Chris Collins' Notes

The spec is the skill

Taylor Otwell is right that a day is a reasonable default estimate. But not because of vibe coding.

I Bought a 2004 iPod in 2026

This week I bought an iPod Classic 4th Generation (Mono) and I’m planning on daily driving it. It might seem a strange thing to do, but hear me out.

Finishing What I Started: Digitising with a Little Help

WordPress Themes as Artifacts

workon: a simple project switcher for the terminal

EmDash is right about everything, and that's not enough

EmDash is a genuinely clever piece of engineering. It's also a Cloudflare infrastructure pitch dressed up as a WordPress replacement, and those are very different things.

I still use plain text files for all of my notes

In 2018 I wrote about moving to plain text to escape note app churn. In 2026, I am still there. Finder, a single working directory, dated Markdown files, and MarkEdit as a thin editor over real files on disk. No systems to maintain, no plugins to tune. It works even better in an AI-heavy workflow.

The GitHub Abandonware Era

The bar to start a project is gone, but the bar to maintain it hasn't.

Laravel feels like a cheat code when working with AI agents

A lot of the modern web stack quietly pushes you into SaaS funnels and tight vendor lock-in

Retiring eleventy-web-starter

I’ve archived my old Eleventy starter. It served me well for years, but I don’t use it anymore.

Scoping a Local-First Image Archive

For years, I've been thinking about how we store and access our digital files, especially photos.

ExifTool Cheatsheet for organising photos

Personal note of Exiftool commands I use often to organise and rename my photos on disc.

Durgod Taurus K320 Mechanical Keyboard

Using the Durgod Taurus K320 Mechanical Keyboard with Mac OS, including remapping keys and replacing the Windows key.

Remove screenshot delay and overlay on Mac

Remove the small thumbnail that appears for a few seconds in the lower right corner.

Update Node dependencies to their latest version

A quick note on how to update all your npm dependencies to their latest version, including major versions.

I use plain text files for all of my notes

I was very caught up in finding the perfect notes app/tool and then I realised I didn't need it.

Alternatives to Unsplash for free stock photos

Unsplash is great and is the go-to place for many people but here is a list of other offerings in the once humble free stock photos industry