Navigation without thinking
For a long time my window management strategy was just tolerating cmd+tab . With a few apps open it works fine, but once you have a dozen things running you are cycling through a strip of icons, overshooting, going...
Kyle McDonald
Kyle McDonald's writings, projects, and posts.
Latest posts
Making things your own
I keep accidentally writing about the same thing. The topics look different at first. A split keyboard I have remapped so many times the layout barely resembles what it shipped with. A sim racing rig dialed in across...
Wireless IEMs are the perfect sim racing audio setup
For a long time I kept my old SteelSeries headset around even though I already liked IEMs more. In the sim rig the cable was enough of a pain that the headset kept winning anyway. With wired IEMs, the cable coming out...
Rebuilding Spotify Wrapped for a self-hosted music setup
Before Spotify Wrapped was a thing, I used Last.fm to track my music. I liked that it mostly stayed out of the way. It tracked what I played, and later I could go back and look at it. That was really all I needed. It...
My sim racing setup and how I actually use it
Most sim rig posts are basically parts lists. They show the cockpit, list the hardware, maybe throw in a few impressions, and that is kind of it. That stuff is fine, but it skips the part I actually care about now....
I bought a split keyboard for wrist pain and it changed how I work
I did not switch to a split keyboard and immediately love it. It took a while to get comfortable. The first couple of weeks felt like I had messed up something that used to be automatic. I was slower, certain keys felt...
Building a self healing homelab
I got tired of finding out my homelab was broken only when I tried to use it. I’d sit down to watch something on Jellyfin , hit play, nothing happened, and end up opening my laptop instead. Playback would fail, an...
Screwdrivers, RJ45, and eye rolls: The struggle for wired internet
Since moving into our apartment my office has been as far away from our router as it can possibly get. For day to day use this didn't matter much, but when gaming the latency was becoming unbearable. So of course,...
My first year sim racing: a journey of learning and community
Over the past year, I've thrown myself headfirst into sim racing. What started with a dusty Logitech wheel from my dad turned into a full-blown obsession involving cockpit upgrades, direct-drive wheels, and deep dives...
Why composability keeps React components maintainable
Over the years, I’ve built and rebuilt component libraries in different environments, mostly in startups where speed is a priority. The biggest lesson I’ve learned? Composability is everything. It’s tempting to make a...
Typescript moduleSuffixes with React Native
For the longest time, there was no easy way for typescript to mirror the react-native compiler's pattern of prioritizing files based on extension ( .native , .web ). This meant that types in a component that needed to...
Predictable user actions with useQueue
When working on projects that require a lot of user interaction that depend on a server response, I've ran into 3 major problems: the server response is slow, consecutive calls to the API can resolve unexpectedly...
Learnings as an Engineering Manager
So it's been about a year that I can call myself an "Engineering Manager", though I've only been officially promoted to that title about 4 months ago. I obviously cannot call myself an expert but, I've...