turing complete with a stack of 0xdeadbeef

Writing

I mostly write about Swift, Objective-C, iOS, open source, and other software development topics. Sometimes I write about the ethics of tech, labor, and politics. I also write satire pieces, personal essays, and notes on what I'm currently reading.

Going indie: business structure, taxes, and retirement

16 August 2023
Updated: 17 August 2023

Welcome to the third part of my going indie series! In the previous post, I discussed building a foundation, getting started, and finding clients. In this post, I am going to discuss many of the decidedly un-fun administrative aspects of being freelance and contracting like saving for retirement and — everyone’s favorite — taxes. Most folks consider these topics to be boring and tedious, but understanding them is critical to your success. The best approach is one of curiosity. As a software developer, you might find the task of optimizing (and minimizing!) your tax burden to be an interesting problem to solve — I definitely do!

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Going Independent

My experience and reflections 3 years later 10 April 2023

A number of folks have reached out to me recently (and over the years) asking me about my experience going indie. I originally wanted to write this reflection after my first year, but I could not find the time nor motivation. The early days of the pandemic really drained me. However, I hope these past three years of experience will only make this post more valuable to those seeking to do the same thing I did. I am writing this for anyone who is interested in trying to go independent — either with your own app development business, solo contracting and freelancing, or both.

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Love for hardcore, and a taste of karma

02 April 2023

I grew up in the 90s and early 2000s. I was a skater kid and when I wasn’t skateboarding I was playing Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater on my Playstation. That scene introduced me to punk music, which eventually led me to hardcore music. By my early teens I was going to shows nearly every week with my friends.

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Goodbye, Twitter

06 February 2023
Updated: 03 April 2023

When I wrote about joining Mastodon, I said I would stay on Twitter for the moment and see what happens. Well, unsurprisingly, the service has continued to erode. It really is a shame, because I’ve found the software developer community there very helpful over the years. I met a lot of friends on Twitter, and later met them for the very first time in person at WWDC.

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Hello, Mastodon

14 December 2022

I finally decided to create an account on Mastodon. You can follow me at @jsq@mastodon.social. I put this off for so long because I was skeptical and I did not want to manage another social account, but it has turned out to be pretty fucking awesome.

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Disconnected

25 July 2022

I have been mostly offline for about two months. Or, at least I have not been writing here like usual, nor posting on Twitter. I have been very disconnected, particularly from work but also the internet in general, starting right before WWDC this year. I still have not watched a single WWDC video, not even the keynote. I have hundreds of unread posts in my RSS reader. And, I am a month behind on reading iOS Dev Weekly.

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May 16 dreams

16 May 2022

I wrote an essay in 2018 reflecting on the 15-year anniversary of my sister’s death. I still think it’s one of the most beautiful pieces I’ve written. Today is her birthday. Amy would have turned 35.

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My first Apple Watch: thoughts and reflections

29 December 2021

I decided to finally get my first Apple Watch with the Series 7 this year. I am typically never one to get a first-generation product — my first iPod back in the day was the iPod Photo and my first iPhone was the 3G (or maybe the 3GS?) — but I rarely wait this long if I’m interested in something. The original Apple Watch had little appeal to me at the time, and the mere existence of the $10,000 gold Edition model made the entire thing feel all the more ridiculous. But over the years as the watch hardware and watchOS improved, and as I got more into fitness, I became more interested. I’ve always felt like there’s a lot of hype around the Apple Watch — people really seem to love it. After wearing and using one for about two months, now I understand. It’s pretty damn good.

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My worst tech interview experience

01 December 2021

Everyone in tech seems to have a “terrible tech interview” story. The topic quietly orbits in the ether of our industry and periodically bursts through the atmosphere in the form of a tweet or blog post that goes viral. Despite universal loathing of our industry’s impetuous and heedless interview processes, few seem willing to improve the current standard. A recent tweet in my timeline reminded me of a story that I’ve never told.

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An iOS shortcut to show proof of vaccine

12 September 2021
Updated: 07 October 2021

Here in Oakland and the rest of the Bay Area, more and more restaurants, bars, venues, and various events are requiring that people show proof of vaccine before entering. (As it should be.) Thankfully, all businesses and events allow showing proof digitally rather than carrying around your physical COVID-19 Vaccination Record Card from the CDC. This means you can take a photo with your phone and present that instead of your singular paper copy. This is great, but the tediousness of tapping around my phone to find and display it has been annoying. So, I made an iOS shortcut to present it instantly.

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iOS 14 App Library

01 June 2021

I think App Library is one of the best features added to iOS in the past few years. I’m not being sarcastic, I know some folks dislike it. However, I absolutely loathe trying to organize apps on my phone into folders, because many apps do not have a singular, definitive category.

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Returning to normal, Part 3

23 March 2021
Updated: 24 March 2021

After only five days, yet another mass shooting has happened in the US. This post follows Part 1 and Part 2 in this ongoing series documenting how the US is recovering from a life-threatening virus.

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Returning to normal, Part 2

17 March 2021

I did not expect that I would have to follow-up on yesterday’s essay so soon, but I can’t say I’m surprised. In the past 24 hours, there were two mass shootings in the US. It is shocking and horrifying, yet somehow entirely predictable.

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Deleting tweets and other social media content

16 March 2021

I have been periodically deleting my tweets for a while now. Yesterday, I finally found a reliable solution for deleting my Twitter “likes” as well and I spent some time deleting all of them. Long ago, I also deleted all of my content on Facebook and Instagram. If you are interested in purging your social media accounts, here are some options.

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Returning to normal

16 March 2021

Oakland has been anything but normal over the past year during the pandemic. But we are starting to see glimpses of normality. Little by little, the whole country is returning to “business as usual”, as they say. And the first real indication that normality is on the horizon for the US was a recent story out of Arkansas.

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Radical readings for the Tech Worker

26 November 2020

After reading my recent satire piece, a good friend of mine (and tech worker) asked if I had a list of books or other resources to learn more about labor history and capitalism in the United States, and how the tech industry operates in this broader context. I had been meaning to write about this, and I figured others would likely be interested, too. So, if you are interested in these topics then this is post for you!

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Seasons Greetings from your CEO at TECH COMPANY

An email from your boss's boss's boss 24 November 2020

Dear COMPANY NAME team:

Hello employees — or should I say independent contractors?! (More on that shortly.) I’m writing to you from my second mansion located in ECONOMICALLY DESTABILIZED COUNTRY IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH EXPLOITED BY UNITED STATES IMPERIALISM! I see the poor children here, and it just reminds me how privileged all of us are to live in a virtuous place like Silicon Valley (at least when I’m there, lol) where we pretend homeless people simply don’t exist. And if they do, it’s because they didn’t try hard enough to do a startup or they didn’t have enough generational wealth to do financial crimes.

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Don't forget the keyboards

An essay 15 September 2020

You know, the thing that is actually most disheartening, disappointing, frustrating, and plainly sad about Apple’s surprise announcement today is that we will not receive any sort of response to our collective dismay. There will be no public acknowledgment, much less an apology (not that it would help much). Only silence.

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Who do they protect?

An essay on police brutality in America 17 May 2020

I am infuriated. Yesterday morning I woke up to the news that in my hometown of Louisville, KY Breonna Taylor was murdered by the police while she was sleeping. Because she was Black. She was shot 8 times. I do not need to list the names of every innocent and unarmed (or sleeping!) Black human being who has been murdered on the streets or in their own homes by the police in this country. You already know them. This has happened so many times before, from the lynchings in the 1800s to LA in 1992 to Louisville today.

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