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My Homelab Two Years Later, Every Upgrade and What It Cost
Two years after a $200 ThinkServer: two Dell R730s, 73 containers, metered power data, and an honest look at whether a homelab pays for itself.
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My Development Setup in 2026
My development setup in 2026: Ghostty, plain zsh, Handy voice input, git worktrees for concurrent Claude Code agents, and chezmoi. What I switched and why.
The Best Home Assistant Automations of 2026 (10 Years In)
The best Home Assistant automations after 10 years and 128 running: basic to advanced, plus how I find broken ones and keep them working.
Enterprise Data Access for AI Agents: What Model Routing Doesn't Cover
Enterprise data access for AI agents is the part of the AI gateway stack most teams haven't built yet. Here's what it handles and why it matters now.
AI Gateway for Developers: What Teams Are Building on Live Enterprise Data
Building internal AI agents on enterprise data without a custom permission system. Here's what teams are shipping on CData Connect AI in 2026.
How to Connect Your Business Apps to Meta Muse
Connect enterprise data to Meta Muse with CData Connect AI. Add Salesforce, NetSuite, or HubSpot as a custom connector in about 10 minutes.
LiteLLM or CData Connect AI? Choosing the Right Enterprise AI Gateway in 2026
LiteLLM vs enterprise AI gateway, 2026 comparison: MCP governance, data connectivity, and when to use each. For IT admins and AI engineers.
![A jellyfish drifting in dark blue water while white text cards read "no ads." then "no algorithm." then "no idea what you should watch." and finally "[joeflix]"](/images/blog/adult-swim-bumpers-plex-pre-rolls/hero.webp)
I Made Adult Swim Bumpers for My Plex Server
I grew up on Toonami and Adult Swim, so I built a little CLI that makes Adult Swim-style bumpers and now every movie on my Plex server opens with one.
I Can't Memorize Lines, So I Built a Teleprompter That Listens
FollowSpot is a voice-following browser teleprompter that runs Whisper locally. Why I built it, plus benchmarks of five Whisper models on an M5 Max.
The Official MCP Roadmap: What Enterprise Teams Need to Plan for
The official MCP roadmap (Aug 22, 2026) maps five priorities. Here's what each means if you operate MCP servers, and what the spec still won't fix for you.
Ship the Ugly Pot
Your org is the quality group from the pottery parable. They were told to make one perfect pot. They made worse pots.
The Cognitive Case for Play in Technical Work
What research on creativity, flow states, and psychological safety says about the conditions that make your best iterative work possible - and how to build them.
What I Learned When I Could Finally Prove My Work Mattered
For most of my last job I couldn't say whether my work mattered. What I learned getting the data that finally answered it - and what it did to my influence.
The 2026-07-28 MCP Release Explained: What It Means for Enterprise Teams
The MCP 2026-07-28 release makes the protocol stateless, adds an extensions framework, and hardens authorization. Here's what each change actually means for teams running MCP in production.
I Finally Stopped Managing My Homelab by Hand (Everything Just Kept Breaking)
How I migrated 62 Proxmox containers to OpenTofu with a self-hosted MinIO state backend - the audit, the wave migration, the stack, and whether immutable infrastructure is actually worth it.
What I Learned Running DevRel in 2026
Lessons from running DevRel in 2026: why data gets you buy-in, why LLMs are a third distribution surface, and what I actually do in the first 90 days.
I Built a Fully Local Voice Assistant for Home Assistant (With GPU, No Cloud Required)
How I built a GPU-accelerated local voice pipeline for Home Assistant using faster-whisper, Piper TTS, and Ollama - zero cloud required, and the failures that got me here.
Two GPUs, Two Nodes, Seven Services: GPU Workload Distribution on Proxmox
How I distribute GPU workloads across two Proxmox nodes using LXC device binding - VRAM strategy, LXC passthrough config, and Tdarr distributed encoding.
My Personal Claude Code Skills Repo Accidentally Became Internal Tooling
I built a few Claude Code skills for myself because I was tired of copy-pasting the same prompts. Then my coworkers started asking questions. Here is what happened when a personal productivity tool became team infrastructure.
How I Reversed a Traffic Death Spiral (And the Weekly Ritual That's Doing It)
Our traffic was declining. Impressions down, clicks down. I'm a Developer Advocate who somehow also owns our web presence - and diagnosing it revealed two completely different problems that needed two different fixes. Real numbers, the weekly audit workflow, and what's actually working in 2026.
AWS IAM Identity Center (Formerly AWS SSO): The Complete 2026 Guide
AWS IAM Identity Center replaced AWS SSO in 2022. Learn how to set it up, configure permission sets, use the AWS CLI, and audit access with CloudQuery.
