Seth Black

AI & Startup Professional

When asked what I do for a living my family has
come up with probably the best description of
me: "He's a professional nerd."

What does that mean, though? I love to nerd-out on lots of things, and I
get to do that for a living! Specifically, I focus on consulting
startups and small tech companies.

Need some help with your tech & AI strategy? Let's talk!

Essays, Articles & Guides

A Third AI Future

The horrifying - yet eerily familiar - dystopia full of murder-bots and all-knowing robot overlords; and the oh-so-close utopia featuring flying cars and droid servants darting around: these futures have been part of our collective imagination for over a century now. As much as I love Sci-Fi, I am compelled to promote a less intense and much more practical future. read on »

Seth's Programming Books List

I love consuming new information. The first big breakthrough in my reading journey was Amazon's book delivery service. It was no longer necessary for me to coerce one of my parents into driving to B. Dalton and watch as I aimlessly wandered... read on »

What is a Startup?

The term startup is used to describe a company that is in its early stages of development. Startups are typically small and have a limited amount of resources. They are often funded by venture capitalists, angel investors, or other private investors. read on »

How to Conduct Consistent Engineering Interviews

After more than two decades as an engineer and over a decade as a hiring manager I've experienced my fair share of terrible engineering interviews. From quizzes to whiteboarding, take-home tests to awkward real-time coding exercises; I feel as though every startup I've worked at has had the exact same growing pains. read on »

Stop Lying about Technical Debt

Technical debt is a term that has been used to describe a myriad of different things. The most common use of the term is to describe the amount of work that needs to be done to fix a system that has been poorly designed or implemented. read on »

Project Highlight

fiscus
fiscus

I've been investing in real estate since the 2010s and realized that my property investment modeling system could be used by others, so I built it!

Python
Flask
MariaDB
ReactJS
NextJS
AWS
Vercel

Running in Production
Podcasts

I chatted with Nick Janetakis from Running in Production about the software and hardware stack that has been running the taleas website for the last decade...more.

Photography
seth.black

I <3 photography, this is my personal showcase.

Canon EOS 6D
Benro Tripod & Head
Photoshop

The Bluetooth Candle
The Bluetooth Candle

C
Objective-C
Java
Rhino3d
3d Printing
Elbow Grease

Seth & Adriana
Seth & Adriana

Adriana and I got married, so why would I not personally design, draw, develop and code our wedding website?

Python
Django
Nginx
Sqlite
Photoshop
Illustrator

FindMeNoms
FindMeNoms

FindMeNoms is an easy way to "find tasty food around you wherever you are". This is a side project that was born out of my need for an app/website that would remember all of the tasty places that I have eaten at, or would recommend to someone, or have been recommended to me. Basically, Yelp wasn't cutting it, as I'd find myself falling down the rabbit hole of reading one-star reviews and laughing at how crazy people can be instead of actually finding food.

Python
Django
PostgreSQL
Redis
Memcached
Objective-C
Java
JQuery
Javascript
Ionic
Photoshop
Illustrator

taleas
taleas

In 2008 I took up drawing as an easy way to vent my artistic frustrations (it was either that, poetry or expressive dance). After a while I had a solid little following and decided to publish my work on the internet as a full-fledged webcomic. Taleas is that comic.

Python
Django
Sqlite
Memcached
Photoshop
Illustrator
Lots of India Ink

Virtual Sales
Virtual Sales

This was a short-lived startup idea. The basic premise was, well, just watch the explainer video.

Python
Pyramid
MySQL
Memcached
RabbitMQ
Twilio
Javascript
JQuery

ADAM.WEB
ADAM.WEB

Document management for schools, doctor's offices, and pretty much anyone else who would give us money. Unfortunately it didn't work out too well. I did get a really cool logo out of it, though.

PHP
Nginx
PostgreSQL
JQuery
Javascript

WebWorx
WebWorx

My very first startup: web development, web hosting and an ISP. This is the very first time I got to work with my friend Darrel. He designed our sites, logos, business cards and even mousepads! No joke.

PHP
Nginx
MySQL
JQuery
Javascript