Nano's Random Ramblings

Friction is the signal

Fri, 05 Jun 2026 18:29:06 GMT

I built a tool to catalog the work I forget. The upkeep taught me why I forget it.

Knowing Enough

Mon, 25 May 2026 23:03:55 GMT

AI is leverage on what you already know. Don't trade away the thing that makes the leverage work.

We Sped Up The Part That Wasn't Slow

Mon, 18 May 2026 14:51:41 GMT

AI accelerated individual engineering. The bottlenecks at the areas of intersection between orgs didn't move.

What I Hand Off

Wed, 13 May 2026 20:30:00 GMT

Trust but verify. The amount of verification depends on the stakes and how well I know the domain.

The Friction That Made Us Talk

Fri, 08 May 2026 15:00:00 GMT

Engineers want to solve their own problems, and AI made acting on that motivation cheap. Alignment used to happen before any code. Now it happens after the tools have shipped.

Learn Your Tools

Mon, 04 May 2026 19:30:00 GMT

If you don't know how your tools work, you're guessing. Learn the seams.

Speak For Yourself

Fri, 01 May 2026 21:55:00 GMT

Your screenshot is not an argument. Tell me what you think.

Your Stakeholders Have Stakeholders (And They All Want Different Things)

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 10:00:00 GMT

I had a plan to fix the Swift migration. I had executive buy-in. Engineers agreed it was a good idea. But this was COVID. Food delivery was exploding. And feature velocity was the only metric that mattered.

Platform Engineering is Archaeology with Deadlines

Sat, 25 Oct 2025 10:00:00 GMT

I joined a company in 2019 to build a bank. COVID killed that project. I got moved to a food delivery app with 1.3 million lines of code, 750k still in Objective-C, and a Swift migration that had stalled for two years.

The Days You Show Up Anyway

Tue, 21 Oct 2025 02:09:14 GMT

I used to think success was about crushing it on your best days. Turns out, the days that really matter are the ones where you barely want to get out of bed.

Explore vs Execute: Finding Your Mode

Sat, 16 Aug 2025 10:00:00 GMT

I've been thinking about how we switch between exploration and execution modes, both in startups and personal projects. Turns out, knowing which mode you're in changes everything.

Why Your "Quick Fix" Takes Two Weeks

Mon, 02 Dec 2024 10:00:00 GMT

Every developer knows that sinking feeling when a "quick" project becomes a multi-week saga. Turns out, there's a reason for that—and it's not just bad estimates.

Finishing up the Prusa XL

Thu, 28 Nov 2024 17:55:55 GMT

I originally pre-ordered the Prusa XL 5 head semi-assembled and received it in the beginning of the year. Looking at the expected build time, I started building it and quickly lost energy to finish it. It sat on the table for six months until I got a not-so-gentle push to finish it from my wife.

Everybody Codes: The Kingdom of Algorithmia

Fri, 22 Nov 2024 04:10:42 GMT

A new Advent of Code style coding puzzle was released this year and it's been so fun to play.

Upgrading to an M4 Max

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 01:38:41 GMT

Apple announced their new MacBooks with M4 processors. I picked up a new MacBook Pro 14" with an M4 Max processor to replace my 2021 MacBook Pro with an M1 Pro.

Major /uses Page Overhaul

Mon, 14 Oct 2024 03:20:55 GMT

I've been tinkering away on my /uses page and it's time for a grand reveal. I've made significant changes since it was first posted.

Site Changelog: Fresh Looks and Funky Features!

Fri, 11 Oct 2024 01:00:06 GMT

I've been busy behind the scenes, sprucing things up on my site, and I can't wait to share the latest and greatest updates with you all.

Choosing A Font

Tue, 08 Oct 2024 01:16:33 GMT

As part of the redesign, I wanted to choose new fonts. For prose, I wanted something legible with high readability. For code, I wanted a compact width.

CSS Theming in 2024

Fri, 06 Sep 2024 01:16:59 GMT

Updating the blog's theming to use new CSS techniques, avoiding flash-of-unstyled-content, and handling OS-level dark/light preferences.

