compression. About six years ago, I decided to publish an article along with the source code for it. You can find it here. Anyway, the other day I received an email from someone who had taken it and modified it for what he was doing. In doing so, he found a piece of misinformation that has been in my article since I originally published it. Not a big deal, and I intend to rectify the issue. However, as we chatted over email, I asked him what he was using Mu-Law/A-Law compression for. Here is a clip from our email:

> So if you don’t mind me asking, what are you working on that has 13 bit

> unsigned audio input?

Sure. I am designing a system that monitors lots of radio stations to capture and

detect Emergency Alert System activations – those ugly tones and occasional

voice messages you hear on the radio. The system has some rather incredible

shortcomings for a critical system in 2005. When the emergency management

office triggers an alert they have no way of knowing whether or not radio stations

actually broadcast the alert. Sometimes the system fails – too often. So our

system listens to the stations and sends a report back to Emergency HQ. In

most cases an exception report that shows which stations did not properly

send out the alert. So if the dam is breaking or the nuke is going critical they

can try again, use the phone, send a helicopter or something.

Whoa. Code that I originally wrote to compress audio in children’s games is now being used to help monitor Emergency situations. Talk about your unintended consequences!

-Jon

Disclaimer:
This post comes from my old blog back in 2004. I’m reposting it here so that I don’t lose the content. The source was hand-written HTML so the formatting probably appears a bit off.

#ifndef HARDWARE_EXCEPTION
#define HARDWARE_EXCEPTION 1


enum HWExceptionType
{
	eIllegalMemoryAccess	= EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION,
	eUnexpectedBreakpoint 	= EXCEPTION_BREAKPOINT,
	eDataTypeMisalignment 	= EXCEPTION_DATATYPE_MISALIGNMENT,
	eSingleStepInstruction 	= EXCEPTION_SINGLE_STEP,
	eArrayBoundsExceeded	= EXCEPTION_ARRAY_BOUNDS_EXCEEDED,
	eDenormalFloat 		= EXCEPTION_FLT_DENORMAL_OPERAND,
	eFloatDivideByZero 	= EXCEPTION_FLT_DIVIDE_BY_ZERO,
	eFloatInexactResult	= EXCEPTION_FLT_INEXACT_RESULT,
	eFloatInvalidOperation 	= EXCEPTION_FLT_INVALID_OPERATION,
	eFloatOverflow 		= EXCEPTION_FLT_OVERFLOW,
	eFloatStackCorrupted 	= EXCEPTION_FLT_STACK_CHECK,
	eFloatUnderflow 	= EXCEPTION_FLT_UNDERFLOW,
	eIntDivideByZero 	= EXCEPTION_INT_DIVIDE_BY_ZERO,
	eIntOverflow 		= EXCEPTION_INT_OVERFLOW,
	ePrivelegedInstruction 	= EXCEPTION_PRIV_INSTRUCTION,
	eUncontinuableException = EXCEPTION_NONCONTINUABLE_EXCEPTION
};


class HWException
{
     public:
          HWException(HWExceptionType aType,
                      EXCEPTION_POINTERS* pExp):
	       itsCategory(aType),
	       itsPointers(pExp),
	       itsLocation(pExp->ExceptionRecord->ExceptionAddress)
          {
	  }

	  HWExceptionType     GetCategory()  const {return itsCategory;}
	  DWORD		      GetLocation()  const {return itsLocation;}
	  EXCEPTION_POINTERS* GetSysPointer()const {return itsPointers;}

     protected:
          HWExceptionType	itsCategory;
	  DWORD			itsLocation;
	  EXCEPTION_POINTERS*	itsPointers;
};


static void HWTranslateException(unsigned int u, 
                                 EXCEPTION_POINTERS* pExp)
{
	throw HWException((HWExceptionType)u,pExp);
}

#endif



///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Example usage:
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

#include "windows.h"
#include "HWException.h"


int main()
{
	//Note, setting the exception translator must be done 
	//on a per thread basis.
	_set_se_translator(HWTranslateException);

	try {
		//This will cause an access violation
		char* ptr = NULL;
		*ptr = 5; 	
	}
	catch (HWException& e)
	{
		//We can now know both the type and the
		//memory location of the instruction that
		//caused the exception.  Cool!

		HWExceptionType exceptionType = e.GetCategory();
		DWORD address = e.GetLocation();
	}
	catch (...)
	{
		//If we got here, then it was some other kind
		//of C++ exception...
	}

	return 0;
}

Disclaimer:
This post comes from my old blog back in 2004. I’m reposting it here so that I don’t lose the content. The source was hand-written HTML so the formatting probably appears a bit off.

