https://emilabraham.com/ Recent content on Emil's webpage Hugo -- gohugo.io en-us Fri, 20 Mar 2026 00:00:00 -0700 https://emilabraham.com/thoughts/thermal-printer-guestbook/ Fri, 20 Mar 2026 00:00:00 -0700 https://emilabraham.com/thoughts/thermal-printer-guestbook/ Overview I’ve always admired people who release web toys for the anonymous public to play with. I’m also interested in bridging the gap between online spaces and real life. In some ways, I wish we could make online spaces more like real life without having to completely lose digital privacy. I made this guestbook to explore that concept. It was loosely inspired by the guestbook at Good Enough. All mentioned source code can be found on my github. https://emilabraham.com/thoughts/claude-car-replacement-tracker/ Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:00:00 -0700 https://emilabraham.com/thoughts/claude-car-replacement-tracker/ The Overview I recently moved to a new place in Mountain View, California. My grocery store is 1 mile away. My gym is 3 miles away. Too far to walk regularly, but perfect for a bicycle. With year-round great weather and no commute, I decided to try going car-lite. But I wanted to know: is this actually saving me money? How much driving am I really avoiding? To find out, I needed to track every trip where I chose my bike or public transit over my car. https://emilabraham.com/recipes/heath-bar-cookies/ Sat, 26 Aug 2023 20:49:30 -0700 https://emilabraham.com/recipes/heath-bar-cookies/ Ingredients 1 cup all purpose flour 1/4 cup cocoa powder 1/2 teaspoon baking soda 1/4 teaspoon salt 1/2 cup butter, softened 6 tablespoon granulated sugar 6 tablespoon light brown sugar 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract 1 egg 1 8 oz package of Heath Bits o’ Brickle Toffee Bits 1 Instructions Preheat oven to 375F. Stir together flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt. Beat together butter, granulated sugar, brown sugar, and vanilla until homogenous. https://emilabraham.com/recipes/chocolate-coconut-bites/ Sun, 20 Aug 2023 17:52:36 -0700 https://emilabraham.com/recipes/chocolate-coconut-bites/ Ingredients 1 cup shredded sweetened coconut 2 tablespoon coconut oil 2 tablespoon honey 1 teaspoon brown sugar 1-2 drops vanilla extract 1/2 cup dark or semi-sweet chocolate chips Instructions Process the shredded coconut and brown sugar until it turns into a powder. Mix the powder, honey, oil, and vanilla in a bowl. Roll into spheres and place on wax/parchment paper in fridge for 10 minutes. Melt the chocolate chips in the microwave, stirring every 30 seconds. https://emilabraham.com/recipes/mango-pie/ Sun, 20 Aug 2023 17:52:36 -0700 https://emilabraham.com/recipes/mango-pie/ Ingredients 2 store bought 9" graham cracker crusts 28 oz can mango pulp 8 oz Cream cheese 6 oz orange flavor jello powder 14 oz small can condensed milk cardamom powder (optional) Instructions Boil a little less than 2 cups of water and dissolve the jello powder. Set it aside and let it cool. Blend all of the other ingredients until it is a single consistency. Should be a light orange color. https://emilabraham.com/recipes/mango-sticky-rice/ Sun, 20 Aug 2023 17:52:36 -0700 https://emilabraham.com/recipes/mango-sticky-rice/ Ingredients 1 thai glutinous sweet rice 1 2/3 cup coconut milk 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/2 cup sugar ripe mango sliced 2 Instructions Wash the rice until the water runs clear. Then let it sit in cold water overnight. Steam the rice for 25-30 minutes. While rice is steaming, dissolve the sugar in the coconut milk over the stove. Don’t let the mixture boil. Keep it on the stove so it stays warm. https://emilabraham.com/thoughts/port-jefferson-ferry/ Wed, 20 Apr 2022 21:00:17 -0700 https://emilabraham.com/thoughts/port-jefferson-ferry/ I don’t know why I waited so long to try this. For nearly all my holidays throughout the year I would travel from Boston to Central Long Island. This is usually a 6 hour journey if you include traffic when driving near New York City. Typically I would drive to Albany the day before in order to break this trip up into a slightly more manageable 3 hour trip + 4 hour trip. https://emilabraham.com/thoughts/human-wisdom/ Thu, 22 Oct 2020 20:54:50 -0700 https://emilabraham.com/thoughts/human-wisdom/ All human wisdom is contained in these two words: “wait” and “hope”. -Count of Monte Cristo https://emilabraham.com/thoughts/mount-greylock-hike/ Sun, 27 Oct 2019 20:42:18 -0700 https://emilabraham.com/thoughts/mount-greylock-hike/ This was my second overnight hike ever. I went with the same crew: Adam and Matt. Fortunately (maybe unfortunately for the sake of the story) nothing super eventful really happened. Everything went according to plan. The weather was great. We did not have to survive below freezing conditions. We did not really lose the trail. In a sense this is great news. It is a sign that we planned far better. https://emilabraham.com/thoughts/north-dakota-dig/ Wed, 11 Jul 2018 20:19:51 -0700 https://emilabraham.com/thoughts/north-dakota-dig/ I landed in the Bismarck airport and the first thing I am greeted by is a triceratops skull and flying pterosaur bones in the air. It’s going to be a great week. Since I first watched Jurassic Park, I was obsessed with being a paleontologist. Unfortunately(or maybe $fortunately$) I discovered computer science and my career path took a turn. After that, my obsession with the ancient beasts before our time took a spot on the back burner. https://emilabraham.com/thoughts/gentian-pond-hike/ Sat, 10 Feb 2018 19:32:32 -0700 https://emilabraham.com/thoughts/gentian-pond-hike/ When we first went into this hike, we were not even sure if anyone hiked in New Hampshire around this time of year. So we looked for trails that people had done in one weekend in the middle of November. There were not a lot of results. Since this was also our first overnight hike ever, we needed something relatively easy as well. And that’s when I came upon Philip Werner’s blog post. https://emilabraham.com/thoughts/renewing-ssl-certificate/ Sat, 29 Apr 2017 18:59:30 -0700 https://emilabraham.com/thoughts/renewing-ssl-certificate/ The day has finally come. My SSL certificate with StartSSL has expired. I tried renewing it, but their site was down. Also they had warnings saying that major browsers would stop supporting certificates issued by them. So I guess that’s means it is time to jump ship to Let’s Encrypt. Let’s Encrypt made it easy to create an SSL certificate. And best of all, it’s free (they highly recommend donating to EFF). https://emilabraham.com/thoughts/creating-a-mail-server-and-enabling-ssl/ Mon, 09 May 2016 18:17:46 -0700 https://emilabraham.com/thoughts/creating-a-mail-server-and-enabling-ssl/ This weekend, I finally finished creating my mail server. I have always been interested in creating my own for a few reasons: Curiosity on how they work and what kind of effort it would take to build one from the ground up A fancy custom domain as an email address. I was always jealous of those who had one To see what kind of control I could have over my email I first started by reading about how mail servers worked. https://emilabraham.com/thoughts/people-and-relationships/ Wed, 10 Feb 2016 17:57:08 -0700 https://emilabraham.com/thoughts/people-and-relationships/ I hate meeting people, but I like getting to know them. Does that make sense? https://emilabraham.com/thoughts/a-scary-thought/ Tue, 13 Jan 2015 17:45:49 -0700 https://emilabraham.com/thoughts/a-scary-thought/ What if, all of a sudden, we all forgot how to communicate with each other? We forgot how to read, write, speak, listen, and interpret human behavior. All we had were our thoughts and our thoughts alone. No input or output of information. How long would it be before we lost our minds? How long would it be before you yearned, no, absolutely lusted for contact? I would look at you, you would look at me and nothing would happen. https://emilabraham.com/thoughts/before-30/ Sat, 10 Jan 2015 17:38:19 -0700 https://emilabraham.com/thoughts/before-30/ This is an extremely ambitious list for me. If I can complete even 20% of this, I will be completely satisfied. This list is not in any particular order. I will add onto this list as I think of more goals that I want to achieve: Start a company Learn how to fly a plane Learn how to ride a motorcycle Travel to 4 new countries Invest in the stock market Learn 1-2 non-latin based language Contribute to research Make a movie Own property Participate in a dinosaur dig Muay Thai fight Hike the Appalachian Trail https://emilabraham.com/thoughts/dog/ Wed, 07 Jan 2015 17:52:36 -0700 https://emilabraham.com/thoughts/dog/ When seeking a role model, One might want to look at Dog. Dog loves unconditionally. You are master? Dog loves you. You are stranger? Dog loves you. Dog looks past race and creed. Dog does not care if you are happy, sad, mean, or mad. Dog loves you for who you are, not what you do, or say. Dog is just simply, Dog. Human, take notes.