Blog

Thoughts on software engineering, game development, and creative coding.

30 March 2026

What Is GIS? A Plain-English Explanation for Developers

GIS solves a whole category of spatial problems that developers routinely hack around. Part 1 of a series on using GIS to build location-aware applications.

GIS
PostGIS
Mapping
Spatial Data
PostgreSQL

9 March 2026

The State of Authentication in Rails, March 2026

Rails 8 shipped a built-in authentication generator, but it only covers about 30% of what production apps need. Here's how it compares to Laravel, Django, and Better Auth.

Ruby on Rails
Authentication
Laravel
Django
Security

15 January 2026

Reviving MTree: A Procedural Tree Generator for Blender 5

MTree was the best Blender addon for procedural trees, but it stopped working after Blender 2.8. I forked it, fixed it for Blender 5, and added L-Systems and Weber-Penn crown shapes.

Blender 5
Procedural Generation
UE5
Open Source
Python

8 December 2025

Zero-Downtime Rails 8 Deployments on AWS with Kamal: A Complete Guide

A complete guide to deploying Rails 8 applications on AWS using Kamal. Learn how to achieve zero-downtime deployments while reducing costs from $75 to $27/month.

Rails 8
AWS
Kamal
DevOps
Docker

10 July 2025

Git Worktrees: Working on Multiple Branches Without the Headache

Learn how Git worktrees let you check out multiple branches simultaneously, keeping your context intact while handling production emergencies, code reviews, and parallel feature development.

Git
Developer Tools
Workflow
Productivity

24 June 2024

HTML to PDF in Ruby on Rails

Explore modern solutions for converting HTML to PDF in Rails applications using Ruby-Puppeteer, moving beyond legacy tools like WickedPDF and Prawn.

Ruby on Rails
PDF
Puppeteer
Backend

4 January 2024

Encouraging Code Policies Using Git Hooks

A practical exploration of using Git hooks to enforce code policies, demonstrated through a pre-commit hook that validates translation file consistency in a React i18n project.

Git
Developer Tools
i18n
Python