ENGINEERING NOTES
THINGS WE BUILT.
THINGS WE BROKE.
THINGS WE LEARNED.
Node.js Goes to One Major Release a Year
Node.js is dropping odd releases for one major every April, with a new Alpha channel and LTS for everything. What changes for servers and CI, with a script to track it.
My Fold6 Inner Screen Broke, So I Locked It to the Cover
Galaxy Z Fold6 inner screen dead and black every time you open it? Force the cover screen to stay on with adb device_state, Shizuku and Termux, no root needed.
Fixing Linux Freezes During Steam Downloads
Steam hits full speed and the whole Linux desktop locks up. A root-cause walkthrough of dirty page writeback, dm-crypt workqueues and QLC SSD cache exhaustion — and the exact sysctl and cryptsetup fixes.
Engineering a Smart Home Monitoring System
When there isn't an off-the-shelf sensor/automation product that fits, the alternative is custom hardware/software integration — built to the actual requirement.
Engineering a PLC Control System
Translating sensors and actuators into reliable control logic — scan cycles, structured text, and why industrial code is written differently.
Running Local LLM Infrastructure
What changes when inference moves off a hosted API and onto GPUs you control — model serving, memory budgeting and the operational tradeoffs.
Building Autonomous Development Loops
Specification-driven, self-correcting engineering: how a loop that inspects, implements, tests and fixes itself is structured — and why it needs a spec, not a prompt.
Building a Reverse Proxy From Scratch
What nginx and Envoy are actually doing under their config files — routing, connection handling and failure modes, implemented directly.
Writing a Linux Character Driver
A field guide to the character-device interface: registering a device, wiring up file_operations, and talking to it from userspace.
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