CWPP vs CNAPP: What Cloud Security Teams Need to Know in 2026
CWPP protects cloud workloads at runtime. CNAPP unifies CWPP, CSPM, and CIEM into one platform. Learn when each makes sense and how they compare.
What Is Attack Surface Management? A Technical Guide for Cloud Teams
Attack surface management finds exposed cloud assets before attackers do. Learn how ASM differs from CSPM and vulnerability management, with SQL examples.
What Is Cloud Governance? The Complete Guide for Platform Engineering Teams
The policies and controls that keep cloud infrastructure secure, compliant, and cost-efficient. Learn the 6 pillars of cloud governance and how to implement them.
AWS Pinpoint Is Being Deprecated: How to Assess Your Migration Scope
AWS Pinpoint reaches end of support October 2026. Query your Pinpoint usage across all accounts to find what needs migrating before the deadline.
How to get started with Home Assistant in 2026
Are you looking to turn your home into a smart home? With the help of Home Assistant, you can easily automate tasks and make your home more efficient.
Self-Hosted Music Still Sucks in 2026
The *arr ecosystem perfected video automation but music remains stuck with album-centric workflows. Current tools like Lidarr force complete album downloads when users want individual tracks.
CloudQuery Sync Performance: A Practical Troubleshooting Guide
Why CloudQuery syncs slow down (especially after a plugin upgrade), how to diagnose expensive tables, and the CLI command that replaces the tables wildcard with an explicit list.
Did Gemini Just Make Your Google API Keys a Security Risk?
Google API keys safe to embed publicly now authenticate to Gemini. Here's how to audit your GCP projects with CloudQuery to find the exposure.
Implementing MikroTik's Binary API Protocol in Python from Scratch
A deep dive into implementing MikroTik's proprietary RouterOS binary API protocol in Python - variable-length encoding, sentence-based messaging, and programmatic network infrastructure control. Zero dependencies, 137 lines.
Cloud Operations Metrics and ROI for Leadership
Track the five metric categories that prove cloud operations ROI to leadership. Includes a one-page scorecard template with before-and-after targets.
A 90-Day Roadmap to Cloud Operations Maturity
A week-by-week plan from first inventory sync to automated governance. Three phases, clear milestones, and metrics to prove ROI to leadership.
What Makes a Cloud Data Layer AI-Ready
AI for cloud operations is only as good as the data behind it. Learn what makes a cloud data layer AI-ready and which use cases it enables first.
Mapping SOC 2 and CIS Controls to SQL for Continuous Compliance
Map SOC 2 and CIS controls to SQL queries that run daily. Replace quarterly audit scrambles with continuous compliance evidence generation.
Writing Cloud Security Posture Checks in SQL
Write cloud security checks in SQL instead of proprietary policy languages. See practical queries for public buckets, MFA, encryption, and more.
Beyond Deploy-Time Checks: Continuous Cloud Governance
Deploy-time policy checks miss console changes, configuration drift, and external changes. Continuous governance catches what CI/CD pipelines cannot.
Visibility-First Cloud Governance: Why You Should Start with Data
Most governance models fail because they enforce rules about infrastructure they cannot see. The Visibility-First model starts with a queryable foundation.
Calculating the True Cost of Cloud Operations Toil
Engineering toil from fragmented cloud visibility costs $47K-$90K per engineer yearly. Use our calculator to measure the real cost at your organization.
Why Cloud Compliance Audit Prep Still Takes Weeks
Most teams spend weeks preparing for audits that should take hours. Learn why compliance scrambles persist and how queryable data eliminates them.
The Hidden Cost of Cloud Security Alert Investigation
Security teams spend more time correlating information than fixing problems. See how a single alert costs 45 minutes of manual investigation.
The Cloud Operations Gap in Multi-Cloud Environments
89% of organizations use multiple clouds but only 8% are cloud-mature. Learn what the Cloud Operations Gap is and why it costs teams hours every week.
Cloud Operations Maturity Model: A Six-Dimension Self-Assessment
Score your cloud operations maturity across six dimensions. Only 8% of orgs qualify as highly cloud-mature - here is where most teams actually fall.
How to Detect Public Databases Across AWS, Azure, and GCP with CloudQuery Policies
Detect publicly accessible databases across AWS RDS, Azure, and GCP Cloud SQL. Step-by-step CloudQuery Policies tutorial with copy-paste ClickHouse SQL.
AWS Lambda Python 3.9 End-of-Support: Find and Upgrade Every Affected Function
AWS Lambda Python 3.9 security patches stopped Dec 15, 2025. Find every affected function across all accounts with SQL queries and upgrade to 3.12 or 3.13.
