Thoughts and musings of a nerd and software developer.
Growing up, I remember games being handed out as shareware and/or demos. You'd get a game, be able to play a few levels, see if it's for you, and if it is, buy the full version. A popular example of this was the eternal classic, Doom . Demos and trials are still around today, but I don't see them quite as much. Now some game developers might have even more of a reason not to even consider demos,…
There's been a lot of consternation in baseball this season about the Los Angeles Dodgers. They have won the last two World Series and are currently on track to make the playoffs again this year, barring an epic collapse. They currently have one of the best players I've ever seen in Shoei Ohtani , a two-way marvel who can both pitch and clobber the ball. They've also stacked their team with some…
Here is something that gets lost in all the excitement about AI productivity: most software engineers became engineers because they love writing code. Not managing code. Not reviewing code. Not supervising systems that produce code. Writing it. The act of thinking through a problem, designing a solution, and expressing it precisely in a language that makes a machine do exactly what you intended.…
I keep hearing people talking about John Steinbeck's East of Eden . I keep hearing lots of praise about it, and I keep thinking about reading it earlier this year and having to at times force myself to finish it. One of the things I've tried to do this year has been mix in classics in my reading. I read Frankenstein by Mary Shelley back in March and chose East of Eden in June as the 2nd in my…
This week it's some CSS tricks for avoiding having to use classes for styling, powering data centers, some hints at the next XBOX, and more. Web Development A workaround for hiding empty slots in Chromium - Dave Rupert Don't Use A Class For That! - Alvaro Montoro Technology They don’t make ’em like Sublime Text anymore - David Bushell Data Centers Are Easy to Build. Powering Them Is Complicated,…
Romantic heartbreak has an elaborate infrastructure. There are films for it. Songs for it. Poetry, rituals, sympathy, advice columns, entire industries dedicated to helping people metabolise romantic loss. Friendship grief, however, remains oddly invisible. Nobody teaches you how painful it feels to slowly lose access to someone who once knew your inner life intimately. Someone who understood the…
It's been a good week, with a brutally hot and humid heat wave towards the end. End of I-League's Regular Season The 8 week regular season of I-League finished with us winning 8-4 and finishing 6-2. We're off to the playoffs and hope to win Monday to make it to the championship. I feel like my play this season hasn't been quite up to snuff, but hockey is a team sport and my teammates have picked…
I found this book from an episode of the Decoder Podcast . The premise is that Joanna Stern used AI, LLMs, and robots for many of her tasks and jobs for 2025. The book goes through her experiences, what the tools did well, what they struggled with, and what they simply failed miserably at. I appreciated her humor in her writing and talking about some of her experiences, both good and bad. As you…
There's been a lot of news surrounding the company Flock and its cameras. The company is mostly known for its automated license plate reading cameras. The premise is simple, license plates are pretty simple to use optical character recognition (OCR) on. As you drive by, it takes pictures of your license plate, reads it, and records when it took the picture. Then Flock users, normally police and…
To bypass the issue of grid demand, many data center builders have promised to power the buildings themselves. The problem with that plan is that it’s easy to build a warehouse full of GPUs. Building power plants and transmission lines to power those warehouses will take years and cost billions more than the data centers. A skilled and efficient builder can complete a data center construction in…
At the heart of this and as I mull this over again and again is the idea that the requirement to earn a profit leads to behavior that's directly counter to the open ideals upon which the web was founded. Removing that requirement allows for more openness (though that is still voluntary). If you believe in the open web, you'll make things open. If you support the ideal, you'll build for it. If all…
In the case of software, the industrialisation of production is giving rise to a new class of software artefact, which we might term disposable software : software created with no durable expectation of ownership, maintenance, or long-term understanding. I can see where spinning up a quick prototype might be a good use of vibe coding. Maybe even a little personal-use app could as well. But I would…
