Some Posts Have Moved

Looking for something and can't find it? I've moved non-work-related content to my personal domain at https://allensnook.com - it's part of trying to draw a clearer distinction between work related things (WordPress and WooCommerce) and everything else. All the posts, including the popular Harley Davidson LiveWire Bluetooth debugging posts (1, 2, and 3), have been …

My Team and I Built A Thing: Bluetooth + Swift = iPhone and iPad Payments!

TLDR: In-Person Payments for WooCommerce is Live A few years back, I drafted an unusual multi-year proposal for my small team at Automattic (the parent company of the open source DIY e-commerce platform known as WooCommerce ) -- that we would integrate hardware into our apps and systems so our online merchants could expand into …

SwiftUI and ViewModels

I came across this wonderful somewhat recent article on Clean Architecture and SwiftUI. Bookmarked. Thinking of printing it out even. In color even.

Expanded mmWave Support for iPhone 13 5G

Apple's September 14th event introduced the new iPhone 13 and what caught my attention was a brief mention by Tim Cook of "new bands and antennas" for the iPhone 12 successor. Looking more closely at the specs shows that the iPhone 13 adds support for 26 GHz mmWave (n258), which builds on the 28 GHz …

PunchThrough’s Ultimate Bluetooth Guide for iOS

I just came across this wonderfully detailed guide to iOS CoreBluetooth written by Gretchen Walker of PunchThrough. It goes into the details any iOS developer should try to keep in mind when integrating with Bluetooth devices. It is very much worth bookmarking and referring back to. I also heartily recommend their wonderful iOS app for …

iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch Radio Subsystems (Index)

This post serves as a brief summary of the technical specifications of the many radios in the Phone, iPad and the Apple Watch and as index for easier deeper exploration into each. Most of these are very broad categories (for example, there are many types of Bluetooth with differing data rates) and I’ll be linking …

Back in the Engineering Saddle Again

A little over two years ago, fresh off the heels of helping ready my company’s part of the Internet for the GDPR, I offered to again take up the leadership of a small team I had led before - this time to launch another SaaS offering - this time in payments. The opportunity aligned well …

Faster WordPress via .NET with PeachPie

I heard about the PeachPie project recently on the Channel 9 podcast (one of my favorite podcasts) - it allows you to compile PHP and WordPress (and plugins) into .NET. As expected, there is a performance boost and also as expected, you don't have to worry about arbitrary PHP running on your site - AND …

The Engineer/Manager Pendulum

I am so happy I tapped on Episode 27 of the POPCAST this morning. And so glad Dan interviewed Charity and especially the focus of the podcast: her post about the "Engineer/Manager Pendulum" I quote: The best frontline eng managers in the world are the ones that are never more than 2-3 years removed from hands-on …