All articles
On Speed at all cost
Working theory, observations, and stuff I've read
Quick Capture
Essential part of the writing process is the concept of quick capture.
The idea is to make it as frictionless as possible to capture those fleeting thoughts as they fly through my head. And these thoughts tend to pop into my head when I’m not on my desk, so a good mobile experience is key too.
That quick meeting note That project idea that pops up when you’re in gym Ideas for improvements in the codebase or architecture The easier it is to write, the more you’ll do it.…
Nextgoose -> gbfm
Moving goosebumps from Vercel to SST
SST CI deployments with a custom domain name
Going from deploying to prod via my laptop, to github actions.
On Migrations
Will Larson on Migrations, from the book Elegant Puzzle
On Blackboxes & Open Garage Doors
Another excerpt from a chat with Ibra & Victor.
Balancing Human & Economonic motivations
This has come up in enough conversations that I thought I should write it down.
A few weeks ago, my bro said to me
If you can’t make an economic case for an engineering decision/initiative, you might wanna leave it alone.
And while I agree, consideration should also be given to the opposing perspective.
Don’t neglect the human side Software development is a human process. We are humans with human needs.…
On Change Advisory Boards
Excerpts from the devops book, Accelerate
Some properties of emergent behaviours
Complicated or Complex?
More heuristics to help you figure out if your problem is complicated, or complex.
Retro: Crowdstrike outage
Your codebase as a product
Excerpt from a chat with Ibra & Vic
Repeatable steps for a Coolify managed VPS
Repeatable steps for a Coolify managed VPS with a custom domain
On Team morale
I’ve routinely seen team morale at its highest when everyone is focused on the same goal. One task, one feature For an extended period of time Extended period of time allows people to learn each others’ rhythms. That’s not something you can speed run unless you have very self aware, or very experienced people who can also communicate well The shared context makes for reduced overheads of coordination & communication cross teams This also goes hand in hand with autonomy.…
Exploring CI/CD options
With a focus on solo hackers' TS & Go projects.
Audience of One
Reminder to self - I am my main audience.
Visually Indexed Music
What if you could search for music in your library by describing what the album cover looks like?
Addressing the broken window theory
Don't live with broken windows
Minimum Lovable Product
Chasing quality over quick and frequent releases
Indecision
Indecision can be more costly than making the wrong decision.
2024 Q1 Writing Retro
Code should communicate intent
It's one thing to write code that does the thing. It's another to write code that tells the reader what it's doing
Network Effects
When a product/business gets better with more users using it.
Team Topologies: Beyond the Spotify Model
2024 Writing Strategy
On Handling Incidents
A few things I’ve learnt about handling incidents.
Problem/Solution Space
Bounded Context in Practice
The Value of Ubiquitous Language
On Prioritising
Some heuristics on how to pick the highest value thing to work on when embedded in a product team.
Youtube Playlist UX wishlist
I like to organise information in playlists, or tags. It allows me to contain narrowly scoped projects.
Dan North - Value of Flow
discusses the concepts of flow efficiency and resource efficiency and emphasizes the importance of optimizing flow to achieve real efficiency.
On Assigning your team to full capacity
The title here is misleading, because I’m here to make a case for not assigning your team to full capacity.
Handling Network Failure on your Frontends
Network failures are an inevitability in distributed computing. Your frontend has to be built with that in mind
Why Write
Exploring how writing is a tactical and strategic skill for developers to hone.
Pull Request Etiquette
We’ll look at this from two perspectives, the pull request author, and the reviewer
Ambient Pair Programming
Shared room, different tasks
Weekend Longreads #1
Some long form content
Cohesion & Complexity
WIP - publishing for early feedback😛
Ping Pong Pair Programming
An asynchronous pair programming method
Past Work
What I've done in the past.
Platform Risk
Something to think about when engineering solutions.
Denis Čahuk on Estimates
Communicating our understanding of the problem and Forecasting completion of the solution
Javascript Proxy 101
Someone gave me 5 minutes to do a sales pitch on the subject
How is a riff similar to Andy’s evergreen/atomic notes?
Lessons from Andy Matuschak
Some Patterns of Multi-Tenant SaaS
I've had the pleasure of working on some multi-tenant products, and noticed some concerns repeat themselves. This note tries to capture some of those
on small PRs
If a task is big enough, multiple small & focused PR's are a solid way to approach it
Domain Driven Design and naming
Musings on what Domain Driven Design taught me about naming variables, methods etc in my code.
On Refactoring
Some musings & observations on refactoring
Flow of Value through a system
Putting together all related resources around this topic.
Digital Garden
Answering the question "Why does this site exist?"
On rest and work
Feels weird to tag this one under productivity, lol.
