matt.toigo

WHY CONSUME WHEN YOU CAN CREATE?

Performance Issue Conversations with Software Engineers

January 17th, 2024 dev

How to talk to your teams when something isn't working.

Thoughts on CMS Design Strategies

June 16th, 2018 dev

A friend interviewed me for a podcast regarding my thoughts on the various strategies that CMS vendors use to design content management systems and how well they work for different types of clients.

Smart Office Meetup Presentation - HelloLights

April 24th, 2017 dev

Jenny Madorsky and myself presenting on our smart office work at Huge DC and our newest project HelloLights.

Smart Lighting: The Interface That's All Around Us.

February 25th, 2017 dev

A writeup on a project I implemented in the Huge DC office to have lamps change color depending on the status of our meeting rooms.

Building Smarter Offices: Safely Stealing Conference Rooms

June 9th, 2016 dev

A piece that I wrote on a project I've been working on at Huge for the last year that powers tablet displays outside of conference rooms with schedules and the ability to create meetings on the fly.

PHP Koans

December 5th, 2015 dev

PHP programming exercises for anyone new to programming or PHP. You start with a suite of failing tests and begin to add code so the tests pass and gradually learn the basics of programming in the process. This is in progress and I'm actively working on finishing it.

PHPWorld 2015 Talk

November 21st, 2015 dev

A talk I gave at PHPWorld 2015 on common problems facing agile software teams and how to overcome them.

3D Printed Bocce Ball Stand

August 17th, 2015 dev

A quick writeup on a small 3D printing project.

Tech for Product Managers - Speaking at General Assembly

July 24th, 2015 dev

A talk I gave to my co worker Catherine Colwell's Product Management class at General Assembly. The purpose was to give Product Managers a brief overview of software engineering terminology and give them advice on working with technical teams.

What Goes Wrong With Agile and How to Fix It

June 17th, 2015 dev

A piece I wrote for Huge based on my experiences leading agile software development teams and identifying solutions to common problems they face.

Pulling Google Calendar Events with Node.js

December 7th, 2014 dev

A quick tutorial on pulling down Google Calendar data with Node.js

Tetris

September 5th, 2012 dev

A version of the classic puzzle game Tetris written purely in Javascript and Canvas. It seems like everything is heading towards Javascript lately so I mostly wrote this just for fun and to improve my JS skills. It is playable in Chrome, Safari, and Firefox and does not work on mobile. The source is available here.

ORM with Validation in Kohana 3

October 17th, 2011 dev

It took me a while to get this working correctly and I'm betting I'm not the only one. This example will give you everything you need to setup user creation with ORM and model level validation.

Linking to YouTube on Mobile Websites

April 25th, 2011 dev

Launching a native video player via the HTML5 video element if possible is the slickest way to handle video on mobile websites. An alternative that requires less development and QA time is simply uploading the video to YouTube and then linking to it. This approach has the advantage of letting YouTube deal with optimization, CDN (content delivery network) caching, and also having the video play on BlackBerry and Windows Phone 7 which can be problematic (also not likely worth the effort) to implement yourself.