My First Trip to Seattle: What YouTube Didn't Tell Me
We walked 20,000 steps across Seattle and ended the night in the back of a police car. Here's the rest of my first week in the city.
- travel
Blog
Notes on software engineering, AI, web design, and helping small businesses grow online, plus anything else I'm learning along the way.
Why I Moved My SvelteKit Site From Vercel to Cloudflare
My site paid $30 a month for cold starts it didn't need. How I prerendered every page, moved to Cloudflare Workers, and cut time to first byte to 183 ms.
- DevOps
- software engineering
Edge Functions in Practice
Edge functions promise faster responses by running code near your users. Here's what works at the edge, what doesn't, and when the latency matters.
- software engineering
- web design
How to Write a Brief for Your Web Developer
A clear brief is the difference between a project that runs smoothly and one that goes sideways. Here's what to include and what to leave out.
- small business
- web design
SEO for Developers: What Your Framework Means for Rankings
SSR, SSG, SPA: your rendering strategy decides whether Google can find and rank your pages. Here's the technical side of SEO for developers.
- SEO
- web design
Visual Branding on a Budget
You don't need a design agency to create a cohesive visual identity. Here's how to build a polished brand look with free and low-cost tools.
- branding
- small business
Learning in Public: Why I Blog About What I Build
Publishing what I learn has compounded into the most valuable habit of my engineering career. Here's how it works and why you should start.
- career
- software engineering
Building Accessible Components from Scratch
Accessibility isn't a feature you bolt on at the end. Here's how to build ARIA-compliant UI components without relying on a component library.
- web design
- software engineering
Why I Use Feature Flags for Everything
Feature flags aren't just for A/B tests. They're a deployment safety net, a debugging tool, and the key to shipping faster with less risk.
- software engineering
- DevOps
Side Projects as Career Accelerators
Side projects aren't just hobbies. They're the fastest way to learn new skills, build a portfolio, and open doors that your day job can't.
- software engineering
- career
Server-Side Rendering vs Static Generation in SvelteKit
SvelteKit lets you mix SSR, SSG, and client-side rendering on a per-route basis. Here's when to use each approach and how to combine them effectively.
- web design
- SEO
How to Scope a Software Project for a Non-Technical Client
The gap between a client's vision and a buildable project is where most engagements go wrong. Here's how to bridge it without jargon, scope creep, or surprises.
- small business
- career
The Case for Boring Technology in 2026
The most reliable systems I've built use the most boring tools. Here's why proven technology beats shiny frameworks, especially for solo devs and small teams.
- software engineering
- technology
Google Business Profile: The Free Tool You're Ignoring
Your Google Business Profile might be more important than your website for local search. Here's how to set it up right and use it as a real marketing channel.
- marketing
- small business
Structured Logging Changed How I Debug
Moving from console.log to structured, queryable logs transformed how I investigate production issues. Here's the practical shift and why it matters.
- software engineering
- DevOps
Building a Brand Voice for Your Small Business Website
Your brand voice is how your business sounds in every headline, email, and page of your website. Here's how to find yours and keep it consistent.
- branding
- small business
The Engineer's Guide to Writing That People Read
Most engineers have more to share than they realize. Here's how to start writing technical content that's clear, useful, and actually gets read.
- software engineering
- career
Local SEO for Small Businesses: What Moves the Needle
Why search is worth a local business's time, and the specific tactics that help you show up when nearby customers are looking.
- SEO
- small business
Svelte 5 Runes: A Year Later
After a full year of building with Svelte 5's runes syntax in production, here's what worked, what surprised me, and what I'd tell someone starting today.
- web design
- technology
RAG Is Not a Silver Bullet
Retrieval-augmented generation is the default architecture for knowledge-grounded AI. But it fails in ways most teams don't anticipate until production.
- software engineering
- AI
5 Signs Your Website Is Costing You Customers
Your website might be turning customers away without you knowing it. Here are five common problems and how to fix each one.
- small business
- web design
Building Reliable Tool-Use in LLM Agents
Tool calls are the most fragile part of agentic LLM workflows. Here are patterns that make them predictable: schema design, validation, and retries.
- software engineering
- AI
Analytics That Actually Matter for Small Business Websites
Pageviews are vanity metrics. Here are the numbers that actually tell you whether your website is helping your business grow.
- small business
- digital marketing
The Hidden Cost of AI Wrapper Products
Thin wrappers around LLM APIs aren't defensible products. Here's why they fail and what to build instead.
- software engineering
- AI
Email Marketing Still Works: A Guide for Small Businesses
Social media gets the attention, but email quietly delivers the conversions. Here's how a small business can build a list that drives revenue.
- digital marketing
- small business
Prompt Engineering Is Software Engineering
Prompts are production artifacts. They deserve version control, testing, review processes, and deployment strategies, just like any other code you ship.
- software engineering
- AI
The Real Cost of a Custom Website vs a Template
Custom build or template? Breaking down the true costs, tradeoffs, and decision points so you can invest wisely in your business's online presence.
- small business
- web design
When to Eval: Building Evaluation Pipelines for LLM Features
Most teams ship LLM features without systematic evaluation. Here's when evals matter, how to keep them lightweight, and how to catch regressions early.
- software engineering
- AI
AI Products Don't Fail Loudly, They Fail Quietly
Why debugging AI systems is less about fixing errors and more about auditing decision-making.
- software engineering
- AI
Website Redesign: Building a Design System from Scratch
How I rebuilt my personal site from the ground up with a custom design system and a component-driven workflow.
- web design
- software engineering
Building Agentic AI for Personal Finance: Lessons Learned
What I learned designing an agentic AI system to prioritize and forecast spending, with guardrails that keep it explainable, auditable, and context-aware.
- software engineering
- AI
I Rewrote My SvelteKit Backend in Go, and I'd Do It Again
Why I moved from a serverless SvelteKit backend to a standalone Go service, and what I gained from the split.
- software engineering
Single Prompt vs Step-Based LLM Workflows: A Design Tradeoff
Exploring the tradeoff between single-prompt convenience and step-based control when designing LLM-powered features.
- software engineering
- AI
My 2025 Wrapped: What I Built, Shipped, and Learned in AI
A look back at the AI side projects I built in 2025 and the technologies that shaped how I think about shipping AI into production.
- software engineering
- AI
Spring Cleaning: Rebuilding My Website with Svelte 5
A spring rebuild of my website in Svelte 5, and how its new features and modern patterns left the codebase cleaner and more efficient.
- web design
Ogre Architecture 101: A Guide to Onion Architecture
Learn how to build a more maintainable, testable, and resilient software system using Onion Architecture.
- software engineering
The Secret to Software Engineer Growth: Embrace the Unknown
Growth as a software engineer comes from running toward the unknown. Here's how I take ownership of hard problems and break them into steps.
- software engineering
Brewing Code: Coffee's Love Affair with Software Engineering
Explore the aromatic world of coffee in software engineering, from the allure of fresh brews to the corporate dramas over the coffee machine.
- software engineering
Secret Sauce: What Makes Customers Flock to Your Business
Discover the key ingredients that turn your business into a customer magnet.
- small business
Instagram vs. Facebook vs. Google Ads for Your Business
Explore the strengths of Instagram, Facebook, and Google advertising to determine the best fit for your business.
- digital marketing
- small business
Why Your Small Business Needs a Website
Why a website still matters for a small business, from the cafe to the bowling alley, and how to take your business online without the overwhelm.
- web design
- small business
- digital marketing