Blog update: Tag links

For 7 days I am supposed to log some voice challenges for my voice therapist, and I'll log these up to twice a day through Thursday, which is 6 days from now.

My 7-day voice and exercise challenge

In July of this year I turned 35. It's an old idea that each person undergoes significant change approximately every 7 years, or that their lives can be sectioned out into 7 year chapters. I think there's something to this.

The 7-year cyles of my life

I've added Post icons to the blog. These icons distinguish between blog updates, programming posts, and more.

Blog update: Post icons

I've added featured posts to the blog. Now, any post tagged with 'featured' will get special decoration and be included on the front page (the first 10 anyway). A shout out to my friend Colby for the idea!

Blog update: Featured posts

Swift remains at the forefront of iOS development with its focus on safety and clarity. Among its features, one stands out for its elegance and utility: the 'defer' keyword. This tool ensures that specific actions are taken as a scope concludes, regardless of how it terminates.

Using 'defer' in swift

One thing I appreciate about Ian Crossland is how willing he is to change his mind when a good point is brought up, like he did in this video. On Thursday, Aug. 31, Ian said (speaking about abortion) "to think that you can ban something that's been happening for hundreds of thousands of years, what an insane proposition to ban it out right"

Changing Ian Crossland's mind on banning abortion

Blog update: RSS

Swift brings a lot of safety features to iOS development. One such feature is the concept of Optionals. An Optional in Swift represents a variable that can hold either a value or no value at all (nil). In many cases, you might need to extract the actual value from an optional, which is known as 'unwrapping'. This blog post will walk you through the basics of unwrapping optionals in Swift.

Unwrapping optionals in Swift

To help start the new month out fresh, I've made some updates to the blog.

September 2023 blog updates

Earlier this week, I attended the first 2024 Republican Presidential Debate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and it was a blast. It was a long day for me outside, hanging out in 100 degree weather, meeting and seeing famous celebrities and politicians. Eventually the debate time arrived and I entered into the rather beautiful Fiserv Forum building anticipating that of the candidates who actually showed up, Vivek Ramaswamy would win the debate--and I was right.

My experience at the 2024 GOP debate in Milwaukee

As the saying goes, "today is the first day of the rest of your life." I turned 35 recently and thought that might be a good time to start the rest of that life. Don't get me wrong, my life has been truly blessed over the last many years, and almost every single year of life has been like starting anew. At 31 I accepted Christ as Lord and met the woman He had in mind for me, Kat. At 32 I married her. At 34 she gave me my first son, Jack. And now, at 35, I want to move forward in life in a way that will make all of the aforementioned persons proud. I have a lot going on. A great job, two rental properties, some promising investments. I also have a lot of things to do, to work on, to improve--like my health and fitness. I keep trying to get into better habits, but it's really hard. Maybe a separate post on that would be good.