Writing (and rants)

I write about the things that annoy me until I figure them out, which is basically all of software engineering. Go, Ruby, FreeBSD, infrastructure, API design, the occasional JavaScript when I can't avoid it. If you're here for hot takes on naming conventions and operating systems that most people forgot exist, you're in the right place. If you're here by accident, honestly, stick around. You've already made worse decisions today.

2026

• Stop Naming Your Go Constructors New
  A grown man loses his mind over a four-letter word in a function name. Turns out he has a point, but still.

2017

• Stop Shipping Desktop Images to Phones
  Shipping a 4000-pixel hero image to a phone on 3G is not a personality trait. Here's a Rails helper that uses the picture element like a grown-up.

2016

• Ansible Hangs on FreeBSD and Nobody Tells You
  FreeBSD doesn't ship Python. Ansible needs Python. One environment variable stops the whole thing from hanging forever.
• Stop Typing Full Git URLs
  Life is too short to type git@github.com: like a caveman. A few lines in .gitconfig and you're cloning with gh:user/repo.
• Replacing OpenSSL with LibreSSL on FreeBSD
  Heartbleed happened because OpenSSL had its own custom allocator that hid buffer overflows from every tool designed to catch them. Here's how to rip it out.
• Postgres Refuses Your NOT NULL Migration
  Postgres is smarter than your migration and it's not going to pretend otherwise. Add the column, backfill, then add the constraint.
• Every Ember-Phoenix Tutorial Was Wrong
  Every existing tutorial was either broken or ignoring the conventions both frameworks ship with. So I built one from scratch.
• npm's Progress Bar Halves Your Install Speed
  Out of the box, npm behaves like a toddler with a megaphone. A few lines in .npmrc make it twice as fast and half as annoying.
• Your FreeBSD Files Are Readable by Everyone
  Your database credentials, API keys, and deployment scripts are world-readable by default. Three digits in one config file fix it. You're welcome.
• Run the W3C Validator Locally with Docker
  The W3C validator requires the internet, which is exactly the thing that isn't working when you need it. So we put a validator in a container.

2015

• Stop Naming All Your Callbacks cb
  Everyone names their callbacks "cb" and then spends forty minutes debugging why the wrong one fires. Two words fix it. You're looking for "next."
• Testing ActiveModel::Serializer with RSpec
  They rewrote the serializer gem and broke how you test it. Here's how to wire up adapters so your specs actually test what your API sends.

2014

• Zero-Config Mobile Testing with Pow and Bonjour
  I wanted to load my Rails app on an iPad without looking up my IP address every five minutes. So I made mDNS do it for me.
• Debugging Ember Apps in End-to-End Tests
  Your Capybara test fails, the browser closes, and all you've got is "expected true, got false." Loading Ember Inspector into Selenium changes everything.
• Why Your Ember Promises Fail Silently
  Something breaks in an Ember promise and you get... nothing. A blank page, a clean console, and a slow descent into madness. Four lines fix it.
• When brew install node required 5.5GB of Xcode
  Apple released Yosemite and broke the compiler. Installing a JavaScript runtime now required downloading an entire IDE. A love letter to 2014.