Tech Articles

A collection of articles documenting my journey through technology, sharing insights, discoveries and reflections on various tech topics. From coding challenges to system architecture, they capture the learning process and technical experiences.

Articles

What Dad Would Have Seen — September 28, 2026
When I was a kid, sometime in the eighties or nineties, my dad took me to a Space Shuttle launch. He took me to air shows too. I had so much fun that I never stopped. I still do all of it.
Build for Yourself, Not Someone Else — September 27, 2026
About eighteen months ago, when I started agentic coding, I told a coworker, "Software is now disposable." I meant that I could build whatever I wanted. Back then it took more effort, it cost more…
The Power of Staying Current (and How Fast Everything Is Moving) — September 26, 2026
Recently I had to explain to our company president exactly how I work and what makes me effective. It is a harder question to answer than it sounds. The first thing I pointed to surprised both of us…
Is This the Moment Tech Nerds Take Over the World? — September 25, 2026
Standing in the crowd at the Starship launch, I was struck by how many people were completely taken with the technology. Engineers, families, retirees, kids. Nobody was cynical. Everyone was…
Optimism in Technology — September 24, 2026
I just watched Starship launch number fourteen, the first commercial Starship flight. It carried a new generation of Starlink satellites, the kind that are a step toward putting AI data centers in…
The Weather App I Built for Myself — September 23, 2026
If you live in Oklahoma, you already know that the information about a storm is out there. The problem is that it's scattered across a dozen places, run by different agencies with different jobs.
What did you build during your layover? — August 11, 2026
I was in an airport in Miami, at the end of a trip, missing my daughter and my dog. That is the whole origin story. There is no startup in it, no thesis, no roadmap.
Work should look like Civilization — July 13, 2026
Enterprise software has an aesthetic, and the aesthetic is punishment. Rows. Filters. A left nav with nineteen items. A dashboard nobody has opened since the demo. Somewhere along the way we all…
3D configurators are here for good — July 13, 2026
Last week, “configure your industrial lift and watch it assemble in 3D” was a thing I'd expect from a CPQ vendor's five-year roadmap slide. This week it's a URL on our docs site that works on my…
Combining two homemade GPTs — July 12, 2026
I built two GPTs at home. Both of them are bad. Combining them into one working product anyway is the biggest experience leap I've had since I started seriously studying this field.
Chinchilla says my model shouldn't exist — July 12, 2026
Every AI team I know ships models the same way: the new one beats the old one on the eval suite, so it ships. The number went up. What else is there to know?
Therapists are the original prompt engineers — June 29, 2026
Sometimes I get stuck in an infinite loop on a problem I can't solve. Whether that's useful or a disaster comes down to one question: can I actually affect the outcome?
My First Innovative Open Source Project — and One I Intend to Maintain — June 25, 2026
Splitting a song into its instruments and scattering them around a 7.1 room used to be an afternoon of finicky manual work. But the interesting half of the problem was never the speakers &mdash…
RCS is AI's No-UI? — June 10, 2026
It all started when my car company removed many of the controls for the heating and air conditioning system. It was only an up or down button. No recirculate, no defrost, no defog. No high, low, or…
Metacognition — June 9, 2026
I learned a word recently: metacognition. Thinking about thinking. It landed harder than a new word usually does, and it took me a minute to figure out why. Then it clicked. I'd already written…
How we invented On Stage Spatial Audio — June 5, 2026
THX certification exists. Apple Spatial Audio ships on every iPhone, every AirPod, every Mac. Automotive manufacturers are now negotiating speaker counts with luxury car buyers the same way they…
Does AI stifle creativity or are you just boring? — June 4, 2026
Every few weeks somebody posts the same take, usually dressed up as concern for the children: AI is killing creativity. It gets a thousand likes from people who have never made anything in their…
Neural Networks in Browser? — May 3, 2026
A technical journal of the architecture, pivots, and one weird CREPE bug.
Sharepoint Became Outdated in One Tweet — April 18, 2026
The companies that end up in this situation rarely planned it that way. They grew, acquired, merged — each new business unit bringing its own filing habits. Four companies under one umbrella might…
Guessing is Intelligence? — April 14, 2026
Have been thinking about guessing and intelligence. Mostly motivated by my work with LLMs. Partially motivated by my recent fascination with OZ Pearlman and his ability to "guess" people's PIN…
Agentic Orchestration: The Career I Didn't Know I Was Training For — March 6, 2026
I've spent my career teaching computers to do things in the right order. It sounds simple. It is not.
What Can We Learn from the Luddite Revolution? — February 5, 2026
In 1811, a group of skilled textile workers in Nottingham, England began smashing knitting frames. They weren't stupid. They weren't anti-progress as a philosophy. They were highly trained craftsmen…
Why I'm Glad I Went All-In on AI in 2025 — December 30, 2025
In early 2025, I made a bet. I stopped thinking of myself as a software engineer and started thinking of myself as someone who manages AI to build and maintain technology. A year later, I'm…
The Cherry on Top: A Self-Driving Car for an All-In Year — December 27, 2025
