Consulting

In consulting On

API Integration projects

Offering comprehensive consulting services including API integration projects, product management, and full stack application development, tailored to solve complex problems and enhance business operations efficiently and effectively.

Westchester, Playa Del Rey, and Playa Vista Hiking Guide

In hiking On

Great hiking near LAX

This part of Los Angeles has a lot of surprisingly remote feeling hikes. Located just north of LAX these three neighborhoods have a beach, the second largest open space in Los Angeles (ballona wetlands), and a bluff side hiking trail with expansive city, mountain and ocean views.

Join alltrails using this link and they will plant 2 trees after you join.
AllTrails

Tarragon Beets Salad

In recipes On
With some green tomatoes on top
With some green tomatoes on top

This was an attempt to copy a salad from Bristol Farms. I ended up modifying it quite a bit from the initial ingredients.

Latest stuff

Link Graveyard

Where I bury my favorite resources

The link graveyard is my page for remembering where I found stuff – whether it’s something I learned, something cool I stumbled upon, or maybe just a friend’s site.

Spotify Top Artists for June 2024

In projects

Spotify API feed

These are some of the recent artists from Spotify. I made a taxonomy of musical genres so each genre has a page on this site now which you may explore from the musical genres page.

Projects

In projects
The projects section is a mix of case studies of professional projects I have worked on, that I have permission to write about, and personal areas of exploration on-line and otherwise. Some of these projects may be monetized in some way at some time, others are entirely open source.

Musical Genres

In musical-genres
Lights coming up
Lights coming up on Dead and Company at the Fabulous Forum in 2023

Every musical genre in my recent tracks. This page was generated with the Spotify API , please read our full disclosure on our use of this data.

Jet Pets

In Hiking

Private dog friendly open space that allows dogs

Latitude
33° 57' 27.00"
Longitude
-119° 33' 57.60"

Jet Pets is an animal transportation company located in Playa Del Rey very close to LAX. They have a large field on their property that is fenced in and they keep it open most days and allow you to walk your dog there.

Oberrieder Dog Park

In Hiking

The happiest place on earth

Latitude
33° 58' 18.48"
Longitude
-119° 34' 45.80"

Oberrieder Dog Park is a large, partially shaded woodchip covered enclosure for dogs and humans to relax and enjoy the company of other dogs (and humans). It is next to a beautiful walking path along the oberreider wetlands with views of the bluffs under LMU. This path easily connects to the Bluff Creek Trail for the back half of a 4.5 mile loop.

Book Store Sample Data

In projects

Example

I just followed the example here on the hugo docs to set up the simple books demo, but I intend to use this new feature to build out some great new dynamic content for content marketing purposes, such as lists of top products.

Content Adaptor Projects

In projects

Content Adaptors come to Hugo!

A long anticipated release has come to the hugo static site generator that will be a real game changer. This is part of release v0.126.0. The new feature, called Content Adaptors allows you to generate static pages in your public directory at build time from a remote resource, such as an api.

Screenshot-a-Day

In projects

S.A.D. 😩

You can’t automate a SLO for look and feel. Or can you?

Screenshot-a-day service. takes a screen shot every n units of time and adds a frame to a gif which you can host.

Ingredients Section

In Posts

Check out the new Ingredients Taxonomy pages

Using Taxonomy effectively

As part of the recipe template configuration being developed for The Ryder Theme for Hugo websites, a new taxonomy is created for ingredients. Ingredients are not the same as recipeIngredients; they are defined as an array in the front matter. I didn’t want a taxonomy page generated for every single recipe ingredient, so I created a separate variable. The recipeIngredients are used to display the ingredients on the page and for the recipe schema, ensuring the pages are properly displayed as recipe rich results in Google and other search engines.

Federal Disaster Emergency Preparedness Kit Digitized

In projects

Digital Federal Financial First Aid Kit (EFFAK)

Digital Federal Financial First Aid Kit

Digital Federal Financial First Aid Kit

Be prepared for the worst case scenario with an encrypted grab and go device the size of bic lighter.

Github Action to Create New Content in Hugo

In Posts

This is what it looks like
This is what it looks like

I use Hugo a lot for my web development work, and I think it is pretty great. The one problem with it for many non-technical people I work with is that there is no CMS feature, they want a website administration page where they can do the usual.

Adding Leaflet to Ryder Theme

In Posts

I made this quick and easy shortcode to get started using leaflet.js in the Ryder Theme for Hugo Websites, as I add more features supported by leaflet to the shortcode I might update this page.

Arts-Link.com

In projects

https://www.arts-link.com is the first domain I ever purchased. I believe it was around 2001. It has been various different websites throughout the years, including not a web-site at all. In this rendition it is an organization which is set up to support artists in their technical needs, to free them from the discratction of such things as self-promotion and websites.

Tunnel Localhost Server Through Cloudflare

In Posts

A tunnel to your desktop

This is something I have done in the past and it usually involved pretty in-depth knowledge of the shell and networking, but now there is a free service that makes it oh-so-easy to spin up a tunnel with a public human readable domain name for temporary viewing of your local network development environment on the internet.

Styling a RSS feed With XSL

In Posts

A styled RSS feed makes your site more usable

When you put a link to your rss / atom feed on your website it is a link to a raw xml file designed for feed readers such as feedly to import them and provide the reader with all their internet in one place.

