https://www.pinecoder.dev/blog/Recent content in Blogs on Pinecoder blogHugo -- gohugo.ioen-usThu, 15 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://www.pinecoder.dev/blog/2026-10-15/my-old-job-is-distant/Thu, 15 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://www.pinecoder.dev/blog/2026-10-15/my-old-job-is-distant/Pumpkin on top of Rattlesnake Ledge I can hardly remember first experiencing ChatGPT. Its become so infused into my professional life, that going back to that first moment, or moments, is difficult. Instead a blur of a few moments. At some point, I realized it was a better Google. It was very similar to when Stackoverflow took off, and how Google search results for coding topics went from being useless to useful.https://www.pinecoder.dev/blog/2026-03-01/we-are-all-at-zero-now/Sun, 01 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://www.pinecoder.dev/blog/2026-03-01/we-are-all-at-zero-now/I’m broken. I can’t think, I can’t develop. The development world has changed again, and I no longer know how it works. I do know that it still works, and that there is a new approach to software engineering emerging. I don’t know if, like prompt engineering, this is a temporary phase; I know it is not a fad. I also know that there definitely is something to it. I brain dumped many thoughts on this, and playfully titled my thoughts “We are all at zero now”.https://www.pinecoder.dev/blog/2025-01-10/Fri, 10 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://www.pinecoder.dev/blog/2025-01-10/Its January 2025 and about a year since I decided to kick off chronicles again as noted in Reignition. From questioning whether it worked, to excitement in getting it running again. From briefly moving so quickly in the v0.5.0 release that I could barely stop to note it. To overwhelm and regret when midway through v0.8.0. To beginning to actually use it for real, where I noted: Of the next features, which do I care about most?https://www.pinecoder.dev/blog/2024-05-13/typed-code-adhd/Mon, 13 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://www.pinecoder.dev/blog/2024-05-13/typed-code-adhd/Photo from a recent Washington hike about half way up Beacon Rock state park Navigating life with ADHD often involves developing strategies to manage daily challenges, particularly in professional environments. For me, a transformative moment came from understanding the role of working memory in ADHD. It reshaped how I approach tasks and manage my cognitive loads. There are many great blogs and discussions on this already, and I don’t intend to pile on with everything that has worked for me, here.https://www.pinecoder.dev/blog/2024-02-18/reignition/Sun, 18 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://www.pinecoder.dev/blog/2024-02-18/reignition/Today I released v0.4.0 of Chronicles. It is the culmination of the last six weeks of feature work, and the first real work in two years. Github insights of the last months work The release notes summarize the associated changes; here I wanted to briefly reflect on the current state of the project and future plans. Iterating on base usability I called the last release “Base Usability — Well kind of”.https://www.pinecoder.dev/blog/2023-06-28/feeling-creative/Wed, 28 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000https://www.pinecoder.dev/blog/2023-06-28/feeling-creative/I’ve been feeling a kind of creative energy lately. Somehow curious again. Still tired, the way parents of young children are. Drained, the way employees of busy companies are. In a prior life being in a creative mood was a time for fun. For hacking and making mistakes. Learning new things and putting them down. Putting them on the shelf, which was not yet so full as to be its own source of anxiety.https://www.pinecoder.dev/blog/2021-11-22/staff-engineer-leadership-beyond-management/Mon, 22 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.pinecoder.dev/blog/2021-11-22/staff-engineer-leadership-beyond-management/This post is a review of (and thoughts about) Will Larson’s Staff Engineering book. Introduction I’ve worked at a few successful1 startups, yet rarely one’s that had proper engineering roles as such. If your tech career spawned out of IT like me, you might lack a conceptual framework for thinking about engineering leadership. There are hero programmer’s and prestige seeker’s. If there is an Engineering Manager it might be someone from finance with an MBA.https://www.pinecoder.dev/blog/2021-11-03/drag-and-drop-image-upload/Wed, 03 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.pinecoder.dev/blog/2021-11-03/drag-and-drop-image-upload/While planning drag and drop image support in Chronicles, I had