Steve Grunwell

Open-source contributor, speaker, and electronics tinkerer

Shelby in 2020, lying on carpet while her nice, soft bad sits empty in the background

R.I.P. to the Best Girl, Shelby

October 17, 2024

In Family

Today we say goodbye to Shelby Marie Grunwell, a.k.a. the Greatest Dog to Ever Live.

She came to our family by way of Canine Collective, a wonderful organization out of Plain City, OH that rescues dogs from high-kill shelters and puts them with loving homes. While we had originally visited the group’s weekly event at a local Petsmart in order to start the process for a chocolate lab named Cocoa, Shelby picked me out, stood on her hind legs, and perched on my arm as if to say “hey there, Steve, I’m the one you want!”

That was just shy of fourteen years ago.

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Grayscale close-up of a watch face

For a Great Time, Make it a DateTime

July 19, 2024

In Code

Let’s acknowledge something right out of the gate: working with dates and times can be a slog. Not a year goes by without some app breaking due to Daylight Saving Time or an assistant not realizing that March 31st exists.

For those of us working in PHP—especially more recent versions of the language—dates and times don’t need to be a source of pain. Instead of strtotime() this and date() that, we have functionality baked into PHP that dramatically simplifies the work of parsing, converting, and formatting dates and times.

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A typewriter with a sheet of paper reading "Equality"

Strict Equality for Better Code

July 1, 2024

In Code

A major focus of my day job right now is cleaning up the PHP in a decades-old monolith, which includes tests written for two different test runners by hundreds of engineers over the years.

I could write a book on the horrors I’ve seen (and currently have at least half a dozen blog posts in draft state), but I’m not interested in raking anyone over the coals for past engineering decisions—honestly, it’s to be expected with any project this size and age. Instead, I wanted to take a moment to talk about one of the most prevalent oversights made by engineers of all levels: strict equality.

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A pile of LEGO bricks spread out across a hardwood floor

Decouple Your Application Code with the Adapter Pattern

April 24, 2024

In Code

The last few months at work I’ve been deep in a refactoring project, cleaning up over twenty years of technical debt. It’s been a massive undertaking, but it’s rewarding work when I’m finally able to remove code that’s been hanging out well-past its expiration date.

One of the patterns that’s come in extremely handy is the Adapter Pattern, which lets me decouple application code from the underlying libraries that we use. This post will discuss how the Adapter Pattern works (with coffee-themed examples, as I tend to do), then demonstrate how it can help with refactoring.

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Taco, a black cat, peeking out of a white drawer

The Beauty of PHP Value Objects

March 12, 2024

In Code

At last year’s php[tek], one of my biggest “holy cow, why haven’t I been doing this?!” moments came from my friend Andrew Cassell when he explained PHP Value Objects in the context of Domain-Driven Design.

Put simply, a Value Object is an immutable object that encapsulates some data and will always be in a valid state.

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A silhouette of a security camera

Why I’m Dropping Google Analytics

January 7, 2023

In Meta

I’ve had Google Analytics running on SteveGrunwell.com to some degree since its earliest iterations over ten years ago. Over time, I’ve been lowering the amount of data collected because, to be honest, I wasn’t doing anything with it.

As a result, I’m proud to announce that I’ve removed Google Analytics tracking from SteveGrunwell.com effective immediately.

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A retro condenser microphone on a nice, purple background

Steve of the Union ’22

November 17, 2022

In Meta

Well now, it’s been a minute!

I haven’t published anything on here in over a year, and anything personal in far longer than that. Considering I just linked to my site from a pinned tweet, I should probably have some sort of “proof of life”.

As such, here’s a quick run-down of what’s been new in my life since…well, honestly, since the pandemic started.

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Two coffees from Fire Department Coffee surrounding a coffee mug with a dripper

Reviewed: Spirit-Infused Coffees from Fire Department Coffee

August 11, 2021

In Coffee & Roasting

A couple weeks ago, Madeline Hayes, the Community Manager for Rockford, IL-based Fire Department Coffee, reached out after stumbling upon my post on roasting bourbon-infused coffee.

As it turns out, Fire Department Coffee has a whole line of spirit-infused coffees, and she was gracious enough to send me a sample. Never one to say no to free coffee, I quickly replied and mere days later a package was on my doorstep containing two bags of Fire Department Coffee’s spirit-infused roasts.

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A wall full of different keys

Handling Credentials in Laravel

February 5, 2020

In Laravel

I was recently asked to code review a friend’s first Laravel app, and when I cloned the repository from GitHub I immediately noticed a few big, red flags. Many of these were common mistakes, so I thought I’d take a moment to discuss how we can safely handle credentials and/or sensitive information in our Laravel applications.

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A mail slot, just below a bold sign reading "Private"

Building a Quick, Private Family Blog with WordPress

January 22, 2020

In WordPress

At times, it’s helpful to be able to create a secure, private family blog for sharing updates with close friends and family without posting to more public social media channels.

There are any number of reasons you might do this: sharing updates about a new child, a new city, or — in our family’s case — a new adventure.

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