Technology · Series: PHP-Native AI Tooling, part 12 of 12
The capstone: a UMAP map of the meditation archive where resurrection, the Holy Spirit, fasting, and repentance each formed their own cluster — structure nobody imposed, recovered from meaning alone.
Aug 10, 2026
I took 2 nights out of a family vacation to backpack across the Ka‘ū Desert Wilderness on the slopes of Kilauea in Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park. It was totally worth it.
Jun 26, 2025
The promise of AI automating mundane tasks seems appealing but is fundamentally flawed. It may eliminate boring jobs, but it doesn’t provide economic security. Displaced workers will be forced to seek new employment. This will turn creative passions into money-making endeavors, stripping them of their joy.
Oct 23, 2020
One year ago today, I sat in the National Mall and reflected on the inspiring atmosphere and the amazingness of my favorite PHP conf. Today, I mourn the loss of both.
Nineteen years, four domains, more hosts than I care to count, and now a newspaper-style redesign. A look back at the old coats of paint, how the new one was built, and why this blog now runs on Kubernetes.
I’ve been shipping real work on Spacefast since August — a docs site for WordPress core, reports for customers, even live checklists. Here’s how I use it, rough edges and all.
The production case study: how DailyMedToday uses Laravel, pgvector, and embeddings so readers can search a meditation archive by state of mind — and the operational lessons learned.
Teams are merging twice the pull requests and the business doesn’t feel any faster. AI sped up the one step that was rarely the constraint. Here’s where the work is waiting now, and what to do about it.
The hiring world still clings to tenure requirements that ignore reality. I’ve been on both sides — rejecting candidates for short stints and creating holes in other engineers’ resumes myself. It’s time to rethink what “experience” actually means.
Another leader once encouraged managers to express gratitude to their teams through hand-written thank you notes. This has evolved into an annual tradition for me. Sharing gratitude with your team is a way to show leadership, even outside of a management role.
How do you address password security? What controls do you put in place? Do they matter? What does a strong password look like? Learn how to protect your users in 2024 and beyond!
Every application that allows authentication requires a proven form of access control. It’s important to understand the different formats available.
What’s the absolute worst thing that could happen with your application? How could an adversary leverage that mistake to their advantage?
It’s difficult to be working among creation and not think of the creator.
How do you define your happiness? How diverse is that definition? Who controls it?
I wrote earlier about why defense AI companies drift toward offensive applications. Today for a hackathon I built the engineering solution I wish had existed when I was inside that world. Firebreak is a policy-as-code enforcement proxy that makes pre-negotiated AI boundaries hold — automatically, at machine speed, with full audit trails.
An all-women release squad for WordPress is long overdue. I’m excited to see what the new 5.6 release will bring to the community!
Serial
The Marshal is on the road from Farlight. In Stillwater, that means a judgment. Everyone already knows how that will end.
Also running
Advent of Evil