When you spend a year teaching AI to do your job, it changes how you see everything. So when it came time to celebrate going all-in on AI in 2025, there was really only one way to do it: let AI…
Our First Production Agent — October 3, 2025
The 'lightbulb moment' happened when I first used Claude for VS Code—later rebranded as Cline. While most people leverage AI for text transformation or content generation, Cline demonstrated…
The Future is Now: AI Augmented User Manuals — September 15, 2025
The problem with traditional repair manuals is simple: they're generic. When a machine throws an error code, a technician has to translate that code into a manual lookup, identify the component in a…
Discovered how to program PLCs with AI — August 14, 2025
So here's the thing: I've basically decided to dedicate what's left of my career to making keyboards and mice as obsolete as fax machines. Not because I hate them (okay, maybe I hate mice a little)…
AI Driven Market Research (Easy Win) — July 9, 2025
Since I started "vibe coding" with AI, building software has become almost trivial. What used to take weeks now takes hours. But here's the thing—once you realize how powerful these tools are, you…
DIY Board Game? — June 29, 2025
A cautionary tale of tornadoes, trigonometry, and trusting the machines
The AI Reality Check: Why CEOs Are Finally Being Honest — May 29, 2025
The sugar-coating era is over. Business leaders are starting to speak plainly about AI's impact on jobs, and their assessments should give us all pause.
Building an Advanced Bird Detection and Prediction System — May 16, 2025
Over the past few days, I've expanded my original birdnet-pi implementation into a comprehensive bird detection and prediction platform. The system now integrates historical data, weather patterns…
Oklahoma Brainrot Meme Generation — May 11, 2025
In early 2025, a peculiar meme phenomenon known as "Italian Brainrot" emerged on social media platforms. Characterized by surreal hybrid creatures with Italian-sounding rhyming names, exaggerated…
Should you host AI workshops? — April 22, 2025
In the Fall of 2024, something shifted in the AI landscape. What was once a trickle of innovations became a flood. Like a kid counting down to Christmas, I watched as AWS re:Invent's AI seminar…
We Are in a Golden Age of Software Development — April 13, 2025
We are living through what future generations will undoubtedly recognize as the golden age of software development. Never before have developers had access to such powerful tools, frameworks…
Asymmetric Advantage: AI is Leveling the Playing Field — April 2, 2025
The conventional wisdom has long held that technological innovation is dominated by tech giants with their massive R&D budgets, specialized talent pools, and extensive resources. However, the rapid…
AI Self-Portraiture: From LoRA Training to Family Fun — March 20, 2025
My journey into AI-generated self-portraits began unexpectedly while watching YouTube videos about Flux. A particular video by Julia McCoy caught my attention, showcasing her creation of remarkably…
A Surprise Software Breakthrough — March 15, 2025
In the race to implement AI solutions across industries, many companies have rushed to create flashy applications that ultimately deliver little value. My journey began similarly in 2023—evaluating…
First Look at R1-1776: A Shallow Dive into Uncensored AI — February 23, 2025
When I first encountered r1-1776 on Ollama's model library, I was intrigued by its description: "A version of the DeepSeek-R1 model that has been post trained to provide unbiased, accurate, and…
Exploring Flux and LoRA: A Journey into Local AI Image Generation — February 20, 2025
In the rapidly evolving landscape of AI image generation, running models locally has become increasingly accessible. Today, I'm excited to share my experience with Flux, a powerful text-to-image…
Are You in an AI Event Horizon? — February 17, 2025
In astrophysics, an event horizon marks the boundary around a black hole beyond which nothing—not even light—can escape its gravitational pull. Once you cross this threshold, there's no turning…
LG Leads the Way in Appliance AI — February 15, 2025
In a significant move for consumer AI technology, LG Electronics has released their EXAONE large language model (LLM) to the public. This release marks a notable shift as the company, primarily…
Hands-on with Zonos-v0.1: Exploring the Frontiers of Text-to-Speech — February 15, 2025
Just five days after Zyphra's beta release announcement of Zonos-v0.1, I got my hands on this exciting new text-to-speech model. As an AI enthusiast always eager to explore new developments, I…
Building a Graphing Calculator in 2 Minutes with AI — February 10, 2025
Yes, you read that right. Using AI assistants, you can create a fully functional graphing calculator in under two minutes.
Exploring Local AI: First Steps with DeepSeek — February 2, 2025
In my ongoing exploration of AI technology, I've taken a significant step forward by beginning to run models locally. My first venture into this space involved testing DeepSeek R1 14b via Ollama on…
AI Development: A Journey of Open-Minded Exploration — February 1, 2025
Over 20 years after college, I find myself learning faster than ever before. This rapid acceleration in learning isn't just about new technologies—it's about approaching technology with an open…
Creating Short Films with Sora: A One-Day AI Video Journey — December 31, 2024
I started the day with a clear mission: learn how to create high-quality videos using AI technology. After researching various options, I quickly discovered that Sora offered the best path forward…
RAG in Retrospect: 2023 Was Too Early For Us — December 17, 2023
In the wake of ChatGPT's explosive emergence in late 2022, many technology leaders found themselves at a crossroads in 2023. Like countless others, I felt compelled to explore how AI could transform…