CPU Detection Code

#ifndef MCI_CONTROL
#define MCI_CONTROL 1

class MCIControl
{
     public:
          MCIControl();
          ~MCIControl();

          int     GetNumberOfTracks();
          void    Resume();
          void    Pause();
          void    Play();
          void    Stop();
          void    OpenDoor();
          void    CloseDoor();

          void    Goto(int track,int minute, int second);
		
          int     GetCurrentTrack();
          int     GetCurrentMinute();
          int     GetCurrentSecond();

     protected:
          void    Init();
          void    SetTimeFormat();
          void    GetPosition(BYTE* track,BYTE* min,BYTE* sec);

     private:
          MCIDEVICEID   itsMCIDevice;
};

#endif

Recently, I heard a fascinating interview with Larry Krasner, the DA for Philadelphia. It really challenged some of my thoughts on incarceration and inspired me to do a little research, locally. Here are some interesting statistics that I found for Oregon:

• 2017-2019 Dept of Corrections Budget: $1.76B ($880m annually) Source
• Average Daily Prison Population: 14,835 Source
• Average cost per inmate: $59,319 ($880m / 14,835)

So who is in our prison system? Here are some other things I found: Source

• White 74.5% (vs 76.4% of normal state population)
• Hispanic 12.1% (vs 12.8% of normal state population)
• Black 9% (vs 2.1% of normal state population)
• 62.7% are over the age of 30
• Male 81%
• Female 19%

Top 5 incarceration rates by county: Source

1. Sherman County, 2.83 / 1000
2. Marion County, 2.14 / 1000
3. Jefferson County, 1.96 / 1000
4. Linn County, 1.89 / 1000
5. Clatsop County, 1.86 / 1000

And what did they do to get there? Source

1. Drugs 20%
2. Assault 13.4%
3. Other 12.6%
4. Theft 9.3%
5. Burglary 8.9%

This also made me curious relative to education in Oregon. Here are a few statistics I found:

• Average Teacher Salary: $59,204 Source
• Total Number of Teachers: 22,357 Source
• Median Class Size: 25 Source

So here are some of my random thoughts after doing this research:

• It’s fascinating that every incarcerated inmate almost exactly equals a full time teacher. (These costs don’t even include local and municipal jail costs.)
• African American Oregonians are clearly incarcerated at a much higher rate than either caucasian or hispanic Oregonians.
• It’s ALARMING that 12.6% of the prison population is incarcerated for offenses labeled as “other”. Take a look at the source for the incarceration cause breakdown and you can see how granular it gets which makes the “other” classification that much more troublesome. (Forgery weighs in at a whopping 0.4%)
• The likelihood of incarceration has nothing to do with the population density that you live in. Only one of the top 5 counties in the per capita list would be considered urban.

Does any of this mean anything? I’m not sure. I’ll definitely be thinking about it for a while. In the alarmist era we currently find ourselves in, I find it helpful to have some actual data behind to fall back on. As such, I’ve included links to all of my sources in case anyone else feels so inspired to do some data spelunking. If you do, please share what you find!

Back in March, I was inspired by Manton’s Austin coffee quest and decided to try my own “30 Days of Coffee.” Starting on April 1 and continuing for 30 straight days, I would experience a new cafe or coffee shop that I had never visited before. The rules I set for myself were fairly simple:

1. I must visit a coffee shop each day for 30 days.
2. I can not have had coffee there previously.
3. The coffee shop must reside within the boundaries of N/NE Portland. (I did this so that I could somewhat mimic Manton’s challenge given the plethora of coffee shops in Portland vs. Austin.)
4. In order to count as a “coffee shop” it must serve lattes (my drink of choice)

I have now completed my 30 days, and I have to tell you that despite sounding easy, it’s actually quite difficult to do ANYTHING for 30 days straight. There were more than a few times that Tiffany had to remind me that I hadn’t made my daily trip (especially difficult since most non-chain coffee shops close at 4 p.m.)

Along the way, I documented each visit on my microblog which you can find here. I also snapped a picture of each location that hopefully gave a small glimpse into the ambiance of each.

This entire endeavor was an experiment in a number of areas, and I can honestly say that I learned a little bit about myself along the way. As I mentioned, I was microblogging the adventure and somehow ended up having a number of people who followed along. A few have even asked for a summary/recommendation list, to which I am more than happy to oblige.

The following is my list of coffee shops that I would gladly return to again. The rankings are relative to me, which means that it’s based on a blend of coffee quality, ambiance, location and overall comfort (including my ability to work remotely). This is simply a ranked list out of the 30 that I visited, not my overall list for Portland. In fact, I think only one of these would crack my Portland top 10 list.