Building a GPU-Accelerated Subtitle Generator for My Video Library
How I built a self-hosted subtitle generation pipeline using GPU-accelerated Whisper AI on my homelab - with parallel workers, VRAM-aware scheduling, automatic language detection, and a multi-layer hallucination filter. A practical faster-whisper guide for video libraries at scale.
Building a Real-Time Digital Graffiti Wall with MongoDB Realm and RGB LEDs
How I built an interactive art installation and collaborative drawing app where multiple users draw on a shared digital canvas that displays their creations live on a physical RGB LED grid, using MongoDB Realm for real-time sync.
Steampipe vs CloudQuery: Architecture and Trade-offs
Steampipe queries cloud APIs live from the terminal. CloudQuery syncs cloud configuration into a persistent inventory. Here is when to use each.
One Year Into DORA: What Actually Worked for ICT Asset Registers
One year into DORA enforcement, 46% of institutions still struggle with asset registers. Learn what worked, common pitfalls, and how to prepare for stricter 2026 enforcement.
CodeBreach Vulnerability: How to Detect If Your AWS CodeBuild Projects Are Affected
Detect CodeBreach vulnerability in your AWS CodeBuild webhook filters. SQL queries to find unanchored ACTOR_ACCOUNT_ID patterns and missing security controls.
AWS + Google Cloud Networking Partnership: Connectivity Solved, Visibility Still Broken
AWS and Google Cloud partnered on multicloud networking, provisioning connections in minutes. But network pipes were the easy problem. Unified visibility across different cloud APIs remains unsolved.
Audit CODEOWNERS Against Okta to Find Orphaned Code Ownership with SQL
Find CODEOWNERS entries for employees who left the company by joining Git file content with your identity provider data. No scripts, just SQL.
Find Commits by Departed Employees Across All Repos with SQL
Identify code changes made by employees who left your organization. Cross-reference git commit authors against your identity provider to find commits needing review.
Find Every repo Missing a LICENSE File with One SQL Query
Identify repositories without LICENSE files across your organization using SQL. No cloning required, no scripts to maintain - just query your git file data.
Find EOL Docker Images, Missing Licenses, and Stale CODEOWNERS Across Thousands of repos with SQL
Query your Dockerfiles, CODEOWNERS, and package.json files across all repos with SQL. No cloning, no custom scripts - just SQL queries that find EOL images, missing licenses, and outdated dependencies in seconds.
Query Your Dockerfiles with SQL: Find EOL Node 18 Images Across All repos
Node 18 reached end-of-life. Find every Dockerfile using Node 18 base images across your organization with a single SQL query - no cloning repos required.
Track React Dependencies Across Your Organization with SQL
Find every package.json using React across all repositories. Query dependency versions, track upgrades, identify outdated packages - all with SQL.
How Unicorne Increased Well-Architected Review Capacity by 60% with CloudQuery
How Unicorne used CloudQuery to automate AWS Well-Architected Framework Reviews and build their FinOps SaaS product Stable - cutting engagement time from 50 to 20 hours.
AWS Lambda Node.js 20 End of Life: Upgrade to Node.js 22 Before April 2026
Node.js 20 on AWS Lambda hits EOL April 30, 2026. Find every affected function across all accounts, fix breaking changes, and upgrade with this step-by-step guide.
6 Cloud CMDB Best Practices for Platform Engineers (2026 Guide)
Cloud CMDB best practices for multi-account environments - automated discovery, tiered sync strategies, SQL-based querying, and historical data retention for compliance.
Building a Claude Code Blog Skill: What I Learned Systematizing Content Creation
I live in the terminal. Like, genuinely live there. As a developer advocate, it’s where I spend most of my time - running commands, testing code, writing docs. Over the past few months, Claude Code...
The Death of Agent-Based CMDB Discovery
Agent-based CMDB discovery fails in cloud environments with containers, serverless, and managed services. API-driven discovery costs 90% less and works everywhere.
The Real-Time Cloud CMDB - Why Ephemeral Infrastructure Killed Traditional Discovery
Traditional CMDBs miss most ephemeral resources because containers live just minutes. Modern cloud CMDBs use tiered sync strategies (15-30 min for critical, hourly for important, daily for baseline). Compare approaches, costs, and learn why ephemeral infrastructure killed traditional discovery.
Cloud CMDB vs Traditional CMDB: A 2026 Comparison
Traditional CMDBs fail 70-80% (Gartner 2024) due to agent-based architecture and rigid ITIL data models. Cloud CMDBs use API-based discovery and native schemas. Compare architecture, implementation time, and technical approaches for 2026.
