Category: Projects

That Time I Deleted a Database

I've been hobby programming for several years that has spilled over into making applications for staff at school. One of those tools is a website t... Read more

New PD Site: SuperAdmins

Starting off with this project, I knew it would need a strong admin interface. One of the problems I mentioned initially is that all of the PD trou... Read more

New PD Site: Presenters

sWe’ve had a look at how users work in the new PD site, so let’s take a look at another major player: presenters. The word “presenter” is really lo... Read more

New PD Site: Staff User

This spring and summer, I've taken on a full-blown re-write of our PD registration and management system. Our current system is a collection of cen... Read more

Sending Charts from Google Forms

We're getting ready to launch a digital teaching and learning course for staff that is based on the TPACK framework. A few years ago, we started ou... Read more

Google Sheets, SpreadAPI, and an Extension

This is a revisit to a post I wrote four years ago in which we used a spreadsheet and Google's nifty little hidden JSON data endpoint to serve data... Read more

Construction, continued...

It was a busy July, working full time on the house. At the end of the month, we were nearly dried in and have started to shift our focus toward pre... Read more

DocuTube Shutdown, June 2020

tl;dr: The DocuTube addon will be removed from the Marketplace at the end of June, 2020. If you're a programmer and you want to take over ownership... Read more

A Photo API in Python

I started a small project to clean up my personal photo hosting. I'm currently using an app written in PHP, but it's way over my head and does way ... Read more

Re-writing DocuTube

tl;dr I have a Google Apps Script project getting a major overhaul. If you want to look at the code and contribute, it's on GitHub. A couple years ... Read more

DocuTube Dev Update

Some quick notes of my progress on updating DocuTube in the Docs Addon store: Search by Default Search videos in the addon popup window Video, chan... Read more

Managing Standards Based Grades in Canvas LMS

I'm trying to make standards-based grading more approachable for my teachers. When I was teaching full time, I held to Frank Noschese's Keep It Sim... Read more

Making RSS Feeds for Instagram

tl;dr: I have a hacky proof-of-concept method for getting an Instagram account as an RSS feed. It uses Python and you can grab the source files her... Read more

The Why Loops

I spent some time last week running through some "why" loops to hone in on reasons behind my potential research question. I think the question is b... Read more

Checking Implementation

Running PD for an entire district is a challenge. The biggest gap I see is knowing how or when teachers actually use what they've learned in a sess... Read more

Running arbtt on Mac OS

Tom Woodward has a semi-regular weekly roundup blog post with links to interesting things he finds on the Internet. A couple weeks back, he posted ... Read more

A Case for Pi

I've never had a case for my Raspberry Pi because...well...I just haven't. One of our schools recently purchased all kinds of STEM stuff and I've b... Read more

Server Hardening and SSL

Last night, I got [a self-hosted photo sharing site](https://photos.ohheybrian.com) up and running on my raspberry pi 3. You can see more about tha... Read more

Forget the Mac Mini, Bring on the Raspberry

This weekend I decided to try and tackle [turning a Mac Mini into a server to host my own photos](https://blog.ohheybrian.com/2018/11/reviving-the-... Read more

Reviving the Mac Mini

My wife bought a Mac Mini toward the end of college that has been sitting in our basement pretty much since we went to Korea in 2009. I've been wan... Read more

Reading Summaries

I've decided to fire up a new, static website to reflect on books I read this year. In all honesty, much of this is bring prompted by my grad schoo... Read more

Killing Pico (and Micro)

Earlier this year, I wrote up a really bare-bones blogging system I called [Pico](https://blog.ohheybrian.com/2018/04/pico-a-tiny-blog/). It's a Py... Read more

Moving back to WordPress

You might not have noticed (or you might have...who knows) but this site is now back on WordPress. I had shifted to Jekyll back in December for the... Read more

Pico: A Tiny Blog

More of my life is run in plain text. I don’t really use word processors any more (other than Google Docs for work) because they’re heavy and not r... Read more

New Tab Flickr Background Extension

I’m part of digital-only secret Santa exchange. It’s a cool idea…you’re assigned someone you may (or may not know) and tasked with coming up with a... Read more

Slides Tweeter Update 4

I thought I was ready for some beta testing of the Slide Tweeter AddOn. Unfortunately, I’ve run into a snag with authenticating some of the code. W... Read more

Slides Tweeter Update 3

(Part 1, Part 2) I’m excited. A beta version of the Slides Tweeter AddOn will be ready this week. Two major updates helped get it to this point: Go... Read more

Slides Tweeter Update 2

A short update to my post about tweeting Google Slides presentations after some work this weekend. – Working AddOn menu prototyped. – Check if a us... Read more

Tweeting Google Slides Automatically

An app called Keynote Tweet has been around (in various working and non-working states) since the late 2000’s and let users auto-tweet images of th... Read more

Badging Patterns

Some more, mostly unfiltered thoughts on badging programs run at the K12 level. (Initial thoughts for some background from back in August.) – Artic... Read more

Update to Endnote Generator

If you’ve used Endnote Generator in your Docs, thanks. I posted an update this evening which will retain the formatting of your footnotes. So, if y... Read more

Badges? We Might Want to Think About Stinking Badges…

Some initial, mostly unfiltered thoughts on digital badges from a professional development perspective: Most badging programs are too simple. They ... Read more

2017 Project: Photo Year

Pictures launch stories. I take a lot of photos and like most people, they stay on my phone. I used to use Instagram, but I’m not happy with their ... Read more

Introducing: Endnote Generator Add On

A year ago, I posted a script which converts footnotes in a Google Doc into endnotes. I’ve gotten great comments and feedback and have made the sta... Read more

Tracking Missing IDs with a Google Sheet

Like many schools, our students are asked to wear their student ID’s when they come into the building each day. During the day, they don’t need to ... Read more

Get in touch

Comments are always open. You can get in touch by sending me an email at brian@ohheybrian.com