So, with all of these caveats out of the way, here is my ordered list of places that I would gladly revisit:

1. Blend Coffee – I cannot say enough good things about this place. From the cleanliness to the thoughtfulness of the seating to the ridiculous number of power outlets, everything about this place is well thought out. I only wish it was closer to my home. That being said, this is the only coffee shop on my list that I would go out of my way to visit. If you haven’t been here, I absolutely recommend a visit.
2. Bassotto – This place was an absolute gem of a find because it’s actually a fantastic coffee shop disguised as a gelateria. It also doesn’t hurt that it’s located next door to the amazing Tamale Boy, but I think I’d come back even if it was located elsewhere. Finding Bassotto was one of the reasons that I did this challenge. It allowed me to find an awesome place that I normally wouldn’t have tried on my own.
3. Prince Coffee – This place is SMALL. It’s also very new and in the beautiful Kenton neighborhood. I will revisit this place if for nothing else than their homemade stroopwafels.
4. Miss Zumstein – This location is very comfortable, but their pastries are wonderful. The staff is friendly, and they have great coffee, but man are those pastries good.
5. Locale Coffee – This is another of the new-wave Portland coffee shops located in the Mississippi neighborhood. I would definitely go back to it again, but there’s nothing particularly special about it. If you’re looking for a decent place to meet someone for coffee and you need to be near Mississippi, you can’t really go wrong here.
6. Saint Simon – This is yet another stereotypical new-wave Portland coffee shop. It has good coffee, is nice inside, has a good location, but is a little too “trendy” for my taste. Think I’m exaggerating? Everything from the moose head on the wall to the forced industrial look to the “wood block” seating just screams Portlandia. I’d definitely take coffee from here again, but I probably wouldn’t stay for long.
7. Seven Virtues – I didn’t want to like Seven Virtues because I find the entire Zipper building to be somewhat pretentious and annoying, but I have to admit that it was pretty nice inside and they had good coffee to boot. I’ve heard from at least one person that they went here right after it opened and were very unhappy with their experience. Perhaps they had some initial issues getting going?
8. Posie’s Cafe – I’m not sure if I liked Posie’s based on its own merits or because it’s located in the Kenton neighborhood. Regardless, I found it to be very charming and a nice place to pop into if you’re looking for a quick caffeine pick me up. They had a lot of seating and had some pretty good looking pastries as well.

And that is it. Out of 30, I would revisit 8. Of the 8, only one of them would crack my top Portland Coffee Shops list. (I’ll try to put that together soon as well.)

As I mentioned, the challenge was more difficult than I expected given how often I go to coffee. In fact, I’ve started thinking differently about 30 day challenges in general and I have a few more I might try in the next few months. If you’d like to see the entire list of 30, I’ve included it below. You can also find my posts on Twitter or Facebook with the hashtag #pdxcoffeehunt.

1. Cathedral Coffee – 7530 N Willamette Blvd
2. TwentySix Cafe – NE 7th Ave
3. Miss Zumstein – 5027 NE 42nd Ave.
4. Saint Simon Coffee – 2005 NE Broadway
5. Tiny’s Coffee – 2031 NE Martin Luther King Jr Blvd
6. Fillmore Coffee – 7201 NE Glisan St
7. Prince Coffee – 2030 N Willis Blvd
8. Bison Coffee House – 3941 NE Cully Blvd
9. Seven Virtues – 2705 NE Sandy Blvd
10. Batter – 4425 NE Fremont St
11. Kopi – 2327 E Burnside St
12. Locale – 4330 N Mississippi Ave
13. The Fresh Pot – 4001 N Mississippi Ave
14. Goldrush – 2601 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd
15. Bassotto – 1760 NE Dekum
16. Spielman Bagels – 2200 NE Broadway St
17. Wholesome Blend – 4615 NE Sandy Blvd
18. Cup & Bar – 118 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd
19. Heart Coffee Roasters – 2211 E Burnside St
20. Blend Coffee Lounge – 2710 N Killingsworth St
21. Cafe Eleven – 435 NE Rosa Parks Way
22. The Arbor Lodge – 1507 N Rosa Parks Way
23. Whole Foods Coffee Shop
24. Extracto – 1465 NE Prescott St
25. Coffee People – Portland Airport
26. J Cafe – 533 NE Holladay St
27. Coffee House Five – 740 N Killingsworth St
28. Case Study – 1422 NE Alberta
29. Posie’s Cafe – 8208 N Denver Ave
30. Elevated Coffee – 5261 NE Martin Luther King Jr Blvd