Posts

• Migrating to Hugo

  Apr 14, 2026 - 2 min read

  The entirety of (the remainder of) this post was written by Claude Sonnet. –CB

  If you look back at my Site Architecture post from a decade ago, you’ll see I already went through the static site generator evaluation process once. That led me to Hexo, which served me well for a long time. But Hexo has aged, and so I’ve migrated to Hugo.

• Levels of Agentic Engineering

  Apr 12, 2026 - 1 min read

  This year the move toward hands-off AI native development has accelerated dramatically. AI-assisted coding was quite commonplace throughout 2025 but this year, full automation has become commonplace. I really like this article about how the journey might look from simple tab-completion all the way to AI native building.

• Fun Thought Experiment

  Feb 17, 2022 - 4 min read

  Tim Urban (Wait but Why) is one of my favorite content filters and in his recent apearance on Lex Fridman’s podcast, he mentioned this excellent thought exercise. I immediately paused the show to go find it on his blog.

• I Was on a Podcast

  Feb 12, 2022 - 2 min read

  Some time last year I started a company-wide email conversation about an article by Tim Bray:

  But Should I Code? Seriously, it’s reasonable to ask that question at this stage of my career. It’s a conversation that arose at both of my last two jobs, Amazon and Google. Should your most senior engineers, the ones with decades of experience and coding triumphs and tragedies under their belts, actually invest their time in grinding out semicolons and unit tests? Or do you get more leverage out of them with mentoring, designing systems and reviewing others’ designs, code reviews, and being the bridge between businesspeople and geeks?

• The Line Between Censorship and Moderation

  Aug 7, 2019 - 1 min read

  Ben Thompson of Stratechery has a fantastic piece discussing a few of the issues surrounding content moderation on the Internet. As to the dynamics of publishers vs infrastructure…

  It makes sense to think about these positions of the stack very differently: the top of the stack is about broadcasting — reaching as many people as possible — and while you may have the right to say anything you want, there is no right to be heard.

• 30 Day Facebook Sabbatical

  Jan 20, 2019 - 2 min read

  Well I was going to leave completely but I know myself well enough that I probably can’t commit to an absolute position straight away so I will instead exit Facebook for 30 days. Let’s go a bit farther and say March 1. If I don’t miss it during that time, I’ll just make it permanent.

  For the most part I enjoy my FB experience as it relates to friends & family and sharing what we’re all up to. There are a couple things that are accessible only on Facebook, such as a local kids’ science meet up. I will need to find another way to participate in the event planning.

• New Look

  Jan 17, 2019 - 1 min read

  Part of the reason I’m leaving Facebook is to spend more time on thoughtful content here on my site. I was never completely happy with the old theme but I left it in place for quite awhile. Recently I found Hueman and quite like its simplicity and performance. I’ve had to edit a few posts here and there and create a “logo” for the header but overall I’m pleased.

  I will be evolving the site logo and logotype as part of my focus on the site so I’m hoping to improve it greatly.

• Leaving Facebook

  Jan 4, 2019 - 1 min read

  I’m not sure I ever trusted Facebook with my personal data but I have most of the time found enough value in its service to overlook the drawbacks. With news of the 2016 election influence and underhanded decisions by Facebook since then, I have decided to tip the scales the other way and leave the service.

• Conversations

  May 2, 2018 - 1 min read

  I recently came across this collection of drawings by Julia Evans.

• Coldplay in Miami Aug 28, 2017

  Sep 3, 2017 - 2 min read

  I’ve rewritten the intro to the post twice, sparing you all the history of missing the last few Coldplay shows and why we finally wanted to see them in Miami. You’re welcome.

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