Five Tips for Getting Maximum Value from a Cloud Asset Inventory
Discover five essential principles for building cloud asset inventories that deliver real business value. Learn how successful organizations transform cloud infrastructure visibility into measurable outcomes through business-focused implementation, cross-functional collaboration, and actionable intelligence.
How to Design a Cloud Asset Inventory for AWS
Learn the five essential design principles for building cloud asset inventories that deliver results - freshness, completeness, normalization, queryability, and extensibility. Discover the maturity stages from ad-hoc scripts to optimized systems with predictive analytics and real-time decision making.
Introduction to CloudQuery for AWS
Discover how CloudQuery solves cloud visibility fragmentation by providing AI-powered insights across all AWS resources. Learn CloudQuery's architecture, how it transforms multi-source data into unified schemas, and why it's become essential for security monitoring, cost optimization, and compliance automation.
Why and When Do You Need a Cloud Asset Inventory?
Discover why and when you need a cloud asset inventory for your AWS environment. Learn how asset inventories solve critical challenges in security governance, cost optimization, and operational excellence - and when organizations should implement them.
Building Secure AI-Powered Cloud Security: From Data Pipeline to Risk Detection
Learn how AI-powered cloud security reduces investigation time by 55% across AWS, GCP, Azure with our open-source demo.
CloudQuery Performance Benchmark Analysis: 581 GB/Hour Throughput and the Reality of Cloud API Constraints
Performance analysis of CloudQuery across multiple platforms and data sources, achieving 581 GB/hour throughput on consumer grade hardware when processing local data, with detailed analysis of cloud provider API rate limiting impacts.
Introducing CloudQuery Insights: Cloud Intelligence That Connects the Dots
CloudQuery Insights monitors your complete asset inventory and surfaces interconnected signals across security, cost, policy, and audit data automatically.
Production AI Data Pipeline Architectures
AI applications need fresh, unified data to succeed. CloudQuery delivers faster data movement from 50+ sources to AI destinations like vector databases and training pipelines - privately on your infrastructure.
We benchmarked our ETL tool and synced 1 million rows in 2 seconds on a MacBook
We benchmarked our ETL tool and synced 1 million rows in 2 seconds on laptop hardware, which is 68% faster than enterprise platforms. Full methodology and code included.
What is an AWS Cloud Asset Inventory?
What is AWS Cloud Asset Inventory? Learn why it's essential for security and cost optimization, and compare AWS Config, Systems Manager, and CloudQuery.
How We Made Our IDEs Data-Aware with a Go MCP Server
How we built a Go-based MCP server to make AI Assistants data-aware, bridging code and database, which ended up transforming the way we code.
We Built an MCP Server and These Are the Gotchas Nobody Talks About
Lessons we learned from building an MCP server to bridge LLMs with cloud infrastructure databases. What we learned about tool descriptions, naming, context limits, and quirks, and how we fixed them.
AI for Analyzing Your Cloud Asset Inventory
CloudQuery's new MCP server lets AI agents directly query your cloud inventory using natural language. Get real dashboards, reports, and analytics from actual infrastructure data across AWS, GCP, Azure, and more.
I Replaced Alexa with a Dumber Voice Assistant (But at Least It’s Private)
After five years of building automations in Home Assistant, I finally pulled the trigger on something I’d been contemplating for months: completely replacing my Amazon Alexa ecosystem with Home...
How to Make Your Internal Developer Portal Actually Useful
A fresh asset inventory is the foundation of successful developer portals. Learn how organizations achieve 224% ROI, reduce onboarding by 67%, and save millions through inventory-driven Backstage implementations with real case studies from Spotify, Toyota, and financial services.
Cloud Centers of Excellence (Part 1): Building Effective Cloud Governance Through Strategic Organization
Discover how to build a successful Cloud Center of Excellence (CCOE) to drive cloud governance, security, and innovation across your enterprise. Learn key structures, roles, and strategies in Part 1 of our 5-part implementation series.
Cloud Centers of Excellence (Part 2): Governance, Security, and Compliance in CCOEs
Who actually owns cloud policy? We break down how real CCOEs manage governance, enforce security without compromising velocity, and keep regulators at bay. We share what works and what quietly fails, inside enterprises handling sensitive workloads.
Cloud Centers of Excellence (Part 3): FinOps, Cost Management, and Real-World Case Studies
Cloud costs aren't just a budgeting issue, they're a systems problem. In Part 3, we unpack how mature CCOEs adopt FinOps practices to track every dollar, cut waste by up to 40%, and drive shared accountability across teams. Real examples from banks and enterprises show how this actually plays out.
