David Eisinger

Dispatch #41 (July 2026) (2026-07-14)

Nico turned two in June. What the hell! Where’s my baby boy, and who’s this sassy little dude running around my house. We threw him a farm-themed birthday (my man loves cows), then took the kids up to see their cousins in Richmond. The next weekend, we went camping with Claire’s family at Carolina Hemlocks Recreation Area. This was awesome – bit of a haul for sure, and the boy couldn’t handle the switchbacks on the way up the mountain, but we were rewarded with a beautiful campsite with river views and temperatures a good 20°F cooler than around here.

Dispatch #40 (June 2026) (2026-06-06)

April bled straight into May, so it felt like a three-week month and flew right by. We celebrated Claire’s birthday and spent Memorial Day weekend at Lake Norman. Then summer kicked in – ran the Running of the Bulls 8K with the kids and a friend of mine, and went to our local pool for the first time this year.

Dispatch #39 (May 2026) (2026-05-12)

Man, what a month. Rich with the stuff of life. THICK. High highs (Nev’s first ballet recital, an incredible trip to Asheville), low lows (the death of our next door neighbor Joel, a major health scare – don’t worry, everyone’s alright). Impossible to capture the feeling of it as I sit here, and frankly it feels silly to document all the dumb stuff I get into alongside the heavy shit, but I’m committed to this project. Let’s go.

Dispatch #38 (April 2026) (2026-04-08)

Finally warming up around here (though we did get hit by the largest 24-hour temperature drop in recorded history while we were up visiting my folks). We took the kids to a Holi celebration, which was a huge mess and a ton of fun. The colors don’t come through here but I think the joy does.

Dispatch #37 (March 2026) (2026-03-15)

February was quick but full. We had a few things hit all at the same time – some good friends visiting from Canada, our company hackathon, and an extended visit from my family. It was hectic but we made it all work, and the month went by in a flash.

Local Docker Best Practices (viget.com, 2022-05-05)

Here at Viget, Docker has become an indispensable tool for local development. We build and maintain a ton of apps across the team, running different stacks and versions, and being able to package up a working dev environment makes it much, much easier to switch between apps and ramp up new devs onto projects. That’s not to say that developing with Docker locally isn’t without its drawbacks¹, but they’re massively outweighed by the ease and convenience it unlocks.

“Friends” (Undirected Graph Connections) in Rails (viget.com, 2021-06-09)

No, sorry, not THOSE friends. But if you’re interested in how to do some graph stuff in a relational database, SMASH that play button and read on.

Making an Email-Powered E-Paper Picture Frame (viget.com, 2021-05-12)

Over the winter, inspired by this digital photo frame that uses email to add new photos, I built and programmed a trio of e-paper picture frames for my family, and I thought it’d be cool to walk through the process in case someone out there wants to try something similar.

Why I Still Like Ruby (and a Few Things I Don’t Like) (viget.com, 2020-08-06)

The Stack Overflow 2020 Developer Survey came out a couple months back, and while I don’t put a ton of stock in surveys like this, I was surprised to see Ruby seem to fare so poorly – most notably its rank on the “most dreaded” list. Again, who cares right, but it did make me take a step back and try to take an honest assessment of Ruby’s pros and cons, as someone who’s been using Ruby professionally for 13 years but loves playing around with other languages and paradigms. First off, some things I really like.

My Enjoyment From Engagement With Media Deepens As I Grow Older | Brain Baking (2026-07-14)

One of the most protective things you can do against the negative consequences of ageing is learning a craft when you are young and keep on practising it. The second best thing you can do is learning something new when you are older.

Golden Hour | Ian Ewing | Radio Juicy (2026-07-14)

Radio Juicy is happy to present Golden Hour, a six‑track journey from beatsmith Ian Ewing, who channels pure nostalgia through organic drums, warm analog tones, and melodies that drift like memories.

Accidental anonymity - macwright.com (via) (2026-07-02)

My other reaction is that I don't know anything about these people. They haven't put themselves out there. They haven't said anything true.

Still using the XTEink X4 – Laura Michet's Blog (via) (2026-06-17)

In late March, I wrote that I'd acquired a tiny, nearly credit-card-sized e-reader and had been regularly using it. I still am! Several months later, it remains in the main bag I use when I leave the house, and I use it most days of the week.

Bloggers, can we make better titles for our posts? | Michael Harley (via) (2026-06-16)

I think this one might be a bit unpopular but I do not like the round-up posts. You know the ones. They're titled Week Notes, Week in Review, Weekly Links and the like. When I'm cruising Bubbles, I do not click weekly notes from randos. For bloggers I know and have followed, I do often scan them.

Just Be Normal About Things - by JA Westenberg - WESTENBERG (via) (2026-06-11)

Be normal, and opt out of the deranged belief that the only way to take something seriously is to take it to the most extreme possible conclusion.

Home | mise-en-place (via) (2026-06-06)

One tool to manage languages, env vars, and tasks per project, reproducibly.

The Archivist In Me Turned This Blog Into a Book | Brain Baking (2026-06-06)

This was a lovely month project that rewarded me with a physical artefact of an ever-evolving digital medium, solidifying words, sentences, and paragraphs in a way that perhaps might even envy The Internet Archive. As a hopeless sentimental person, flipping through the book, looking at the figures and reading the text makes me happy.

It's time to talk about my writerdeck (via) (2026-05-26)

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to convert my old laptop into a writerdeck, a dedicated writing device free from the distractions of the modern internet.

Resident: vibe coding firmware (our new sandbox library for ESP32 devices) (Interconnected) (2026-05-21)

We’re open sourcing Resident, our library for running AI-authored code on microcontrollers – with no compile step and no firmware flashing.