Essays

People told me that becoming a dad would change everything all at once. I became a dad on August 21, 2025. It was a chaotic and special day…

Lawrence C. Corbridge presented some of my favorite ideas in Stand Forever , and I found out recently that he gave a follow up to that talk…

I've been working as an engineer at Particl from Oct 2021 to the present. It's been a bit of a chaotic and wild ride, and it occurred to me…

Vite comes from the French word for "quick" , but is it really? I've spent the last 3, almost 4 years building our web app at Particl…

See this post for inspiration. Over the past few months, I've moved as much code as possible away from Next.js . While I see why people…

Designing good tools depends on much more than the features you include. Like the best margherita pizzas in Italy, or the best ambient music…

Consider 2 people in different circumstances: Good job, income, stability, schooling, family situations, spouse, comfortable home, but can't…

I consider myself a religious person. I go to church weekly, I pray, I meditate, I read the scriptures. I try to be a good person. I feel…

When you move into a brand new house, you inevitably are left with a few projects by the builder to wrap up. 2 such projects on near…

I was a bit of a weird teenager, and am still a bit of a weird adult. I like a lot of the "normal" things like sports, music, and hanging…

Doing great work and living fulfilled can boil down to a specific way of doing work, which is finding a project of one's own . Said another…

Kadee and I found out some hard news we'd started to suspect a few years into our marriage: it wasn't going to be as easy as we'd hoped to…

There are a ton of chart libraries out there for React. I've used just about every single one of them, and I've started to get stronger and…

I've always enjoyed seeing beautiful artwork of Jesus Christ. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (of which I am a member) has…

Thesis : the Gospel is actually stupidly simple and I overcomplicate it. Simplifications points us back to the way, and Jesus is the way…

To preface this whole essay/discussion, Elder Robert D. Hales once said in General Conference a few years ago: What is said is not as…

My wife and I wanted to buy a house shortly after we got married in 2021. We told ourselves, "the market is too crazy now" and sat on the…

Ever since I've paid attention to the Law of Two Words , I've seen it all over. President Russell M. Nelson of the Church of Jesus Christ…

One of the central ideas of the book Fahrenheit 451 revolves around preserving books and their ideas. In my essay on Things Principles , I…

They don't go in any particular order but helpful in both a job or in life: Write Things Down Simplify Things Measure Things Why Things…

I visited Italy for the first time this year, and no surprise, was rustling for a selfie stick on every street corner. Like the whole world…

Being the obnoxious husband that I am, when I found out my wife had never seen the Lord of the Rings I force fed all the extended versions…

I sat today with my eye closed and thought about a fire. I had recently listened to Jon Hopkins' Sit Around the Fire and considered how my…

Doing hard things I was blessed with a mother who always told me I could do hard things, whether it was sports (I played on several…

Why learning to code has been one of the best choices I've ever made. At a macro level, software is eating the world . The top 5 most…

For a long time I've been a fan of digital solutions for real-world problems. Parents won't get you a dog? Tomagotchi. Need a way to connect…

After a year being closely involved on the docs for Gatsby , I've learned a thing or two and have started seeing patterns in it and other…

I've been attending BYU since Fall of 2013, and I've learned a thing or two along the way. As I approached graduation, I often found myself…

As I’ve evaluated contradicting opinions in different areas of software engineering and development like bootcamps vs college degrees, this…

Like many people, I have no shortage of ideas for apps that don’t genuinely need to exist. I tend to hold onto those ideas waiting for some…

Making Animation Approachable Being a wizened guru of CSS used to be a barrier for entry to designing complex motion animations. Libraries…

Shave off hours of work with a simple to use React component built for images. Optimizing images hardly sounds like an ideal afternoon of…