Cloud Centers of Excellence (Part 4): Implementation Best Practices and Common Pitfalls
Part 4 of the Cloud CoE series: a battle-tested roadmap covering what to build first, what to skip, how to avoid the ivory tower trap, and keeping your CoE alive past year one.
Cloud Centers of Excellence (Part 5): The Future of CCOEs and Getting Started
CCOEs aren't going away, they're evolving. Part 5 looks ahead at how CCOEs are shifting. We share what's next, what to build, and how to keep your CCOE adaptable without locking it in the past.
Why (and How) We Built Our Own Full Text Search Engine with ClickHouse
How we built a full-text search for CloudQuery using ClickHouse, achieving 10x faster queries without dedicated search engines.
How We Accidentally Invented a Cloud Search Language
How we turned our search bar into a domain-specific language using Peggy instead of regex, solving complex parsing challenges for cloud resource queries.
How We Handle Billion-Row ClickHouse Inserts With UUID Range Bucketing
How we solved memory explosion issues in ClickHouse when processing billions of rows of cloud configuration data using an Insert-Splitter with UUID-range bucketing technique.
Integrate AbuseIPDB Threat Intelligence with CloudQuery
Check your cloud public IPs against AbuseIPDB abuse scores using CloudQuery inventory data and SQL joins. Includes working query examples.
Kubernetes Asset Tracking: Why 70% of Enterprises are Struggling (And How to Fix It)
Learn how to tackle the challenges of managing Kubernetes assets across multiple clouds with the central configuration store pattern. Discover how CloudQuery enables SQL-based querying for efficient governance, security enforcement, and compliance at scale.
How to Query ipinfo.io Data with CloudQuery
Enrich your CloudQuery cloud asset inventory with ipinfo.io geolocation, ASN, and privacy detection data using SQL joins. Includes working query examples.
Visualize & Govern Your Cloud Stack with CloudQuery Reports
CloudQuery Reports delivers actionable insights for multi-cloud security, compliance, and cost optimization with ready-to-use dashboards and SQL queries.
Six Months with ClickHouse at CloudQuery: The Good, The Bad, and the Unexpected
After six months using ClickHouse as CloudQuery's default backend, here's what we learned about performance, JOIN limits, sorting keys, materialized views, and benchmarking.
What We Learned Querying Cloud Infra for Expired Dependencies
Learn how to easily track and fix end-of-life cloud services across AWS, Azure, and GCP with CloudQuery new End-of-Life (EOL) integration.
The Best Way to Keep Your Cloud Inventory Up to Date
Keeping cloud asset data up to date across AWS, GCP, Azure, and Kubernetes has been a challenge until now. CloudQuery Data Pipelines automate syncing, normalizing, and structuring cloud data into a unified format. No more fragile scripts or manual exports. See how it works
Building an AWS Cloud Asset Inventory
Learn how to build a cloud asset inventory in AWS using CloudQuery, PostgreSQL, and Grafana. This guide covers setting up CloudQuery, transforming data with dbt, and visualizing cloud assets for improved security and compliance.
Stop Wasting Time on Cloud UIs and Scripts, and Query Your Cloud Like a Database
CloudQuery SQL Console lets you search your cloud like a database. No more clicking through endless dashboards or writing brittle scripts - just instant answers with SQL.
How to Eliminate Blind Spots in Your Cloud Environment
Stop guessing what in your multi-cloud environment. Use CloudQuery asset inventory to see everything, secure everything, and save money doing it.
AI, Without Exposing Your Data
Learn how to build AI-powered applications while keeping your sensitive data secure and private on your own infrastructure.
How to Build a Cloud Asset Inventory for Azure
Learn how to build an Azure cloud asset inventory with CloudQuery and PostgreSQL. Covers setup, dbt transformations, and visualizing assets for security and compliance.
Getting Started with Cloud Asset Inventory in 2026
Cloud asset inventory is vital for managing multi-cloud environments, enhancing security, and ensuring compliance. Learn how to build and maintain an effective inventory. Explore best practices, address challenges, and see real-world applications.
What is SOC2 Compliance?
Learn SOC2 compliance essentials: protect data, build trust, and meet regulatory standards with security, availability, integrity, confidentiality, and privacy.
Tempus: Multi-Cloud Asset Inventory Across 80+ AWS Accounts and 1000+ GCP Projects
How Tempus uses CloudQuery on GCP with Terraform, GKE, Cloud SQL, and Grafana to run nightly syncs across 80+ AWS accounts and 1000+ GCP projects for compliance and security.
