Project on Josh Wise

Unboxed: Postmortem+

Mon, 17 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Earlier this month, I wrote about building Unboxed, a native macOS app to convert Google Vault MBOX exports into PDFs. The goal was simple: make email archives accessible to non-technical staff handling open records requests. The app worked, but it had a problem—it was slow. Really slow. Large MBOX files would chug along, eating up memory and often crashing the app entirely. I suspect the culprit was PDFKit, Apple’s framework for generating PDFs, struggling to keep up with the workload.

viewFMX

Thu, 30 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

My workplace recently adopted FMX as a platform for managing facility resources and availability. The platform provides robust scheduling capabilities and has proven invaluable for managing room bookings and resource allocation across our district.

However, we quickly identified a gap in our implementation: the need for clear, real-time displays outside each conference room showing current and upcoming bookings. While there are commercial products available that offer this functionality, FMX doesn’t provide dedicated display hardware or a standalone display solution. What they do offer, though, is a comprehensive API - and that’s where my journey began.

orgLink

Wed, 09 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In today’s digital-first educational landscape, teachers are expected to navigate a complex web of online resources. From learning management systems and grading portals, to curriculum repositories and communication platforms, the number of essential links can be overwhelming.

To address these issues, I developed an internal extension deployed via our Google Workspace account. This tool provides a centralized, easily accessible hub for all essential web resources used by teachers in our district. I decided recently that this extension could be improved upon, and made available for others to solve similar problems.