July was a mostly quiet month that started with a massive heat wave that happened to occur as my central AC crapped the bed. Early Heat Wave The month started off with a heat wave over the 4th of July weekend with temperatures reaching triple digits. And of course our AC wasn't working properly. Our house was quite uncomfortable and while we were able to deal with it for the most part, I felt…
The main winners in a gold rush are the ones selling pickaxes, and it sure seems to me like the token vendors are about the only ones who really stand to gain from most of this, if we’re adhering to any coherent, holistic definition of productivity. I wonder how much of the supposed productivity gains are either eaten up by reviewing the pull requests, or later, fixing the tech debt and bugs…
In one article on its site , ISBNdb explains that printed books published before 2022 are ideal for AI training data because they don’t include AI generated text. This just makes me sad. I know it's nothing new, but seeing books destroyed to create new AI slop is just painful to see. Thank you for reading this with RSS and keeping RSS alive! You're awesome! Reply via: Email • Mastodon •…
As I have mentioned many times prior, I do not use generative AI for anything in my personal life. I don't use it to help write posts or code for this site or any of my little side projects. I have many reasons for staying away from AI and LLMs. Some of them I might be able to get over for some tasks, but the one that I don't know if I'll ever be able to get over is its effect on the environment.…
A little light this week. A dive into the new SLNX format for .NET solutions, thoughts on the share button, and more. .NET What is IdentityServer and When Do You Need it? - Maarten Balliauw Exploring the SLNX Solution File Format - Dave Brock Web Development The Best Loading States Are No Loading States - Jenna Smith Nobody clicks your share buttons - Derek Hanson AI LLMs and performative…
I picked this book up after re-watching the HBO series and the accompanying podcast. I figured reading the source material would provide more insight into these extraordinary men and what they went through in their World War II campaigns. The book starts off talking about all the training they went through. The Airborne were a new concept, the US had never had airborne divisions prior to World War…
It was a quiet week. Resting After seeing the doctor about some hip pain, it was recommended to take it easy for a week and avoid strenuous exercise. That meant no hockey, no lifting, and no running. Whelp, there goes me getting back into a rhythm with lifting. Oh well, I think it was definitely the right call to rest. I got a few walks in, but otherwise took it easy. Personal Site Redesign I've…
Since around mid-March, I've started a new morning routine for myself. I've been journaling every morning in an attempt to calm my mind before the start of the day. I get up, walk Tess, pour myself a cup of coffee and put my thoughts to paper. I currently use a Moleskine-like lined notebook although I'm planning on switching to a dotted soft cover LEUCHTTURM1917 as I've used them for my nighttime…
If you haven't noticed, I'm a bit of a sports fan. My two biggest sports are baseball and hockey. I grew up playing baseball, and have been playing ice hockey for the last 13 years. They're sports I love and follow. The one thing I haven't been all that great with is watching them. I'm not ignoring what's going on, I follow what's going on with the teams I follow, Phillies (baseball), Flyers…
Ever since Trump re-entered the White House in January 2025, one of his biggest targets has been the trans community. He and the GOP have been going after them, trying to strip away their rights and their dignity. In some ways it feels like they've become the right's punching bags which is upsetting in so many ways. But then I see articles like this one , and it brings me joy to see a group of…
This week it's some thoughts on .NET development, CSS shorthand properties, AI and Linux, and more. .NET 40 Lessons I Learned in 12 Years as a .NET Developer - Anton Martyniuk The Codebase Is the Prompt: Wolverine, Vertical Slices, and AI-Assisted Development - Jeremy D. Miller Web Development When to use (and not use) CSS shorthand properties - Elaina Natario The end of responsive images - Mat…
It was mostly a quiet week. I had three straight days of hockey, but then a quiet rest of the week. Bombers Regular Season Over My hockey team, The Bombers finished the regular season 8-7-1. It was a noticeable improvement over the last two seasons. We're currently in a playoff spot, but need two teams to each lose their final game in order to keep the playoff spot. Now we have to wait until early…
My wife and I recently did a re-watch (for me) of the HBO series Band of Brothers . It tells the story of Easy Company of the 101st Airborne in World War II. It's based on true stories and real people and I can't say enough good things about it. It was a fantastic miniseries that I would highly recommend to anyone. The Series I originally watched Band of Brothers in 2023 after putting it off for…
