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The front page of the redesigned Eric Mann's Blog in November 2026: a newspaper masthead in heavy black type, section navigation, a lead story with a large photo, and a verse-of-the-day box beside the journal.

Technology

Nineteen Years, Four Domains, and a New Front Page

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.

Nov 11 · 9 min read

Journal

  • Aug 10, 2026

    Hiking Keauhou

    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.

    Continue →: Hiking Keauhou
  • Jun 26, 2025

    The Deceptive Promise of AI

    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.

    Continue →: The Deceptive Promise of AI
  • Oct 23, 2020

    One year ago today …

    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.

    Continue →: One year ago today …

Technology
  • Shipping with Spacefast

    Shipping with Spacefast

    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.

    Nov 10 · 5 min

  • DailyMedToday: A Production Case Study in Semantic Search

    DailyMedToday: A Production Case Study in Semantic Search

    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.

    Nov 9 · 3 min

  • From Voice to Vectors: Building a Searchable Audio Archive in PHP

    From Voice to Vectors: Building a Searchable Audio Archive in PHP

    Transcribe, embed, search: turning hours of opaque audio into a semantically searchable archive that deep-links to the exact moment — ext-whisper, ext-infer, and ext-turbovec composed.

    Oct 1 · 3 min

Business
  • Short Stints, Real Experience: Rethinking Career Tenure

    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.

    Jan 5

  • Gratitude

    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.

    Dec 3, 2025

  • Burnout Prevention Through Strategic Reassignment

    Corporate burnout prevention programs often miss the point entirely. Instead of addressing workload, unrealistic expectations, or systemic issues, they treat burned-out employees as the problem to be managed or removed from the equation entirely.

    Nov 25, 2025

Security
  • Password Security

    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!

    May 7, 2024

  • Understanding access control

    Every application that allows authentication requires a proven form of access control. It’s important to understand the different formats available.

    Mar 18, 2022

  • Adversarial mindsets

    What’s the absolute worst thing that could happen with your application? How could an adversary leverage that mistake to their advantage?

    Mar 17, 2022


  • Gardening and God

    It’s difficult to be working among creation and not think of the creator.

    May 3, 2015

  • Workaholics Anonymous

    How do you define your happiness? How diverse is that definition? Who controls it?

    May 1, 2015

Opinion

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