Occasionally, the notes on this site will be annotative notes on other folks’ works that I find interesting. Whenever possible, I’ll make these annotations public, especially when the sources are publicly available.
#annotations
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Recent Posts
Planning With Agents: Better can be Better web
— Annotations on Maggie Appleton's 2026 talk about Boundary Objects
Tell the speakers that you liked their talks web
— Some quick thoughts on Ana Rodrigues's post "Tell the speakers that you liked their talks", and a general initial test for web-based annotations.
Union types (C# reference) web
— Some quick notes on the Union type addition in C# 15, and how I can use it to make Flowthru fail-fast(er)
Writing Better Gherkin web
— A few notes on a very important, but hidden, part of the Cucumber and Gherkin documentation around Behavior Driven Development
Lean Software Development: Prelude Notes
— Notes on the prelude chapters of Lean Software Development (2003)
Working with Valves: Understanding the Structure of "Flat" Organizations .pdf
— Many an engineer has heard tales of Valve's "flat" organization structure — what is fact, what is fiction, and how does it actually work? An annotated copy of the 2012 First Edition of Valve's Employee Handbook.
It's All Graphs, Dummy .pdf
— Our lives are all dominated by a little graph in our hearts — and sometimes, that graph gets wacky. A review of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's "Theory of Stupidity", part of his larger ~1943-1945 work "Letters and Papers from Prison."
Hyperparameter verification of StcE protein folds in Pedram et al., 2023 .pdf
— The rubber hits the road on ColabFold! I hope that's rubber I'm smelling — although it may be the computer. A replication attempt of a protein fold figure in K. Pedram et al (2023).
An Annotated Guide to Hobbyist Protein Folding .pdf
— Amaze (or bore) your friends and family by picking up on a hot new hobby that's all the rage — protein folding! An annotated starter to the 2021 paper "ColabFold - Making protein folding accessible to all"
Agentic Programming as Theory Building .pdf
— Do humans have a role in software development anymore? Absolutely — but we need to rethink what it means to program. An modern review of Peter Naur's 1985 essay "Programming as Theory Building"
APL: Pattern 4; Agricultural Valleys
— Urban development has the high ground over agricultural and ecological preservation — and it should! *A Pattern Language* annotations on Pattern 4: Agricultural Valleys
APL: Pattern 5; Lace of Country Streets
— How dense is too dense? How sparse is too sparse? Annotations for A Pattern Language's proposals for the density of metro-adjacent country streets for agriculture, recreation, and preservation.
APL: Pattern 1; Independent Regions
— Home isn't where the heart is — it's a single node on a very, very large graph. Annotations for the "Independent Regions" pattern of *A Pattern Language*.
APL: Pattern 2; The Distribution of Towns
— How close is too close? How far is too far? *A Pattern Language* annotations related to the statistical, economic, and ecologic concerns in balancing how dense human habitats ought to be.
APL: Pattern 3; City Country Fingers
— City, with natural stripes — or nature, with city stripes? Annotations for A Pattern Language, and tracking public opinion of where Americans want to live over the past 50 years.
APL: Pattern 0; Introduction
— Can graphs be libertarian? Authoritarian? Annotations for the introductory portion of the 1977 book A Pattern Language.
Ants in the Neighborhood
— Is Jane Street run by soccer-loving ants? Inconclusive. We *can* conclude that they're fans of Markov Chains, though — an invaluable tool for understanding complex data structures.
A Pattern Language, and a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
— The beginning of a topological review of the 1977 urban design and architecture reference book A Pattern Language, and a journey to understand Earth's greatest graph: the Earth, itself.
Evolution and Revolution as Organizations Grow .pdf
— Annotations for Greiner's 1972 paper "Evolution and Revolution as Organizations Grow", about the structural composition of organizations at different sizes and requirements.
Intro to Event Storming
— Notes from learning Event Storming for domain-driven design. Thoughts on phases, color-coded chaos, and how to transition from fast pitches to full products.
LLMs: A Primer Presentation for Our Newest, Scariest Tool .pdf
— An engineer-focused primer on the mechanisms that drive Large Language Models. Basics on how we got here, how they work, and how to use them without feeling an apocalyptic dread.
Terraform LocalStack Testing
— $70/mo/seat? Just using live AWS may be cheaper. An evaluation of LocalStack as a testbed for Account Factory Terraform.
The Simple Economics of Open Source .pdf
— Why do we do what we do? "Egoboo." Exploring economic models of OSS contributions beyond altruism and ego.
Annotations: College Admissions and the Stability of Marriage .pdf
— A dive into the hottest algorithm of the 1960s: Gale-Shapley matchmaking. Who knew that the mysteries of the heart could be solved with a matrix?
Utah Office Consult .pdf
— People problems are the hardest engineering problems. A consult on thinking out-of-the-box to explain morale problems in small companies.
Core Posts
Agentic Programming as Theory Building .pdf
— Do humans have a role in software development anymore? Absolutely — but we need to rethink what it means to program. An modern review of Peter Naur's 1985 essay "Programming as Theory Building"
APL: Pattern 1; Independent Regions
— Home isn't where the heart is — it's a single node on a very, very large graph. Annotations for the "Independent Regions" pattern of *A Pattern Language*.
APL: Pattern 2; The Distribution of Towns
— How close is too close? How far is too far? *A Pattern Language* annotations related to the statistical, economic, and ecologic concerns in balancing how dense human habitats ought to be.
LLMs: A Primer Presentation for Our Newest, Scariest Tool .pdf
— An engineer-focused primer on the mechanisms that drive Large Language Models. Basics on how we got here, how they work, and how to use them without feeling an apocalyptic dread.
APL: Pattern 4; Agricultural Valleys
— Urban development has the high ground over agricultural and ecological preservation — and it should! *A Pattern Language* annotations on Pattern 4: Agricultural Valleys
APL: Pattern 3; City Country Fingers
— City, with natural stripes — or nature, with city stripes? Annotations for A Pattern Language, and tracking public opinion of where Americans want to live over the past 50 years.
A Pattern Language, and a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
— The beginning of a topological review of the 1977 urban design and architecture reference book A Pattern Language, and a journey to understand Earth's greatest graph: the Earth, itself.
Evolution and Revolution as Organizations Grow .pdf
— Annotations for Greiner's 1972 paper "Evolution and Revolution as Organizations Grow", about the structural composition of organizations at different sizes and requirements.
Annotations: College Admissions and the Stability of Marriage .pdf
— A dive into the hottest algorithm of the 1960s: Gale-Shapley matchmaking. Who knew that the mysteries of the heart could be solved with a matrix?
Working with Valves: Understanding the Structure of "Flat" Organizations .pdf
— Many an engineer has heard tales of Valve's "flat" organization structure — what is fact, what is fiction, and how does it actually work? An annotated copy of the 2012 First Edition of Valve's Employee Handbook.
An Annotated Guide to Hobbyist Protein Folding .pdf
— Amaze (or bore) your friends and family by picking up on a hot new hobby that's all the rage — protein folding! An annotated starter to the 2021 paper "ColabFold - Making protein folding accessible to all"
APL: Pattern 5; Lace of Country Streets
— How dense is too dense? How sparse is too sparse? Annotations for A Pattern Language's proposals for the density of metro-adjacent country streets for agriculture, recreation, and preservation.
APL: Pattern 0; Introduction
— Can graphs be libertarian? Authoritarian? Annotations for the introductory portion of the 1977 book A Pattern Language.
Ants in the Neighborhood
— Is Jane Street run by soccer-loving ants? Inconclusive. We *can* conclude that they're fans of Markov Chains, though — an invaluable tool for understanding complex data structures.