I love music. It's not uncommon for me to have headphones on while working listening to whatever catches my ear. Something that's caught my ear lately has been alternate versions of albums and songs I love. Below are four examples of what I mean. They take artists, albums, and songs I love and turn them into something new and amazing in their own way. The Wonder Years - Burst & Decay The Wonder…
When everyone fakes an opinion to look engaged, you end up with a five-way debate over something that should’ve been a coin flip. Real opinions get drowned out by performative ones. “I don’t care, just pick one” is permission for the room to move on There's not always a single correct way to build things. Choose one and go with it. You will likely be able to change it later if the need arises.…
Some thoughts about opinionated CSS, moving from developer to architect in your career path, an interview with Cory Doctorow, and more. .NET Doing More with GitHub Copilot as a .NET Developer - Wendy Breiding Web Development Do graphs and charts need to be accessible? - Martin Underhill Our CSS isn't opinionated enough - Craig Abbott General Development Fast is better than slow - Patrick Dubroy…
It was a quiet week, spent mostly indoors due to the wildfire smoke. Smoky We spent a lot of time indoors this week thanks to the Canadian wildfires and the smoke that settled over southeastern Pennsylvania and the northeastern United States as a whole. The air quality was horrible and I could smell the smoke the few times I was outside. I'm hoping it clears soon. New Strength Training Routine…
One of my favorite authors is Cory Doctorow. Both his blog and his books are phenomenal. I often wonder what it would be like to always have topics to write about in depth. He has a new long-form article out it seems every day and I heard on a recent podcast episode with Trevor Noah that he wrote 9 books during the COVID-19 pandemic. I know I'll never be as prolific a writer, but I wish I could…
In Texas just this Tuesday, an ICE officer shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a father of three who lived in the US for 35 years building houses and caring for his family. The agency immediately released a statement justifying lethal force on someone it alleges tried to “weaponize his vehicle.” Videos showing parts of the confrontation already suggest it’s probably another bullshit story like…
This week its the release of TypeScript 7.0, trouble for U.S. science, some amazing space photos, and more. Web Development You can style alt text like any other text - Andy Bell Browsers Treat Big Sites Differently - Den Odell A few ways of specifying per-theme colours in only CSS - Chris Morgan Announcing TypeScript 7.0 - Daniel Rosenwasser The problem with HTML reset buttons - Adam Silver AI…
It was a quiet week without much going on. The weather thankfully cooled off so I had that gong on for me. Weather Cooled Off Some Thankfully, the brutal heat wave we suffered through this weekend broke Monday. I was even able to get some runs in this week without feeling like I was dying from the heat. Considering how bad it was at the end of last week, I'll take it. Disliking macOS Tahoe So…
One thing I've been monitoring is my cell phone screen time. I've been doing pretty good lately, hovering around one hour a day. One thing I've been trying is to keep my phone in another room than whichever room I'm in. That goes along with me keeping the phone out of the bedroom at night. For over a year now, I've replaced my phone as my alarm clock with a simple bedside table alarm clock . Its…
Back in college and shortly after, I would hop between different Linux distributions. Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Fedora, OpenSuse, Slackware, Gentoo, Debian, and I’m sure a few others were all on my desktop at some point. It was fun trying to see what the differences were and which one I liked best. Now, it’s a little different. Now, I want stability. I want something that works. Originally I had tried…
This week it's some thoughts on accessibility, the rising cost of AI tokens, problems at XBOX, and more. Web Development Three stoic principles for better web accessibility - Steve Frenzel The Internet Enshittification, Despotification, and the Open Internet - Mike Masnick The Boring Internet - Terry Godier AI The Tokenpocalypse Is Here: Companies Are Scrambling To Stop Spending So Much on AI -…
It was a busy-ish June. Fortunately it did include a nice little vacation in the middle of the month. New York City In the middle of the month, my wife and I ventured up to New York City for my birthday as has become tradition. We were a little more subdued this trip as we didn't really do any of the typical NYC things like go see a show or museum. Our hotel was right by Bryant Park so we enjoyed…