Building a Multi-Cloud Asset Inventory for Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and AWS with CloudQuery
Learn how to build a unified multi-cloud asset inventory with CloudQuery. This post covers pulling data from AWS and GCP, storing it in PostgreSQL, and querying your cloud assets with ease.
How to Build a Multi-Cloud Asset Inventory
Learn how to build a multi-cloud asset inventory (AWS, GCP, Azure) with this step-by-step guide. It covers cloud data collection, transformation, and storage, helping you optimize security, compliance, and cost management in your cloud environments.
Step-by-Step Guide to Building a Cloud Asset Inventory for GCP
Learn how to build a GCP cloud asset inventory with CloudQuery, PostgreSQL, and dbt. Covers setup, data transformation with dbt models, and querying your cloud resources.
Data Warehouses Are Terrible Application Backends
‘The ever-increasing tide of data has become a paradox of plenty for today’’s developers. According to a report from Seagate, by 2025 worldwide data will grow to a staggering 163 zettabytes, over 10...'
How to Build Applications over Streaming Data the Right Way
In modern data ecosystems, streaming data flows like traffic on a busy highway. Each packet of data has a specific destination,...
The Engineer’s Guide to Enriching Streams and Dimensions
Data - it’s the new oil, the new gold, the new … you get the idea. There’s a whole lot of it, and it’s valuable. But unless you’re into data hoarding, the point isn’t just to collect it; you want …...
Why ClickHouse Should Be Your Next Database
“Today, we’re jumping into databases. Another database to learn? But before you sprint for the hills, allow me to introduce you to ClickHouse.”
A step-by-step guide to build a real-time dashboard
Can you imagine shipping a new user-facing dashboard only to have your users met with a visualization that takes several seconds or even minutes to load? No way, right? Your users would get...
How to build a real-time fraud detection system
Financial fraud is a growing concern in our increasingly digital world. According to a report by PwC, almost half of the surveyed organizations experienced fraud in the past 2 years. For...
Modern data management with real-time Change Data Capture
Data engineers are grappling with surging data volumes while stakeholders increasingly demand real-time decision-making and user-facing features powered by data. This raises a fundamental question:...
Real-time Databases: What developers need to know
Selecting the right application database can be a challenge for developers, especially so when you need a database for building real-time applications. Real-time data has become an essential...
Using Bloom filter indexes for real-time text search in ClickHouse
Efficient text search is one of the hardest problems in data engineering. Text-based data presents a unique set of challenges, especially when you need results in real time...
What it takes to build a real-time recommendation system
Real-time, personalized recommendations have become a foundational part of our online experiences. From streaming services suggesting our next binge-worthy TV series to e-commerce platforms offering...
Event sourcing with Kafka: A practical example
Imagine you’re building banking software, and you’ve been asked to figure out one of the most fundamental tasks in fintech: determining the current balance of every customer in your system....
How to query Google Sheets with SQL in real time
Sick of manually wrestling with Google Sheets like it’s an Excel spreadsheet from 2005? Feel like force-quitting Chrome every time you attempt to sift through just 10,000 rows of data? We’ve all...
Adding Custom Domain Names on Your Internal Network Using Nginx Proxy Manager and Pi-Hole
How I set up custom domain names on my internal network using Pi-Hole for DNS and Nginx Proxy Manager for traffic control and SSL - including what actually works for SSL on local-only domains.
How to get started building a Homelab server in 2026
I built my first Homelab server for under $200 using a used Lenovo ThinkServer from Facebook Marketplace and Proxmox. Here is everything I learned about picking hardware, choosing an OS, setting up containers, and mounting NAS storage.
Developer Advocacy in 2023
Adapting to Techpocalypse - Remember when we thought 2020 was a wild ride? Fast forward to 2023, and here we are, in the midst of a tech market downturn and a tsunami of tech layoffs. Developer...
DevRel as Dev Zero
As a developer advocate, I often ponder DevRel’s role in catching bugs and tricky issues before they escalate. I’m sharing my thoughts in this blog post. DevRel as Dev Zero DevRel can serve as the...
Treat Content Development for Your Open Source Project Like Your Open Source Project
‘Hello nerds! Let’s talk about how you should treat content development for your open source project like your open-source project. I know, it sounds meta, but bear with me. As a developer advocate, I’ve...’
From Digital Design to Real-World Object: How I Created a 3D-Printed Planter for a Recycled Postcard Rack Planter
You might not have thought much about using your technical skills to create physical objects. However, with the rise of 3D printing technology, it’s becoming easier than ever to turn digital designs...
