Archive

Seasonality

It's beginning. Each year it kind of sneaks up on me, the gradual temperature adjustments from summer to fall. I really start to notice it in the changing of the plant life on my daily runs through the woods. A few curled leaves, browning on the edges. The

iPhone Duo thoughts

I've tried not to make this a breaking-news, tech-style blog. That's more what Krehin is for, something I'm testing in contrast to short-form posting on social media. But yesterday was a big day. I've long written about my love

Holding your thoughts

I've long struggled to keep ideas floating in my head without interruption. I'll be thinking through a concept, trying to figure it out, then something floats in. It might be an outside force, someone needing to talk to me, a Slack message, an email, a fly

Try harder

That's the message I've heard many times throughout my life. Often from well-meaning folks. They imagine that life will blossom and magic happens through sheer force of effort. It's also a message I've been guilty of promoting, of repeating things I&

Running thoughts

I don't know how to meditate. I've tried. I've followed guidelines, read about it, listened to advice from others, and every time I take a stab at it I just feel like I'm failing. Maybe that's the whole point, and

Hacking culture

It might be the world I'm swimming in, but it feels like a lot of people are starting to build apps. Some of these ideas spring from a desire to tinker and create, and maybe make money. But many others come from folks who have a problem, and

Hacking excitement

I'm excited. It'd be an understatement to say that things have shifted with technology in the last few years. The whole world has changed. And those of us who build software for a living have seen the ground shift under our feet. As with many designers,

Circuit breaks

Last night I was up late working on a project for work. Nobody made me do it, so no—don't worry, I won't be blinking twice. I really wanted to solve a particular problem, and I went at it all day, from dawn till dusk. Every

Being

You push so hard for so long, and at some point you look up and wonder why you've been expending your energy. When this happens, you can decide to keep pushing for diminishing returns or pause, step back, and reconsider. This is an area I struggle with. I&

Deeper reading

Over the last month I've done a lot more reading. Partially because of my little X4 (and now the X4 Pro), and partially because I got back from a two week vacation in Italy. During our trip I made the conscious decision to use my iPhone as little

Why I still get excited about new hardware

Next month Apple will be coming out with new phones. I'm looking forward to it. It's easy to be cynical these days about tiny upgrades, corporate entities sucking us dry for everything we're worth, planned obsolescence, and products that are merely incremental improvements over

Dogfooding software

I was talking with a friend recently about what it takes to make software successful. Specifically, indie apps and ideas. Over the years I've waffled between two sides of a spectrum. On the one hand I want to build great interfaces based on insight from real world customers.

Career ouroboros

When you first start your career you quickly realize that much of your work depends on execution. You learn something and you figure out how to do it. You get better, you find efficiencies. For me, as a teenager, this meant honing my craft. I tinkered with graphic design, figured

Design with AI? Think different

With all the AI tools available to us, it seems that a designer has no need for the archaic, simple, not auto-completing, software of the past. Why bother with something so trite as designing when AI can just do it all for you? This week I've been

Meaningful endeavors

Maybe it's happened to you. You reach a point where you pull up short and don't know the point of all your endeavors. Life is like that at times. It continues, relentlessly, and seems to demand, eat up, take everything you've got. At some

AI Rules for Product Designers

I was recently listening to a podcast episode from Cal Newport, where they outlined AI rules for developers. Namely, that a developer should approach AI use carefully, with intentionality, in a way that will ensure they aren't losing the abilities they have, and are benefitting from where AI

Blending new and old product design

It's been a year since I called the death of Figma. I'm still not sure if I was right, but the stock market seems to agree with me at the moment. Since then I've spent most of my time designing, and developing, with Claude

Delight in mundanity

Some days creativity is easy. I know what I want to get done, and all the pieces come together in the right way. I might be tired, I might be worn out from the effort, but it's effortless. I love those days, and they're part of

Writing right

Other than earlier's post, it's been a while since I wrote. A funny thing happens when you get out of the habit. Your next post—those next words you plan to publish, grow larger in estimation. You start to imagine they must be perfect, that the

Really building

Last week I decided to try something. I had an idea for a new app, pulled up Claude Code, and began building. The concept wasn't theoretical, I knew what I had in mind, and wanted to get to a solution immediately. Now, roughly a week later, I have