It was a brutally hot week here in southeastern Pennsylvania. I'm glad the heat wave seems to be lifting. Bad Week for Hockey I played four games this week, including back to backs on both Monday and Thursday. Unfortunately all of them were losses. The games on Thursday were a little rough as we were short skaters because of the 4th of July holiday and vacations. I was pretty sore the day after…
A while back, I read Means of Control by Byron Tau. It was a book that talked about all the ways the government is using various services like social media and ad tech to get around the 4th amendment to track us. One of the suggestions on how to help avoid said tracking was to stop using both MacOS and Windows. I’d been keeping my desktop booted into Linux Mint rather than Windows 11 for a while,…
I don’t miss floppy disks. I miss the mindset they demanded—that every byte matters, that constraints breed creativity, and that software should be light on its footprint. I remember booting up the Amiga computer as a kid using floppy disks. All the games I played on it used 3.5-inch floppy disks and I don't remember any of them needing more than 1 disk. Thank you for reading this with RSS and…
Over the last couple months, I've been using my desktop as my primary machine, only using my MacBook when sitting out on the couch or porch. On my desktop, I've remained on my Linux Mint partition, continuing to stick with Linux. Historically, I've never really done much with gaming on Linux as I've often had issues with getting Wine to work properly. Well, it's been a while since I've really…
This week it's an article looking at how to do theming with CSS, some bad announcing at the World Cup, layoffs at Bungie, and more. Web Development How we’re approaching theming with modern CSS - Andy Bell I Built the Same App 10 Times: Evaluating Frameworks for Mobile Performance - Loren Stewart Understanding the fundamentals of CSS Layout - Kilian Valkhof AI The goal isn't to write more code -…
Anthropic ran a randomized trial in early 2026 where engineers learned a new Python library, half with AI assistance and half without. Both groups finished the tasks at the same speed. But the AI group bombed the follow-up comprehension quiz: 50% versus 67% for the manual group, with the gap widening on debugging. The interesting cut was inside the AI group itself. Engineers who used AI to ask…
I missed last week as my wife and I went to New York City last weekend to celebrate my birthday. New York City We spent almost a week in New York City for my birthday. I wish we could say we did a lot, but we really just took it as a little vacation. We started off each day with coffee and a pastry in Bryant Park reading and relaxing. Afternoons were spent wandering the city. The weather was…
This week it's help on how to choose between data structures in C#, the awesomeness of HTML, thoughts on data privacy and more. .NET C#: Should This Be a Class, Record, Struct, or Interface? - Chris Pietschmann Web Development The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML - Terence Eden Privacy Things I Think I Think... Data Privacy - Ted Neward AI Read this before you vibe-code another app - Yael…
A fair many pieces on AI, some thoughts on Safari & Chrome, and more. .NET C# / .NET Performance: Why Is It Slow 'Here' and What Should You Optimize First? - Chris Pietschmann Web Development A tale of two browsers - Jeremy Keith Reminder: You Can Stitch Together Lots of Little HTML Pages With Navigations For Interactions - Jim Nielsen Building a UI Without Breakpoints - Amit Sheen AI The American…
During a televised cabinet meeting at the White House in 2025, Musk, wearing a murdered-out MAGA hat signed by his boss, had a giggle about “accidentally” canceling Ebola prevention. He said it was a mistake that would be fixed. USAID whistleblower Nicholas Enrich, testifying before Congress, said that fix never came. A little more than a year after Musk’s comments, Africa is facing what could…
And here's the bit that really keeps me up at night: a lot of this AI-generated code? Nobody fully understands it. The person who "wrote" it didn't really write it. They prompted it, skimmed it, maybe ran it once. When it breaks in production at 2am, the person on-call didn't write it and the person who prompted it can't explain it. You've just increased the surface area for incidents while…
“Another developer on a contract working with me at the moment generates massive amounts of code, leaving me with 1000+ lines of pull requests to review and it takes massive amounts of time to do this. This leads to me feeling more tired and burned out than I've ever felt in my entire life. The cognitive overhead of switching between prompting, coding, checking the LLM's output is a massive energy…
It was a quick week. It felt like it was all hockey...which it was. Too Much Hockey If there ever was such a thing, it was personified as this week. Originally I was going to do the I-League practice sessions Monday to get some reps in net, and then play 2 games Friday for the 2 other teams I play for. Well, that changed when I was asked to fill in both Wednesday and Thursday for other teams that…