I Rebuilt My Blog for the Fifth Time
Every rewrite taught me something different. This one taught me to stop rewriting.
Welcome
Building with clarity. Shipping with intent.
Thoughts on engineering, design systems, developer experience, and the craft of building software that lasts.
A brief timeline
-
View-source kid. Built fan sites for games I loved, broke them, rebuilt them. Learned more from other people's markup than any class.
-
Studied approximately nothing related to computers, kept coding at night anyway. First freelance gigs: restaurant menus, band pages, a very pink wedding site.
-
First real engineering job. Junior to senior in four caffeinated years — wrote everything down along the way, which turned into this blog.
-
Design engineer working on design systems and web performance. Writing more than ever: the blog passed 100 posts this year.
Latest articles
All postsSQLite Is Probably All You Need
Before you reach for a managed database cluster, consider the file that's been quietly running the world since 2000.
Understanding Closures, Finally
The explanation I wish someone had given me ten years ago: closures are just functions with a backpack.
CSS Grid Is Easier Than You Think
You need about six properties to build almost every layout on the web. Here they are.
A Field Guide to Debugging
Debugging is a learnable skill with an actual method — not a personality trait some engineers are born with.
Projects
Small tools and side quests. Everything is open source.
tokensmith
A design-token compiler — one JSON source of truth out to CSS variables, Tailwind themes, and Figma.
specimen
A type-specimen playground. Paste any Google Font pair and see it set as a real article, not a pangram.
inkwell
The 90-line static site generator this blog runs on. Markdown in, HTML out, nothing else.
termclock
A flip clock for your terminal. Pomodoro mode, world clocks, and exactly zero configuration files.
keymap
Visualize and print custom mechanical keyboard layouts. Made for my split ergo board, works with any QMK config.
contactsheet
Turns a folder of film scans into a quiet little gallery site — captions from EXIF, grain intact.
Get new posts in your inbox
One email when something new goes up. Usually once or twice a month, written like a note to a friend.
No spam, unsubscribe anytime.