notes
a working diary. some technical, some not. the bar for posting is low on purpose.
- speaking names
three tsars run the world, and their names read like gogol picked them.
- lines that cross the pacific
why a tokyo to los angeles route can draw the long way round the world in mapbox, and how to split it at 180° without getting the crossing wrong.
- a context vault for my assistant
i kept pasting the same three paragraphs about myself into every ai conversation. now they live in a git repo the assistant can read.
- a wiki with a review step
why stillwiki keeps drafts private and makes every page pass a reviewer before it goes live.
- designing this site as a circuit board
the dark theme is a pcb, the light theme is its assembly drawing. what the metaphor bought, and what it cost.
- why i prefer plain markdown over mdx
mdx is a great tool for someone else's problem. mine is that i want to still be able to open my notes in ten years.
- principles i keep
the ideas i reread more often than anything else i have written. some borrowed, a few mine.
- routing copper traces in eighty lines
the traces on the home board are an svg drawn from measured positions. the only clever part is a small function that turns right angles into 45° chamfers.
- social cards drawn at build time
every note on this site gets its own open graph image, rendered from the same board tokens as the page, with no server and no browser in the loop.
- using impeccable with claude code on a real redesign
notes from redesigning this site with an ai agent and a design skill that refuses to let it pick the safe option.
- hello, world
first post on the new site.
- on tools
a few thoughts on the tools i reach for.
- free fall
freedom looks like free fall. it lasts until someone else's will pushes against yours.
- the price of an hour
your passport sets the price of your time more than your skill does.
- borrowed traits
- a bitten apple
apple is the rotten apple of capitalism, bitten by an idealist.
- still exploding
- a community of the right size
happiness is in choosing a community that isn't too big. four years later, a crowd made me add a footnote.
- the jar
- the centipede
- freedom from pain
- heaven on pause
- making a decision
- everyday faith
- a tilted horizon
photographers call a crooked horizon tilted. memory does the same thing to reality.
- calm in a storm
- pleasure is comparative
- simple things
- sky gods
the nature of a place matches its mythology. maybe the names came first.
- stories
- time has a character