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Blog

Notes on disciplined systems, engineering with LLMs, and B-boying — three pursuits, one operator.

Engineering

Lessons from what I run into at work, learned from and written down.

Series

Series · 10 parts Jul 2026

Reaching a Remote DB From Your Laptop

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

00Reaching a Remote DB From Your Laptop: One Mental Model(overview)01A Database Connection Is Just Five Coordinates 02The Connection URI Is Canonical; Flags Are It Decomposed 03Two Tunnels to a Remote DB: Cloud SQL Auth Proxy vs kubectl port-forward 04docker-compose image vs build: Provenance, Not Existence 05Build-Time COPY Bakes Files In; Volumes Mount Them Live 06One-Shot Query vs Interactive REPL: DB CLIs Fork on One Flag 07The MySQL CLI: Remote Connection and Flags 08The MySQL CLI: Four Ways to Feed Inline SQL 09sqlit: a Keyboard-Only DBeaver, and the Whole Model on One Page

Series · 8 parts Jul 2026

Crop, Resize, Fill: Image Processing

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.

00Crop, Resize, Fill: Four Image-Processing Lessons Learned(overview)01An Image Is More Than a Grid of Pixels 02Image Format Cheat Sheet 03Lossy vs Lossless Drives File Size 04Ad Serving Flips the Format Priority 05libvips Stores an Animation as One Tall Stacked Strip 06One Load Path for Stills and Animation 07Uniform vs Positional Transforms on a Stitched Strip

Series · 10 parts Jul 2026

One Operation, Many Engines

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

00One Operation, Many Engines: A Cross-Engine Query Mental Model(overview)01ClickHouse Data Types: The Set You'll Actually Hit 02Spark SQL Data Types: Primitives, Nested, and struct vs map 03The Portable SQL Core: The 80% That Runs Anywhere 04count(*) vs count(col): It Comes Down to NULL 05LIKE vs ILIKE: Substring Search (and Case) Across SQL Engines 06The ClickHouse Array Functions You'll Actually Reach For: has, arrayMap, multiIf 07Spark Array Functions & collect_list vs collect_set 08From SQL to MongoDB: Operators and Vocabulary, Mapped 09Cross-Engine Query Exercises: Test Yourself (With Answers)

Series · 5 parts Jul 2026

Thread-Safe Login, the Hard Way

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

00Making Login Thread-Safe: Four Lessons a Race Condition Taught Me(overview)01A Mutex Gives You ACID's 'I', and Nothing Else 02Finish First, Then Publish: Never Ship a Half-Built Object 03Python's `with lock:` Always Releases, Even on Exception 04Double-Checked Locking: Two Identical `if`s, Two Different Jobs

Dancing

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Notes and stories from my dancing life.

Series

Series · 12 parts Jul 2026

BBoy Physical Training: The Ten-Layer Map

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

00BBoy Physical Training: The Ten-Layer Map(overview)

01Neural Recruitment: Waking the Most Fibers at Once(coming soon)

02Neural Coordination and Timing: Left-Right Sync, Firing Order(coming soon)

03Muscle Quality and RFD: How Fast You Produce Force(coming soon)

04Tendon Elasticity: Rubber-Band Energy Return(coming soon)

05Motor Coordination: Drilling the Technique In(coming soon)

06Balance: Proprioception and the Vestibular System(coming soon)

07Reaction: Choice Reaction for Battles(coming soon)

08Vision: Seeing It Earlier(coming soon)

09Mobility: Hip, Ankle, and T-Spine Range(coming soon)

10Energy Systems: ATP-PC, Glycolytic, Aerobic(coming soon)

11Recovery: Sleep, HRV, and Nutrition(coming soon)