Worth working out in writing.
Essays going back to 2016 — on product, systems, AI, leadership, and whatever else has been worth thinking through. Now reading here, on-site.
Distance from Gray
A commitment-specific account of what remains unestablished, and what contracts and measurement can show without pretending to prove truth.
More essays
Seeded Recall
How a language model comes to know a person, measured. A method for placing dated content on known surfaces and reading what the models return, pre-registered and run on my own name.
Why Interaction Became a Scientific Problem
Four decades of human-computer interaction, and the question the field kept postponing: what, exactly, is an interaction?
What Started as a Study Tool Became a Product
A native iOS app for my lady's CAPM prep, and the one rule it's built on: derive, don't ask.
Living Documentation
Generative tools work from whatever context you give them. Why documentation that stays current with the system is the input-side contract for AI work.
The Material Is the Contract
A steel game board with a write-on ceramic coating meant mastering six materials that behave like undocumented APIs, and what they taught about parameters.
Versatility Is a Design Decision
When COVID shut down tabletop gaming, Cursed Crypt survived because its factory was built to make things, not game products. Range kept the business alive.
The Prompt Was Never the Point
From prompt engineering to constitutional systems for model judgment, uncertainty, and action.
Customer Experience (CX) vs. User Experience (UX)
Where customer experience and user experience differ, where they overlap, and why a business needs both aligned, from a neighborhood bakery to a global brand.
Shit Does Not Roll Downhill, It Gets Tracked Everywhere
Problems do not roll downhill anymore. They show up in every dashboard and handoff. Why leadership accountability is the foundation of a resilient team.
The Grounds of First Principles
First principles thinking in practice: stripping a problem down to what is actually true, worked through a morning coffee routine and the cost of spaceflight.
Resolving React 19 Dependency Conflicts Without Downgrading
React 19 peer dependency conflicts: how to find the library causing them and resolve them without --force, --legacy-peer-deps, or a downgrade to React 18.
Market Forecasting for Product People
Market forecasting for product managers: the core techniques, how to build a product-focused forecast, the metrics that matter, and the pitfalls to avoid.
The Cruelty of Hiring
One candidate's weeks of silence and the hiring habits behind them: why companies hire this way, what it costs their teams, and the small changes that fix it.
Projects vs. Products
Understanding their distinct roles, lifecycles, and metrics to drive impactful results and sustainable innovation.
Feedback Loops
How to track a feedback loop: which data to collect, how to chart it, and the formulas that show whether a change to a product or process actually worked.
Guide to E-Commerce Metrics
A manager guide to the operational, customer, process, risk, experience and financial metrics that make an online business measurable.
Sisyphus Discovers Tools
A short parable. Worn down by carrying other people's burdens, Sisyphus finds an olive branch that could work as a lever, and has to decide if he may use it.
Orchestrating Tomorrow
Product leadership when AI can spin up a prototype in minutes: the work moves from how to build to why and for whom, and the leader becomes a conductor.
The Way of the Cactus
How a cactus survives the desert, read as a way to handle the information age: endure the flood of data, conserve attention in the quiet, keep what matters.
Middleware in Next.js: A Comprehensive Guide
A reference guide to middleware in Next.js: what it intercepts in the request and response cycle, how to set it up, advanced patterns, and the upgrade path.
Spokane’s Fiber Future
This is the complete talk I gave to the Spokane City Council on February 26th 2018 regarding the benefits of Municipal Broadband. I ran out…
Unit Test Next.js API Routes with TypeScript.
Unit testing Next.js API routes in TypeScript with Jest: GET and POST handlers, error cases, and the other scenarios worth covering. A personal reference.
Testing Routes in Next.js 13
Note: 8/28— I’ve refreshed the content after some experimentation and the release of 13.5.
GitHub Profile Tuning: A Senior Developer’s Guide to Job Seeking
How a curated GitHub profile, covering presentation, code quality and community engagement, works as a career asset in a developer job search.
CIPM — The Cognitive Information Processing Model
The Cognitive Information Processing Model read as a library: how the mind takes in, sorts, and retrieves information, and where the model shows up in practice.
Protecting Routes in Next.js 13
With the evolution of the App Router in Next.js, the framework has become even more robust, offering developers enhanced control over…
WTF is React Fiber?
React Fiber has the buzzword vibe. In this article, I’ll attempt to unravel the mystery, explore its inner workings, and describe why it’s…
Exploring React Fiber Use Cases
React Fiber, introduced in React v16, is a complete rewrite of React’s core reconciliation algorithm. It significantly improves how React…
Slack is Destroying Communities
How the world’s best business collaboration tool alienated one of the world’s largest web developer communities.
Live by the EpiPen, die by the EpiPen
I wish I had a photo of Saturday to share with the world. A snapshot of what it’s like for a person who rides an extreme line when it comes…
Dear Mailchimp,
We love your service! You focused on UX and UI while your competitors focused on the enterprise. Building a user base with jokes and beauty…