Pines Image Gallery With Hugo

In Posts

A super simple alpinjs image gallery

The first place I used this is on the recipe page about my mom’s family recipe cookbook

Bluff Creek Trail

In Hiking

AKA LMU Trail, AKA Westchester fireroad trail

Latitude
33° 58' 31.08"
Longitude
-119° 35' 17.16"

The Bluff Creek trail is a nice mostly flat partially paved/dirt path that traverses the bluff just under LMU. Recommended as a loop with a couple mile trail and then couple miles walking in Playa Vista through Oberrieder park.

Product Marketing

In projects

Can small content websites actually make money?

An exploration into monetization of small content websites.

These product catalog pages will be pulled in on content pages via tages and related content functionality.

Referral links tool kit

In projects

A tool to build links for affiliate marketing programs.

Extreme Geomagnetic Storm Photography

In Posts
Pulled to Black

Pulled to Black

On May 10, 2024 solar flares caused extreme G5 conditions to be observed

Recipe Template for Ryder Theme

In Posts

Optimize Recipe Content with the Schema

The recipe templates for The Ryder Theme for Hugo websites are progressing well. Today I released an update that creates the schema.org json-ld specification tags for a recipe. This allows your recipe content to show up as “rich content” in search engines and social media platforms.

Tag Cloud

In Posts

Cloudy days a hoy-hoy

I found this partial to create a tag cloud on Mert Bakir’s personal website and I have been adapting the code to suit my needs for this project, for now I’m just leaving it under this project page until I can decide what to do with it.

Home Feed Filtering and Colorization

In Posts

Limit your home page feed by Section, Category or Tag

You can now set params in your hugo.toml file to keep any pesky pages off your homepage that you may not wish to promote for whatever reason.

Bluff Trail

In Hiking

The western extension of the Bluff Creek trail

Latitude
33° 57' 53.28"
Longitude
-119° 34' 21.76"

A short 1.5 mile trail located just west of LMU along the bluff beside the One Westbluff neighborhood. This trail has views of the ocean, the marina and the Ballonas Ecological Preserve.

Ballona Creek Bike Path

In Hiking

Part of Park to Playa Trail

Latitude
33° 57' 56.02"
Longitude
0° 00' %!f(int64= 00)"

The Ballona Creek Bike Path parallels Ballona Creek while connecting the Pacific Ocean at Marina Del Rey with Culver City. The trail connects with a beach path that continues south to Redondo Beach while at the north, Dusquesne Avenue connects the bike path with the eastern portions of the Park to Playa Trail.

Ballona Wetlands

In Hiking

Ecological Preserve

Latitude
33° 57' 56.16"
Longitude
-119° 33' 38.52"

Ballona contains a complex mosaic of habitats defined mainly by hydrology, including wetland habitats, such as brackish and freshwater marshes, seasonally flooded freshwater wetlands, salt pans, riparian and upland habitats, like coastal sage scrub and sand dunes. Many wildlife species, especially birds, utilize more than one habitat type – thus the juxtaposition of these habitats next to one another, also known as heterogeneity, which is important for biodiversity.

Del Rey Lagoon

In Hiking

The Lagoon beside the beach

Latitude
33° 57' 36.00"
Longitude
-119° 32' 60.00"

Del Rey Lagoon is a 14-acre park in the beach neighborhood of Playa Del Rey. This park features lighted baseball fields, basketball courts, and playground. There is a parking lot availability for visitors.

Hiking

In Hiking
Ben and Rhys on Bishop Peak
Ben and Rhys on Bishop Peak

Maps, Guides and Logs

One of my greatest joys is being outdoors in a wide open space with nothing made by man in sight. At times, I do have to come back to reality, and occasionally when I do, I will share routes, guides, maps, and from time to time, gear recommendations.

Join alltrails using this link and they will plant 2 trees after you join.
AllTrails

Ironcove Solutions Orchestration Engine

In projects

Workforce Onboarding: A Case Study of Ironcove Solutions’ Orchestration Engine

I was hired by Ironcove Solutions to lead product development for a new application they were developing called the Orchestration Engine, an application designed to streamline workforce onboarding processes. We collaborated closely with the team from Ironcove Solutions to bring their vision to life.

The Ryder Theme for Hugo

In projects

In honor of this old guy
In honor of this old guy

Introducing the Ryder theme, a theme for the hugo static website generator. This is an open-source Hugo theme boasting Tailwind CSS, FontAwesome integration, and customizable features. Perfect for beginners and seasoned developers alike, kickstart your website with this versatile theme.

Tuna Noodle Bake

In Recipe
Tuna Noodle Bake recipe
Tuna Noodle Bake recipe

I love this recipe because it is so simple, can be made for under $5 and is really tasty. We used to eat this quite often when I was growing up.

Original Granola

In Recipe
Granola Prep
Granola Prep

Lemon Chia Granola

In Recipe
Lemon Chia Granola Final

Grandma Kreider's Meatloaf

In Recipe
Grandma Kreider's meatloaf
Grandma Kreider's meatloaf

Simple easy meatloaf recipe. There are no fixed amounts here!

Dads Home Fried Potatoes

In Recipe
Dad's Home Fried Potatoes
Dad's Home Fried Potatoes

My dad would make these for big family breakfasts on the weekend