@shawnhooper.ca
He/Him. Web Developer, Conference and Workshop Speaker. Theatre kid who still gets to do sound and lighting on the side. Small town Ontario, Canada Blog: https://shawnhooper.ca RSS: https://shawnhooper.ca/feed #webdev #php #laravel #wordpress #appsec
we had a team of incredibly dedicated elite government coders
public servants forgoing much more lucrative gigs because they wanted to make government work for people
some of them were my friends or former colleagues
they worked in the GSA, 18F, and the USDS
this administration fired them all
Did you hear about the AI bot that wrote a blog post calling out a human maintainer in the open source matplotlib project?
shawnhooper.ca/2026/02/12/w...
I've ditched all the smart home voice things (I had Google Home). I don't miss them.
Doing camera,lighting,switches,sensors, etc. all on local, no cloud service solutions. All controlled via Home Assistant.
when they tell you to go back to writing about gadgets www.theverge.com/policy/86857...
Great read. Transcript of a speech that Cory Doctorow gave in Ottawa yesterday. pluralistic.net/2026/01/29/p...
New Bruce Springsteen track just dropped.
Streets of Minneapolis
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-Av...
#AlexPretti #ReneeGood #Minneapolis
Brilliant.
In today's blog post: It's been 40 years since the Challenger disaster. Wow.
shawnhooper.ca/2026/01/28/c...
#nasa #history #challenger
Breaking news: Composer Philip Glass withdrew his highly anticipated Symphony No. 15 from its scheduled Kennedy Center performance, saying “the values of the Kennedy Center today are in direct conflict with the message of the Symphony.”
Today I published a Bash script that goes through all the S3 buckets in an AWS region and configures it for cross-region replication.
shawnhooper.ca/2026/01/26/s...
#aws #devops
First time using the Laravel Forge dashboard in a few months. Nice improvements! #laravel
What a time to start journaling. Every entry is like, “I bought bubble bath today. The people of Minnesota are resisting the president’s fascist thugs. My code caused a small bug.”
Google Meet show how late people will be based on meeting history
This week we had to say goodbye to Lola, the best "starter cat" a man could ask for. shawnhooper.ca/2026/01/11/l...
Wrote my year in review today.
shawnhooper.ca/2025/12/30/2...
#yearinreview #blogging
Right you are! I hadn't noticed it wasn't actually in Montreal proper. Well, that's annoying.
Hmm, there's a "Vintage Computer Festival" happening in Montreal next month. Could be fun to check out.
vcfed.org/vcf-montreal/
#montreal
Currently in Calgary
A breakthrough treatment for tinnitus could finally be on the way
Researchers in the UK may have discovered a treatment for the symptoms of tinnitus.
mixmag.net/read/breakth...
The new McDonalds on Rideau is celebrating their opening with a donation to a local raccoon rescue.
www.facebook.com/rideauvanier...
For those of you unfamiliar, there's famous incident of a fight in the old McDs where someone pulls out a raccoon:
www.cbc.ca/player/play/...
#ottawa #raccoon
On our first Apple II computer at home, there was a program called "Applevision", that my brother and I just called "Dancing Man". It blew us away then, and fills me with nostalgia now.
Youtube Clip:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqPe...
#nostalgia #appleII
Quite breathtaking story - military grade drones at Dublin airport which flew on the path Zelensky's plane took. The drones reached the flight path of his plane exactly the time it should have been there, but just missed it because Zelensky arrived ahead of schedule:
Tonight’s math. Calculating speaker delay time. Ex:
To calculate the delay in milliseconds for a distance of 80 feet, divide the distance by the speed of sound (approximately 1126 feet per second) and then multiply by 1000.
This results in a delay of about 71 milliseconds.
#livesound #math #sound
Yeah, it was delicious. I may be a little too full at the moment.
A large pizza crust with red onion, chicken, green peppers, red onion and banana peppers, covered in mozzarella and BBQ sauce.
Tonight's dinner - home made gluten free chicken BBQ pizza.
Doing my laundry. You can tell the show’s run just ended. Everything is black.
#heatre #stagecrew
The cast and crew of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee on stage.
Just finished a two week run of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Had a blast. Great to back in community theatre.
#stagecrew #communitytheatre
The U.S. government has released a new crash test dummy design that advocates believe will help make cars safer for women.
Just the vibe I needed today. Listening to Fred Again's Tiny Desk Concert.
What a great set. From 2023, but holds up 100%.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iQm...
#music #tinydesk #dj
