Notes from building, operating, repairing, and occasionally overcomplicating software systems.
This includes application development, infrastructure, self-hosting, architecture, automation, debugging, and the decisions that connect them.
Posts
The Day I Almost Deleted the Analytics Identifier
Two strings looked redundant in an automotive email builder, but one identified a campaign and the other identified a saved revision.
Docker Mounts: Why Local Theme Edits Appear Inside WordPress
The practical difference between Docker named volumes and bind mounts, learned while building a live-editing WordPress theme workflow.
When Production Security Followed WordPress Home
Importing production WordPress data also imported security assumptions that made the local administrator login unusable.
When Arithmetic Was Not Enough for News Clustering
An early SoCalNomad clustering experiment exposed the need for multi-story article membership and a better separation between deterministic code and semantic judgment.
The ISPConfig Database Prefix That Broke My WordPress Import
A WordPress database import failed because I confused application-friendly names with ISPConfig’s actual multi-tenant database identities.
Building a Local WordPress Workshop with Docker
How I built a safer local WordPress workshop with Docker, MariaDB, real production content, and a bind-mounted child theme.