Essays

Notes from the making.

Technology, markets, biology and the craft in between. Published when there is something worth saying, not on a schedule.

2026

5 essays

The Cost of a Clever Abstraction

I once replaced four hundred lines of repetitive code with forty lines nobody could read. Here is the arithmetic I now do before doing that again.

Aug 22, 2026

Half a Million Points on a Phone

Velvynote renders a world map of user notes on hardware that is mostly a battery with a screen. The map was never the hard part — the transitions between zoom levels were.

Jul 18, 2026

Reading the Query Plan

Postgres will tell you exactly why your query is slow, in a format designed to be ignored. Four things to look at, in order.

Jun 9, 2026

Migrations That Survive Production

Every project I have shipped eventually developed two sources of truth for its schema. Here is the discipline that finally stopped it happening.

May 2, 2026

Motion With Intent

Most animation on the web is decoration wearing a costume. The test I use to decide whether a transition earns its milliseconds.

Feb 11, 2026