Blog Posts
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The 15 Minute Feedback Section Implementation
A quick, practical feedback section added to capture ideas while the work happens, tie these to commits, and keep the changelog honest.
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Pickled Pirates Racing - Stability Pass + Rails 8.1 Upgrade: Cleaner UI, Calmer CI, and Safer Admin Updates
A stability pass with a Rails 8.1 upgrade, cleaned UI, fixed CI failures, and safer admin updates.
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Stabilizing the Core: General Cleanup, Rails 8 implementation, Ruby 4.0.1 Pin, and Safer Public Pages
In this last sprint I focused on stability: upgrades, safer rendering, and fewer crash paths across the public site.
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Hosting RydersWorld on Its Own Heroku App
How RydersWorld was deployed as a standalone Heroku app and mapped to a subdomain using Route53.
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Fixing S3 Security (and Why It Was Worth It)
Migrated the app from public S3 assets to IAM-scoped private storage using presigned URLs and centralized helpers.
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The CloudFront Alias Trap
How a simple CloudFront setup turned into a cross account alias ownership investigation.
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Daily Task and Rewards System Evolution
The daily task system evolved into a deterministic, level based execution and rewards model grounded in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
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SMART Goals Without the Bloat
Added SMART goal tracking using JSON fields for flexible, clean task and goal planning. Includes automatic resume logic for on hold items.
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Pickled Pirates @ Estranged Drags
A behind-the-scenes look at the Pickled Pirates @ Estranged Drags YouTube series — a chaotic mix of burnouts, laughs, and late-night antics, wrapping up this week with the final episode.
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How I Reclaimed My Running Data from Nike and Synced It to Strava
Nike Run Club had all my historical runs—but no API, no export button, no easy way to actually use that data. So I took matters into my own hands and brought everything into Strava.
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RydersWorld
Ryders World is a dynamic Rails application, tailored toward event management and sharing, combining a calendar view with an integrated photo gallery powered by AWS S3. Featuring user authentication through Devise, it simplifies organizing events with my son while offering powerful search capabilities with pg_search to reflect on past memories.
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Changelogs
I recently implemented changelogs for my project to create a clear and comprehensive record of all updates and modifications. Going forward, I'll be using these changelogs to systematically track every change, big or small. This not only helps maintain transparency but also enhances project management by providing an organized history of progress. It’s a great way to ensure that everyone involved stays informed and up to date with the evolution of the project.
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ChatGPT - Exploring the power of AI
I was able to create some pretty neat images of my favorite Toyota trucks with the help of AI image generation. It’s been a fun experiment blending technology with my automotive passion, and I cannot wait to continue to explore this aspect of AI as the technology progresses. Take a look at the results and see what you think!
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Project Spotlight - Beard Bros Dumpsters
This project demonstrated how easy it can be to implement Gems like Simple Calendar and Devise for user authentication and management, alongside calendar interaction!