Under Major Construction

Mon, 02 Sep 2024 17:32:00 GMT

This site is currently under major construction. I'm modernizing and touching up everything in the toolchain, while maintaining all legacy links and features.

2020 - What A Year

Wed, 01 Jul 2020 14:00:00 GMT

We are officially halfway through 2020 and boy has it been a wild ride.

Show Me What You Got

Tue, 21 Jan 2020 11:12:00 GMT

See the hardware and software I use daily

50 Things That Made the Modern Economy

Sat, 14 Apr 2018 18:00:00 GMT

An interesting podcast I liked about how the modern economy came to be.

Supporting compactMap in Swift 4

Thu, 22 Mar 2018 19:50:00 GMT

Define an extension on Sequence to make compactMap backwards compatible.

Active Compilation Conditions for Xcode

Sun, 18 Mar 2018 19:30:00 GMT

Pass flags to your iOS App without prepending -D

The Comment Comeback

Sun, 11 Mar 2018 12:18:00 GMT

Adding comments via utteranc.es

Setting Up Absolute Paths in create-react-app

Thu, 18 Jan 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Avoid using relative imports via import {} from '../../../components with CRA.

Release: Alfred Pods Workflow

Mon, 29 May 2017 14:30:00 GMT

Search CocoaPods and copy pod 'Pod' to your clipboard with Alfred

Persisting the Last Visited URL in an Android WebView

Wed, 22 Mar 2017 16:20:00 GMT

Where I use Kotlin to load the last visited URL

Using CITEXT With Knex.js

Sun, 12 Mar 2017 17:00:00 GMT

Using the CITEXT PostgreSQL data type with Knex.js

Setup Phoenix Router with a Single Page App

Sat, 04 Mar 2017 20:19:00 GMT

Allow SPA routers to handle your frontend routes.

Atom Plugins for Elm

Sun, 25 Dec 2016 00:00:00 GMT

I've gotten back into using Elm for a pet project of mine. Here are some of the plugins I found most useful for Atom.

ES6: Using Set For Unique Arrays

Mon, 21 Nov 2016 00:00:00 GMT

A quick way to get an array of unique values

Adding A User To An Existing GPG key

Sun, 20 Nov 2016 00:00:00 GMT

Where I fix commits that were signed but unverified in Github.

Theming Via CSS Properties

Tue, 08 Nov 2016 00:00:00 GMT

Where I talk about adding a new feature to my blog where you can switch between a Night and Day theme.

Fix Nokogiri v1.6.8.1 Installation Failure on macOS Sierra

Thu, 13 Oct 2016 00:00:00 GMT

A fix for nokogiri 1.6.8.1 on macOS Sierra by updating libxml2

macOS Sierra: Hang on React Native Init

Wed, 21 Sep 2016 00:00:00 GMT

A fix for hangs that occur on react-native init on macOS Sierra.

Migration to Jekyll

Fri, 02 Sep 2016 00:00:00 GMT

My experience transitioning from Octopress 2.0 to Jekyll 3

Rails 4: Easily Add Reference to Migration

Sun, 15 Sep 2013 19:29:00 GMT

A look into Rails 4's add_reference

How to view open connections on files

Sun, 01 Sep 2013 20:01:00 GMT

Use lsof to learn what your processes use behind the scenes

Make iTerm 2 work with Mac OSX movement keyboard shortcuts

Sun, 04 Aug 2013 12:17:00 GMT

Add support to iTerm2 for ⌥ and ⌘ modifiers to move between words

DevOps for Ruby Part 2 - Using Nginx to Host Rails Applications

Sat, 06 Jul 2013 19:26:00 GMT

Continue setting up Rails to use Nginx on a VPS

DevOps for Ruby Part 1: VPS & Ubuntu Installation

Sun, 23 Jun 2013 21:53:00 GMT

Tutorial on how to move your Rails project to a VPS

Setup PostgreSQL for Rails on a Mac

Thu, 23 May 2013 14:57:00 GMT

Learn how to setup PostgreSQL on a Mac via CLI or an application

Venture into tmux

Mon, 06 May 2013 09:00:00 GMT

A look into how to install and use tmux

Amending git commits

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 08:11:00 GMT

Learn how to amend your git commits with a simple fix