some confusion about handling files once dropped. There are many tutorials out there but they often provide a “copy this code” approach and offer little insight. Many recommended using base64 encoding but that did not seem right. The more general problem of file uploading through a browser is one I occassionally return to, so I wanted a conceptual deep dive I could use as a foundation.https://www.pinecoder.dev/blog/2020-12-30/python-write_file-utility/Wed, 30 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000https://www.pinecoder.dev/blog/2020-12-30/python-write_file-utility/Recently I wrote a python script for syncing data to a 3rd party service. I needed to output various text files during its run, both for debugging and audit history. Ideally, I wanted a simple function which would allow the following: # Set some base directory via config working_dir = 'data' # Pass filenames and contents, with any directories # automatically created as necessary: # should output to: data/job_2/stats.csv write_file('/job_2/stats.csv.', raw_policy_data) # should output to: data/job_2/applications/results.https://www.pinecoder.dev/blog/2020-10-09/search-tags-interface/Fri, 09 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000https://www.pinecoder.dev/blog/2020-10-09/search-tags-interface/Introduction In my last attempt to build this app, search organically grew in prominence as I added new features. Originally the app was just date ordered markdown documents, and search was free text with a few added features. In this version, I wanted search to be more central and flexible. Rather than an adjunct on the selected journal, I thought it could be the main driver of what was on screen.https://www.pinecoder.dev/blog/2020-09-16/focused-headings/Wed, 16 Sep 2020 11:00:00 +0000https://www.pinecoder.dev/blog/2020-09-16/focused-headings/I finished another feature on Chronicles: “Focused headings” (demo). Focusing a heading finds all content under that heading, filters everything else out, then pins the heading to the top of the journal. A journal might typically have a range of topics across many days: Typical journal with multiple topics After “Focusing” a heading, the heading element is fixed to the top, and the view filters any content not under that heading:https://www.pinecoder.dev/blog/2020-08-19/the-fifth-prototype/Wed, 19 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000https://www.pinecoder.dev/blog/2020-08-19/the-fifth-prototype/On July 2nd I re-booted a stalled side project of mine called Chronicles — a markdown based journaling application. On August 14th I shipped the first (very basic) phase of it. Nobody should be interested in this release, but it is an important milestone for me — something usable shipped. This is a brief retrospective on the first milestone. Getting in a rhythm with Go The thought of restarting this project was daunting.https://www.pinecoder.dev/blog/2020-05-23/deno-test-drive/Sat, 23 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000https://www.pinecoder.dev/blog/2020-05-23/deno-test-drive/When I first heard about Deno 1, I thought it would fizzle. A better Node sounded nice but I couldn’t see why it would take off. When it hit 1.0 and blew up on hackernews, I was surprised and a little excited. Maybe it had more steam than I thought. Node has warts and Typescript is great after all. Reading the announcement blog post, two points stood out to me:https://www.pinecoder.dev/blog/2020-04-27/node-exit-logging/Mon, 27 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000https://www.pinecoder.dev/blog/2020-04-27/node-exit-logging/Node supports exit codes and error logging but has important caveats I’ve learned the hard way. What follows is a summary of what I learned while fixing a failed Github Actions workflow. Errors and exit codes Consider this script which throws an error: throw new Error('all i do is fail'); This script fails, and two important things happen: It logs an error It exits with a non-zero exit code > node .https://www.pinecoder.dev/blog/2019-11-08/hosting-gatsby-blog/Fri, 08 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000https://www.pinecoder.dev/blog/2019-11-08/hosting-gatsby-blog/In this post, I’m going to cover creating your own blog with Gatsby, a React-based Static Site Generator. Motivation Content and static site generators Up and running with Gatsby Customizing Hosting Syndication Next steps Motivation Before getting to the background, lets (briefly) start with why. You could publish blog posts to Medium, Wordpress, or Ghost and be up and running immediately. That’s a perfectly fine route to go. Creating your own blog is something you do because you want to own your website.