Friction is the signal
I built a tool to catalog the work I forget. The upkeep taught me why I forget it.
Nano's Random Ramblings
My random thoughts on software and other things.
Latest posts
Knowing Enough
AI is leverage on what you already know. Don't trade away the thing that makes the leverage work.
We Sped Up The Part That Wasn't Slow
AI accelerated individual engineering. The bottlenecks at the areas of intersection between orgs didn't move.
What I Hand Off
Trust but verify. The amount of verification depends on the stakes and how well I know the domain.
The Friction That Made Us Talk
Engineers want to solve their own problems, and AI made acting on that motivation cheap. Alignment used to happen before any code. Now it happens after the tools have shipped.
Learn Your Tools
If you don't know how your tools work, you're guessing. Learn the seams.
Speak For Yourself
Your screenshot is not an argument. Tell me what you think.
Your Stakeholders Have Stakeholders (And They All Want Different Things)
I had a plan to fix the Swift migration. I had executive buy-in. Engineers agreed it was a good idea. But this was COVID. Food delivery was exploding. And feature velocity was the only metric that mattered.
Platform Engineering is Archaeology with Deadlines
I joined a company in 2019 to build a bank. COVID killed that project. I got moved to a food delivery app with 1.3 million lines of code, 750k still in Objective-C, and a Swift migration that had stalled for two years.
The Days You Show Up Anyway
I used to think success was about crushing it on your best days. Turns out, the days that really matter are the ones where you barely want to get out of bed.
Explore vs Execute: Finding Your Mode
I've been thinking about how we switch between exploration and execution modes, both in startups and personal projects. Turns out, knowing which mode you're in changes everything.
Why Your "Quick Fix" Takes Two Weeks
Every developer knows that sinking feeling when a "quick" project becomes a multi-week saga. Turns out, there's a reason for that—and it's not just bad estimates.
Finishing up the Prusa XL
I originally pre-ordered the Prusa XL 5 head semi-assembled and received it in the beginning of the year. Looking at the expected build time, I started building it and quickly lost energy to finish it. It sat on the table for six months until I got a not-so-gentle push to finish it from my wife.
Everybody Codes: The Kingdom of Algorithmia
A new Advent of Code style coding puzzle was released this year and it's been so fun to play.
Upgrading to an M4 Max
Apple announced their new MacBooks with M4 processors. I picked up a new MacBook Pro 14" with an M4 Max processor to replace my 2021 MacBook Pro with an M1 Pro.
Major /uses Page Overhaul
I've been tinkering away on my /uses page and it's time for a grand reveal. I've made significant changes since it was first posted.
Site Changelog: Fresh Looks and Funky Features!
I've been busy behind the scenes, sprucing things up on my site, and I can't wait to share the latest and greatest updates with you all.
Choosing A Font
As part of the redesign, I wanted to choose new fonts. For prose, I wanted something legible with high readability. For code, I wanted a compact width.
CSS Theming in 2024
Updating the blog's theming to use new CSS techniques, avoiding flash-of-unstyled-content, and handling OS-level dark/light preferences.
Under Major Construction
This site is currently under major construction. I'm modernizing and touching up everything in the toolchain, while maintaining all legacy links and features.
2020 - What A Year
We are officially halfway through 2020 and boy has it been a wild ride.
Show Me What You Got
See the hardware and software I use daily
50 Things That Made the Modern Economy
An interesting podcast I liked about how the modern economy came to be.
Supporting compactMap in Swift 4
Define an extension on Sequence to make compactMap backwards compatible.
Active Compilation Conditions for Xcode
Pass flags to your iOS App without prepending -D
The Comment Comeback
Adding comments via utteranc.es
Setting Up Absolute Paths in create-react-app
Avoid using relative imports via import {} from '../../../components with CRA.
Release: Alfred Pods Workflow
Search CocoaPods and copy pod 'Pod' to your clipboard with Alfred
Persisting the Last Visited URL in an Android WebView
Where I use Kotlin to load the last visited URL
Using CITEXT With Knex.js
Using the CITEXT PostgreSQL data type with Knex.js
Setup Phoenix Router with a Single Page App
Allow SPA routers to handle your frontend routes.
Atom Plugins for Elm
I've gotten back into using Elm for a pet project of mine. Here are some of the plugins I found most useful for Atom.
ES6: Using Set For Unique Arrays
A quick way to get an array of unique values
Adding A User To An Existing GPG key
Where I fix commits that were signed but unverified in Github.
Theming Via CSS Properties
Where I talk about adding a new feature to my blog where you can switch between a Night and Day theme.
Fix Nokogiri v1.6.8.1 Installation Failure on macOS Sierra
A fix for nokogiri 1.6.8.1 on macOS Sierra by updating libxml2
macOS Sierra: Hang on React Native Init
A fix for hangs that occur on react-native init on macOS Sierra.
Migration to Jekyll
My experience transitioning from Octopress 2.0 to Jekyll 3
Rails 4: Easily Add Reference to Migration
A look into Rails 4's add_reference
How to view open connections on files
Use lsof to learn what your processes use behind the scenes
Make iTerm 2 work with Mac OSX movement keyboard shortcuts
Add support to iTerm2 for and modifiers to move between words
DevOps for Ruby Part 2 - Using Nginx to Host Rails Applications
Continue setting up Rails to use Nginx on a VPS
DevOps for Ruby Part 1: VPS & Ubuntu Installation
Tutorial on how to move your Rails project to a VPS
Setup PostgreSQL for Rails on a Mac
Learn how to setup PostgreSQL on a Mac via CLI or an application
Venture into tmux
A look into how to install and use tmux
Amending git commits
Learn how to amend your git commits with a simple fix