Software, Photography, and the Spaces in Between

My reflections on code, photography, product development, and life — collected here in chronological order.

2025 in Review

The last time I did a year in review post was way back in 2014. I've always sort of kept track of my resolutions and progress over the years since, but never actually sat down to write out another full review like this.

Is This Thing On?

Three years can go by in the blink of an eye. That's how long it's been since my last post on here -- it's also not the first time that I've gone three years between posts. But I thought it might be nice to give an update.

Using Websockets with React Query

If you just need to fetch some data you can use useQuery and be on your way, but as your application grows in complexity you may find yourself wanting to connect to a websocket to receive real-time updates from your server. Fortunately, React Query makes this quite painless.

Bye bye, Birdie

I honestly can't tell if the Twitter acquisition is going off the rails or according to plan.

Making the Jump to Engineering Management

After almost a decade working as an individual contributor — with a few short stints in engineering leadership-adjacent roles — I've decided to finally make the jump to engineering management.