Flow state
Steps I take to preserve and make time for flow state
Energy Management
An alternative or add on to time management
Feature Flags
Some things to think about when considering feature flags
How I learn
Heuristics, mental models, practical, immersion
Computer science is a liberal art
Pitch → Shape → Kickoff -> Commit → Cooldown
UX Crit
A way to train your design eye
Tidal UX Wishlist
I'm trying to use tidal more and more. Here are some UX pain points I've been feeling.
Async by default
Containers in AWS
Some services & workflows that help with container management, orchestration, & infra
AWS Batch
Some services and workflows that help with Batch processing in AWS.
AWS Elastic Load Balancer
Let's learn how to balance this load, shall we
AWS Networking Refresher
Polishing up my knowledge on how networking is structured in AWS
Common React Render Bug
The most common react bug I've been having to fix is caused by trying to `value.map()` an `undefined value`
AWS Cloudtrail
Actions taken by a user, role, or an AWS service are recorded as events in CloudTrail. Events include actions taken in the AWS Management Console, AWS Command Line Interface, and AWS SDKs and APIs.
2022 Learning Summary
Such a wide array of topics. It was a fun year for learning
Route 53 Basics
Highly available DNS Service from AWS
AWS Cloudwatch
Logs, Metrics, Alarms, Events, & Dashboards
AWS CloudFormation Basics
Infrastructure as Code. Cool kids sh*t😎
AWS EC2 Basics
Compute service.
AWS VPC basics
Networking services
MTTR > MTBF
Optimising Mean Time To Recovery is more important than trying to minimise Mean Time Between Failures.
Pull Requests & WIP
I often open Pull Requests immediately when I start on a task.
AWS notes: S3
Simple Storage Service
On WIP Limits
How WIP limits can help your team ship software faster, & more effectively
Cognitive Load Theory
How can this theory can be a helpful heuristic for effective team design
Team topologies with James Lewis
Thoughtworks' James Lewis shares his experience & research on Team Topologies, software architecture, & complexity science
On Reading more effectively
Some highlights snipped from fs.blog + a Youtube video at the end
Team Topologies: ING Bank
A case study of ING bank and their experiments with team topologies
Cloud Fundamentals
Characteristics of the cloud According to NIST:
On-demand self-service: Can provision capabilities as needed, without needing human interaction Broad Network Access: Available over the network and accessed through standard mechanisms (like http) Resource Pooling: No control or knowledge of the exact location of the resources. Resources are pooled to serve multiple consumers using a multi-tenant model Rapid Elasticity: Capabilities can be elastically provisioned and released rapidly, to keep up with demand.…
AWS notes: IAM
IAM provides Identity for anything requiring long term AWS access. Humans, services, or applications (these are referred to as principals).
Nesting - Using Environmental cues
I tend to do some of my most impactful/meaningful work whilst in PJ’s. In fact, I can confidently say I’ve generated more revenue in that outfit than any other.
React Observables
An attempted answer to a question asked in the Frontend masters Discord
Update a single Ubuntu/Linux package
Getting tired of always having to google how to do this, and I just haven't committed it to memory yet.
Goosebumpsfm
Spotify UX Wishlist
I am somewhat of a spotify power user. Here is some commentary on the User Experience
Ideal collaboration UX for music apps
A friend asked me a thought provoking question a few weeks ago
Notes: How to know what to Test
A short talk by Kent Dodds.
Posted from a mobile git client
Some experiments ;)
Notes: Managing Client Relationships
Goldman Sachs managing director and Law School adjunct professor Jim Donovan shares his insights on the skills necessary to manage and cultivate client relationships. Donovan is responsible for advising many of the largest corporate and individual clients of Goldman Sachs. (University of Virginia School of Law, Nov. 6, 2015)
Course Notes: AWS Solutions Architect Cantrill
Some notes from the learn with Cantrill course
UX Case Study: Sharing music from streaming platform to Instagram Stories
Looking at how software interacts with the world around it
Hugo site OG Images using Node and Cloudinary
After months of procrastinating, I finally have a solution for Open Graph Images on this site
Predatory/Hostile UX
A little story about how iOS handled the placing of icons after I installed Apple music
on Proof of Concepts
Some observations I've made on Proof of Concepts, and how they fit into the software development lifecycle.
Start With Abundance
Reflections on lessons taught by David Perell & Tiago Forte, and how I'm applying it in organising my knowledge work. In this example, we focus on how it's helping with my music organisation.
Dan North - Patterns of Effective Teams
Notes from an insightful talk by Dan North
DJing: Opening Set
My love affair with the Opening set. I want to be the DJ you think of when you think "I need a good opener for this event"
Record labels I like
Some record labels I like, ranging from old and dear, to new stuff from a few days ago:)
Networking recaps for Cloud Computing
I studied networking once upon a time, and I need to brush up those lessons as they're applicable to AWS Solutions Architect learnings.