Databases and DevOps: How to Use SingleStore With GitHub Actions
Databases are frequently not included when transforming an application and engineering culture toward a DevOps, or continuous deployment engineering organization. And, you could be forgiven for this...
How to Use SingleStore as a Key-Value Store
Key-value stores are perhaps one of the most popular databases on the market today - and with good reason! They are fast, scalable and super easy to use. But did you know you can get all the...
Four Questions You Need To Ask When Choosing a Database
Are you overwhelmed by the sheer amount of databases on the market today, and not sure where to start? Let’s say that you are a Software Developer, and you need to select a database for a brand new...
Database Sharding vs. Partitioning: What’s the Difference?
In this post, I explain the differences between database sharding vs. partitioning and explore when to use each - or even to combine them for data-intensive applications.
How to Add Machine Learning Predictions with SingleStore and MindsDB
Have you ever needed to set a machine learning model on your data before?
How to Get Started with SingleStore
Are you looking for the fastest possible way to get a new SingleStore Cluster up and running while testing out sample datasets to experiment with and use?
How to Use SingleStore and Node.js
Do you need to get a basic SingleStore application setup quickly using Node.js?
How to Manage MongoDB Data at Scale
Let’s face it: Your data can get stale and old quickly. But just because the data isn’t being used as often as it once was doesn’t mean that it’s not still valuable or that it won’t be valuable again...
How to Query from Multiple MongoDB Databases
Have you ever needed to make queries across databases, clusters, data centers, or even mix it with data stored in an AWS S3 blob? You probably haven’t had to do all of these at once, but I’m guessing...
How to Seed a MongoDB Database with Fake Data
Have you ever worked on a MongoDB project and needed to seed your database with fake data in order to provide initial values for lookups, demo purposes, proof of concepts, etc.? I’m biased, but I’ve...
How to Use Custom Archival Rules and Partitioning on MongoDB Atlas Online Archive
Okay, so you’ve set up a simple MongoDB Atlas Online Archive, and now you might be wondering, “What’s next?” In this post, we will cover some more advanced Online Archive use cases, including setting...
How to use MongoDB Client-Side Field Level Encryption (CSFLE) with Node.js
Have you ever had to develop an application that stored sensitive data, like credit card numbers or social security numbers? This is a super common use case for databases, and it can be a pain to...
MongoDB Aggregation Pipeline Queries vs SQL Queries
Let’s be honest: Many devs coming to MongoDB are joining the community with a strong background in SQL. I would personally include myself in this subset of MongoDB devs. I think it’s useful to map...
An Introduction to IoT (Internet of Toilets)
My favorite things in life are cats, computers, and crappy ideas, so I decided to combine all three and explore what was possible with JavaScript by creating a brand-new Internet of Things (Internet...
How To Use The MongoDB Visual Studio Code Plugin
To make developers more productive when working with MongoDB, we built MongoDB for Visual Studio Code, an extension that allows you to quickly connect to MongoDB and MongoDB Atlas and work with your...
Linked Lists and MongoDB: A Gentle Introduction
Are you new to data structures and algorithms? In this post, you will learn about one of the most important data structures in Computer Science, the Linked List, implemented with a MongoDB twist....
Save The World And Money With MongoDB Atlas Data Lake
Thanks for coming to my talk, Save The World And Money With MongoDB Atlas Data Lake. About Data centers are expensive. It turns out that this is not great for the environment. By 2040, storing...
The Art of Computer Science
First, thank you so much for coming to my keynote, The Art of Computer Science. Here you will find all the resources discussed during the talk. About Do you feel like you have struggled to find your...
Bechdel.io - How We Used JavaScript To Help Make Film More Inclusive
Thanks for coming to my talk, Bechdel.io - How We Used JavaScript To Help Make Film More Inclusive. Here you will find all the resources discussed during the talk. About What do The Social Network,...
How to Pass A Coding Interview
The question I most frequently get from developers is how to pass a coding interview. What follows is what I think will be sufficient for a person to be well prepared.
A Gentle Introduction to Building Serverless Apps
Thanks for coming to my talk, A Gentle Introduction to Building Serverless Apps. Here you will find all the resources discussed during the talk. About Do you want to crank out features the business...
MongoDB Schema Design Best Practices
Thanks for coming to my talk, MongoDB Schema Design Best Practices. Here you will find all the resources discussed during the talk. About: “How do I model my schema for my...
From SQL to NoSQL: A Gentle Introduction For Devs
Thanks for coming to my talk, From SQL to NoSQL: A Gentle Introduction For Devs. Here you will find all the resources discussed during the talk. About “I have heard about NoSQL databases, but don’t...
