Why I Prototype Motion Before Polishing Layout
Static layouts can look perfect and still refuse to move. By prototyping motion early, spacing, hierarchy and components evolve around how the interface actually behaves.
My writings
Dispatches from a life spent online.
What I Write Down During a Youth Baseball Game
During youth baseball games, I let the app track the score and use my notebook for the human data: faces, failed drills, invisible players, and one actionable line per kid.
A Month of Ignoring Daily Body-Fat Numbers
I hid the body-fat tile on my smart scale for 30 days and watched only a 7-day rolling weight average. The results were calmer mornings and steadier habits, not worse progress.
Fluent emptiness and the missing Tuesday morning
A draft about my Withings scale sounded polished and personal, but it was fluent emptiness. Here is how I now spot that pattern and push writing back to real detail.
The boring training week I can actually repeat
My training week is aggressively boring: a fixed 20-minute kettlebell session, rec softball as a social anchor, wildcard days that can be nothing, and recovery as the actual plan.
The Hour I Lost to a Plausible AI Debugging Answer
A confident AI diagnosis of a React Native hydration issue sent me refactoring the wrong layer for 45 minutes. The real bug was a string "null" in the API.
The client code I will not paste into an AI tool
A practical line between “helpful AI code review” and “leaking your client’s business model,” based on operational privacy rather than legal fine print.
The frontend code I deliberately keep boring
One feature taught me that a neat React state machine was less valuable than three plain useState hooks, and it changed how I choose boring frontend code.
The metric I stopped letting ruin my morning
For months my HRV score decided if I was allowed to feel competent that day. A 90-day experiment changed it from a verdict into one quiet input among many.
What My Automated Archive Exposed About My Writing
Reading a batch of AI-written posts in my Ghost archive made the patterns obvious: recycled transitions, invented habits, generic intros, fake closure, and why even a few real notes change the result.
When smooth animations make a fast site feel slow
A site can be technically fast and still feel slow if your animations sit between intent and feedback. These are the ones I shortened, simplified, or removed after watching real users.
Where Cursor Stops and My Judgment Begins
Cursor is very good at filling in the boring middle. Recent client work showed exactly where that stops, and where experience still has to say no.