adamtaylor.me
  • Writing
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  • Work With Me

  • 429 Days

    Posted on: February 20, 2026

    Until we meet again, my son.

  • The system runs on ignorance

    Posted on: February 17, 2026

    "What are you trying to tell me? That I can dodge bullets? No, Neo. I'm trying to tell you that when you're ready, you won't have to."

  • Not looking at the code

    Posted on: February 16, 2026

    I shipped a fully-featured game with Claude Code. After two weeks, I realized I hadn't read a line of code.

  • Examples of subtractive prompt designs

    Posted on: February 12, 2026

    Subtract the LLM's "escape routes" to get novel results from your prompts.

  • Ship less, think more

    Posted on: February 12, 2026

    When you ship at the speed of thought, thinking becomes more important, not less.

  • Beating procrastination with Clarity

    Posted on: December 24, 2025

    I've found that somewhere around 98% of all my procrastination comes from a lack of clarity about what exactly the end goal is and what the very first step towards that end goal should be.

  • Editing Is Thinking

    Posted on: December 23, 2025

  • Migrating from Reflect notes to Bear Notes (while implementing Forever ✱ Notes)

    Posted on: June 28, 2025

  • Setting iTerm2 Highlight Triggers within Dynamic Profiles

    Posted on: May 1, 2025

    Today I solved a weird issue with getting HighlightTrigger actions to work properly alongside iTerm2's Dynamic Profiles. This involved a surprising amount of hoops and left me scratching my head as to why this was so complex in the first place.

  • Performance improvement with Ruby on Rails

    Posted on: February 26, 2025

    My postmortem from a deep-dive I did to understand performance questions related to a production Ruby on Rails application I manage.

  • This version of ChromeDriver only supports...

    Posted on: February 12, 2025

    I wrote a tiny script to fix `Selenium::WebDriver::Error::SessionNotCreatedError` whenever it rears its ugly head.

  • Rails ActionText/ActiveStorage error code 0

    Posted on: February 9, 2025

    I fixed the "error code 0" issue by correctly configuring my AWS S3 CORS settings.

  • Dockerfile ARG not set from docker-compose.yml file

    Posted on: January 15, 2025

    Order matters in your Dockerfile when it comes to ARG declarations!

  • IntelliJ crashes when creating a new keymap

    Posted on: January 13, 2025

    Trying to add a new keymap in IntelliJ kept crashing it. I fixed this by adding a JVM compiler setting, interestingly enough.

  • Using sqlite to query CSVs

    Posted on: January 10, 2025

    Does your IDE choke trying to process 28MB CSV files? Use sqlite instead!

  • Debugging Docker compose builds with BUILDKIT_PROGRESS

    Posted on: January 6, 2025

    I figured out how to make Docker's default build output easier to use when debugging docker builds.

  • Getting Caffeinated on MacOS

    Posted on: December 22, 2024

    Or why I use: "caffeinate -disu &"

  • My software launch failed

    Posted on: June 6, 2024

    …and I learned a lot from it!

  • Using iTerm Dynamic Profiles

    Posted on: June 6, 2024

  • Using git hooks to run Applescripts

    Posted on: May 19, 2024

    Today I found a cool way to leverage Applescripts within git hooks

  • Easy-mode nvm and cd

    Posted on: May 19, 2024

    Set up nvm to auto-run with 'cd' so you never have to worry about it!

  • The .docsfile

    Posted on: February 22, 2024

    The .docsfile was an idea I came up with that allows me to add easily-referenced documentation to any project regardless of collaboration.

  • Debugging local websites on a real mobile device, using Safari

    Posted on: February 21, 2024

    Leveraging your desktop Safari to debug a locally-running website is a powerful way to test on a real mobile device.

  • Warning: Database records may not be ordered

    Posted on: February 19, 2024

    I inadvertently introduced a pernicious business-logic bug to my Tournament software due to relying on ActiveRecord ordering, without specifying order!

  • Identifying and Resolving performance bottlenecks

    Posted on: February 10, 2024

    Using datadog to identify and fix a several-second-long page load

  • MacOS Sonoma Breaks Symlinks

    Posted on: February 2, 2024

    My experience figuring out that MacOS Sonoma managed to totally break my dotfiles repo.

  • ActiveRecord group for feature usage

    Posted on: February 2, 2024

    How I used ActiveRecord's .group method to verify production feature usage

  • This website's pre-commit hook

    Posted on: January 16, 2024

    This website uses a pre-commit hook to ensure that my PDF resume is always up-to-date with my latest website version!

  • git save

    Posted on: November 4, 2023

    git save is a custom git alias for quick and dirty commits

  • IntelliJ's Local History saved my life too!

    Posted on: November 4, 2023

    That gut-wrenching feeling when you realize you've deleted something you shouldn't have.

  • Fixing a minor inconvenience with Phosphor Icons

    Posted on: June 12, 2023

    A quick how-to-fix for a package that did not support the importing syntax I wanted to use.

  • Turn off iTerm 2 triggers in interactive mode

    Posted on: May 25, 2023

    A likely culprit if ag or vim slow down to an unbearably slow rate

  • The Chat Interface

    Posted on: May 21, 2023

    The secret sauce behind ChatGPT

  • Identity-based Change

    Posted on: May 2, 2023

    You become what you think you are, regardless of what you really are.

  • A-players

    Posted on: April 13, 2023

    As a leader, you should identify A-players so that you can avoid losing them due to complacency.

  • Curbing Mistake Bounds

    Posted on: April 13, 2023

    Effective leaders understand how to galvanize growth without sacrificing success.

  • Leaders and Managers

    Posted on: April 13, 2023

    A leader makes sure the right things are getting done. A manager makes sure things are done right.

  • Making a flexible 'pr' command

    Posted on: April 7, 2023

    Building your own shell ergonomics is a great way to improve your workflow speed and efficiency.

  • Hedgehogs and Foxes

    Posted on: April 6, 2023

    What is it the hedgehog knows that the fox does not?

  • Cautiously Optimize

    Posted on: March 23, 2023

    In programming, we're told to avoid premature optimization. Meaning, don't do it until you know you need it. I propose a corollary: we should be cautious what we optimize.

  • What are you looking for?

    Posted on: March 21, 2023

    After reading a fascinating new book I found a new perspective on the pursuit of leadership in my career.

  • Fixing 'Unexpected default error' when building Astro project

    Posted on: March 18, 2023

    My astro project suddenly started failing builds, and it took some extreme measures to identify and fix the problem. Here's what I learned debubging the 'Unexpected "default"' error.

  • Auto-generating your resume for fun and profit

    Posted on: March 17, 2023

    I'm tired of my PDF resume always being out of date with the latest-and-greatest additions to my resume page. So I've fixed it today!

  • The Digital Rubbish Stack

    Posted on: March 9, 2023

    Stop worry about perfection and just write. Write rubbish. Write often.

  • Just Don't Do It

    Posted on: July 22, 2022

    Your TODO list is too long. Just don't do it. I mean, not literally. Well actually maybe yes, literally. You don't need to do half the things you sign yourself up to do.


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