Author: Jason Beaird

Just a journal of my meandering thoughts and interests.

Making a Fidget Toy From a Logo

As the holidays were approaching in December, I wanted to send a small token of gratitude to the product designers on my team at Sprout Social. My go-to holiday gift for teammates in the past has been a page-a-day desk calendar, but I decided to be a little more creative this year.

Custom Domains & The Social Web

With the news in December that Threads was starting to test an ActivityPub integration, there has been a steady flow of articles about what Meta’s support for this W3C Protocol means for the future of social media. One of my favorites is Colin Devroe’s post about how ActivityPub will cross the chasm in 2024.

Challenge Coins & Cheesy Trophies

For me, the wheels started turning when we set the dates for our product zone’s Chicago HQ onsite and decided to make a hackathon the focus of our 2 days together. I wanted to make this meetup a memorable one and create some kind of tangible reminder of the occasion. I also knew that our hackathon teams would work hard on their self-selected projects and that everyone who participated would deserve a fun reward.

FlightFins Falcons for Onewheel

As someone who loves Onewheel trail riding, I’ve often wished I could be more “locked in” on my board while cruising over rough terrain. Replacing the stock grip tape was really the only change I made that helped with that, but it’s still easy to get thrown off occasionally by the roots, rocks, and drops that are common on mountain bike trails. I wanted something more than increased surface friction to keep my feet planted.

Building Simon for Arduino Uno

A couple of weeks ago I decided it was time to build something fun. My kids and I enjoy tinkering with maker projects here and there, but we haven’t made anything lately quite like our epic Twang LED Strip game build from last year. I really wanted another project that required some 3D printing and made use of an Arduino Uno and some Arduino starter kit parts we had sitting idle.

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