Blog

How one engineer doubled output with AI, then spent the saved time on life: value, judgment, advice for newcomers, and a system for yourself.

An agent is one more system you design: script what you can, leave only real judgment to the LLM, then graduate repeated judgments into scripts.

75 production images, 6,075 automated runs: why WebP beat AVIF for serving, and how to ship it.

Splitting Chrome from an API pod for autoscaling, and every networking trap along the way.

A friend's JWT auth worked. Signatures verified. But seven security gaps sat wide open. These notes are the result of that audit.

19 goroutines, one shared browser, exit 137. A postmortem tracing Go concurrency, GMP scheduling, memory layers, and the semaphore fix that stopped the bleeding.

An automated dependency update bumped the Golang version and cascaded through Docker, Alpine, and libvips, teaching nine lessons about version coupling, contaminated test oracles, and silent security gaps.

One mental model for reaching a remote database from your laptop: the five coordinates, the tunnel, docker packaging, and one-shot vs REPL queries.

A one-line migration ticket hid two opposite-facing TLS setups. Untangling the PKI behind it — the certificates, keys, and CAs — from inbound one-way TLS to outbound mTLS to Kafka.

A GIF crop bug that rendered garbage taught how images and animation really work — format trade-offs, libvips page-strips, and one load path for stills and animation.

One operation, three engines: query ClickHouse, Spark, and MongoDB by thinking in intent instead of memorizing three sets of syntax.

A production race condition taught four lessons about locks, atomicity, and safe publication.

A ten-layer map for BBoy physical training, from neural recruitment and RFD to reaction, mobility, and recovery.

James Clear's Atomic Habits as a systems-first map: two foundations, one habit loop, the four laws, and how to keep a habit alive past boredom.