The Kinshasa Manifesto
Rope-a-dope for distributed systems — event-driven patterns that don't just survive autonomous agents, but get stronger under the beating.
David Merrick
Engineering, agentic systems, home infrastructure, and the occasional adventure.
Latest posts
Hello Distributed System, My Old Friend
How my personal AI went from a flat-file monorepo to a Kafka microservice architecture in my basement.
Agentic Fundamentals
Five rules for working agentically: plan first, test upfront, manage cognitive overhead, verify continuously, and keep the work human-readable.
The Fellowship of the Smart Things
A new house, an appliance dragon named Smaug, 200 sensors, and the eighteen-agent Fellowship I built to keep them all under control.
Shire: 10G Home Network Buildout
Dead zones, Comcast outages during the workday, a coworker with spare gear, and a full enterprise-grade rebuild of my home network.
Meet Luke and Leia
I adopted two cats this spring — a brother-and-sister pair from Cat Adoption Team in Sherwood. Here they are.
First Ascent (Agentic Mountain)
One route up Agentic Mountain: what I learned coding with AI agents, and why it's good for humans.
How I built a 111 kWh home battery system for 35% of retail
From a small Panel-1 install to a whole-home battery system: 11 EcoFlow Delta Pro Ultras hauled back from Idaho, $15k cash on ~$42k of MSRP, $15,926 back from the IRS, and a Death Star joke that named the whole thing.
Why I'll still use 1Password over Apple's new password manager
Apple Passwords is great, but lacking several key features that 1Password has
How to print a Notion page
Notion printing is awful. Here's a workaround.
2023 Europe Cycling Trip
Cycling trip with my dad and sister along the Danube from Germany to Austria
Wallowas Backpacking, July 2023
A weekend backpacking trip to Ice Lake, in the Wallowas
Sabbatical Week 4 - Cat Ba Island, Hanoi, Da Nang, and Seoul
A chill last week of sabbatical in Vietnam and South Korea
Sabbatical Week 3 - Ninh Binh, Hanoi, and Ha Long Bay
I spent the third week of my sabbatical exploring northern Vietnam and on a cruise in Ha Long Bay
Sabbatical Week 2 - Hoi An, Hue, Phong Nha, and Ninh Binh
A week of exploring central Vietnam
Sabbatical Week 1 - Vietnam Visa Nightmares and Salvaging the Trip
My Vietnam visa was denied at the gate, but I managed to salvage the trip and spend a few days in Japan and Taiwan while waiting for a new one to get processed.
Revisiting Vietnam after 23 years
How to upscale video with AI
Upscaling old 480p video to 4k using Topaz Labs Video AI.
Working with text in IntelliJ
Some useful tips for working with text in IntelliJ. Bulk-editing, alphabetizing, text-substitution, text expansion, etc.
How I digitized hundreds of old MiniDV tapes
I returned home from a recent trip to my parents' place with a box full of old tapes. Here's how I digitized them.
How I'm doing backups in 2023
I decided to create a more robust data backup strategy for my family in early 2023. Here's what I put into place.
How to quickly convert HEIC to JPEG in macOS
Use macOS's quick right-click action to convert HEIC to JPEG.
Pro Tip - Boolean Searches in the Google Photos Web UI
Google Photos's web UI isn't always great for people searches, but there are hidden parameters you can pass to make it behave more like it does on mobile.
State of my smart home, 2023
How to digitize old family photos with the Epson FastFoto
The Epson FastFoto is a blazing-fast scanner for digitizing your family's memories. Here's why I recommend it.
Best of 2022
A few favorite travels, books, movies, podcasts, and games from 2022, in no particular order 🙂
Advent of Code 2022 in Kotlin
Costa Rica 2022
Highlights from a December 2022 trip to Costa Rica with my girlfriend. We stayed in Ojochal, Quepos, and La Fortuna.
Ride Report: Trail of the Couer d'Alenes, September 2022
In September 2022, my dad and I did rode the length of the Trail of the Couer d'Alenes, in Idaho.