AWS Well Architected Framework
Some notes from the Well-Architected Framework whitepaper
Dub Techno Staples
there’s a reason why people always mention Deepchord, Fluxion etc when we talk about dub techno
Applying Shape Up
I read shape up a year or two ago, and I'm applying some of the principles taught when managing my own workload. I only work on 1 'other' project at a time, outside of my daily work commitments
Using Pro Search
I have no search on my site yet, but Pro-Search has solved that problem. Makes it super easy to find any text on my site.
Spotify Teardown Reflections
reflection on some of the lessons learnt from the densely packed book, Spotify Teardown
Guided Music
better way to share curated music
A quick lesson in design - Dark Patterns
A mini rant & quick lesson in design
Using contrast in DJ sets
Taylor & Ronny teach some fundamental lessons on energy management in a DJ set
Survivorship Bias
Questions for New Freelance Client
Tom Critchlow on Strategy
RFC: Playlist Aggregator
Trying to have a good overview of the architecture of pieces involved with building this backend service.
Project Yani
Yani Highlights
Project DIFTK
DIFTK highlights
Project BHE
BHE Highlights
Freelance
How I freelance & contract
2021 Note Setup
Obsidian, icloud Notes, Hugo, Git
Ios Music Recognition
a small feature I've been wanting for a long time
Writing End to End Tests
more retrospective notes from the last freelance project I did.
The guide to Guide: how I work
My values, and how that translates to my preferred ways of working & communicating
speedy dubs
more upbeat dub techno & friends
Hypnus Goodies From Dub Monitor
various links from the Dub Monitor video on hypnus.
Tracks From Dub Monitor Spotify vs Tidal Video
this is the music that was used to make statistical analysis of which platform offers more techno music.
Mobile First Styling
Styling is 'easier' if you use a mobile first approach.
Nestjs Rest Api Notes
Notes from a nest js crash course
Sagas Microservice Architecture Patterns
notes on the saga's pattern
Mutation Testing in Javascript
introductory research into mutation testing
I'm Fascinated by Design
Good design is a fundamental layer of multiple disciplines, because of this, I think it's important to make time to understand the principles of good design
Dataecho Retro
Retro from the project I've just finished
Backend - What I've Been Up To
summary of the backend work I've been doing in the last few weeks
Helpful Hugo Commands
useful hugo commands & links
Spotify Shortcode
experimenting with Hugo shortcodes - implementing a way to embed spotify tracks
Regulatory Capture
Outsourcing Freelance Work
I recently had a chat with my BK about his experience with outsourcing portions of his freelance work. a few things he said stood out to me, & that's what I'll highlight.
Interesting Spotify Tools
Tailored for music curation. - Interesting Spotify tools I've found to help manage your library, & gain better insight on its structure.
Consuming an API in your web app
Some notes on a pattern I've seen when writing code that relies on data from an API
Spotify X Amazon Similarity
Random insights on platform
SOLID principles
A summary of SOLID principles - for Object Oriented design…
OOP basics
A summary of some object orientation notes
How to grow your influence by thinking in public
Some notes & annotations from the Hundreds Of Ways podcast episode with Tom Critchlow
The way my notes are setup
A combination of Obsidian, Simplenote & Dropbox.…
Complete intro to react - notes
Notes from Frontend Masters course titled above, the course is presented by Brian Holt.
Gatsby Blog Posts Filter - How I made it work
A few snippets and steps on how I made the blog post filter work.
Finishing up Javascript 30
An attempt to make a habit of finishing courses. A few notes on interesting bits & stuff thought's I'd love to bookmark
Git Shit Done
Git commands that I always have to google
Extended Thoughts(Tuesday 22 September)
04:44 - Context to my surprise, this is when the day started. I’m by no means a morning person but I appreciate an early morning from time to time, so being up this early set a good tone to the day. It wasn’t more than 5 to 10 minutes after gaining consciousness when I reached for my phone, and glued right in, checking for important texts, e-mails & the rest of it.…
How to deliver curated playlists
This is how I share my playlists across multiple streaming services, with minimal effort, for free.
My social card struggle with React Helmet
A breakdown of the problem I’ve faced whilst trying to get my links to turn into sharing cards when shared on social media.…
Collaboration Guide for Indie artists in Zim
Who’s this article for? This is for the independent/indie artist in Zimbabwe, looking to take action towards securing a long term career. It’s not going to cover everything under the sun, but hopefully enough to get you asking the right questions, and start having the important conversations earlier in your career. Invest in your intellectual property.
Quite a number of conversations have prompted me to put this piece together. The final push to get started came from a tweet I saw the night before:…