Building Your First GraphQL Client in JS
Thanks for coming to my talk, Building Your First GraphQL Client in JS. Here you will find all the resources discussed during the talk. About RESTful APIs have been around for a while now, but they...
An Introduction To IoT (Internet of Toilets 🚽)
Thanks for coming to my talk, An Introduction To IoT (Internet of Toilets 🚽); Or How I Built an IoT Kitty Litter Box Using JavaScript, and here you will find all the resources discussed during the...
My Top 50 All-Time Favorite Records
Every couple of years, I like to compile a list of my 50 all-time favorite records. These tend to be the records that I listen to the most or that have had the greatest impact on me. The order...
How to Build a React and MongoDB App From Scratch In 10 Minutes
Are you interested in learning how to build a React and MongoDB App? Like many of you, I have been interested in learning more about MongoDB’s cloud offerings and also not spending a dime. This guide...
How to Build A Spotify Player with React in 15 Minutes
Have you ever wanted to build a Spotify player for your app or website? Adding personalized music to any application is super easy with the Spotify Developer API. Personally, I have been playing...
A Brief Cuba Travel Guide
Have always wanted to see what communism looks like firsthand or try an authentic Cuban cigar? Well, travel to Cuba is still possible from the United States in 2018 (despite President Trump’s travel...
The Tech Talks That Have Had The Biggest Impact On My Career
It’s not that often that I go to a conference or watch a talk on YouTube that truly changes the way I think about programming or software development. Even though I’m someone who does frontend...
An Engineers Guide to Knowing if You Are Done With a Project
Have you ever started a project and thought to yourself, “When can I call this done?” Then this listicle is for you! This guide is intended to be a general list of things your personal or...
Building High Performance React Applications
Okay, we all know that React was built with performance in mind, but when is React slow? I want to break down for you, dear reader, common bottlenecks in React and when you might be making your...
So, You Want To Learn How To Code? Here’s What You Need To Know.
So, you want to learn how to code? Here’s What You Need To Know to get started. This is a list of my favorite programming books, talks, podcasts, newsletters, websites, and general tips for...
I Ran My First Hackathon, and So Can You!
I Ran My First Hackathon, and So Can You! Here are the lessons I learned from planning, organizing, and executing my first hackathon. The hackathon I ran was the Stupid Shit and Terrible Ideas...
I was on Hawaii Public Radio to talk about our Stupid Hackathon Hawaii
Thanks again to Burt Lum and Ryan Ozawa for having me and my buddy Ray on their radio show, Bytemark’s Cafe, to talk about the Stupid Shit and Terrible Ideas That No One in Hawaii Needs “Hackathon”....
Complete Guide To Node Client-Server Communication
After reading High-Performance Browser Networking by Ilya Grigorik, I was inspired to implement all of the client-server communication techniques outlined in his book in Node and JavaScript. This...
Bechdel Test Script Parser - How It Works
The Bechdel Test Script Parser was a collaborative digital humanities project between myself and my sister, Laurel Karlsson. It is the product of a shared passion for film, feminism, and the creative...
One Week in Oahu - A Seven Day Tourist Travel Itinerary
This itinerary contains the list of spots I would bring friends and family one week in Oahu. I tried to avoid the usual tourist spots.
How To Find a Technical Co-founder
Okay, so you have an idea for a new company, and you just know that Facebook for cats is the next billion-dollar idea. The only issue is that you have no idea how to code. You heard from your aunt...
10 Things I learned at Startup Weekend
What Is Startup Weekend? Are you interested in starting your own business someday? Do you have an idea for a business? Want to meet some smart people? Startup Weekend is for you! Startup...
PSA: Activate 2-Step Verification on your Email Account
You all should activate 2-Step Verification on all of your most important accounts. Making a new long password is no longer enough to protect your accounts. It’s easier than you think for someone to...
How to pixelate images with HTML5 and JavaScript
A couple of months ago, I was interested in learning some new HTML5 elements. The more visual flourishes of the canvas class especially caught my eye. The ability to dynamically adjust elements in an...
How To Explain to Your Dad Why Snapchat Is So Awesome
A recent article written by Jeremy Liew, titled “If you don’t “get” why Snapchat is growing so fast, read this,” and a conversation with my anti-Snapchat Dad has had me thinking about why Snapchat...
My Relationship With The Internet
There have been a lot of articles recently published about how the internet, social media, and smartphones are killing ‘real human connections.’ I however believe that this is a reactionary knee jerk...
Overwhelmed by the Web
Why are we surprised when someone has not seen, listened, or read something? Have you ever heard someone say, “You’ve never watched X!?!” or “Haven’t you read Y about the Z conflict? Don’t you care?”...