One of my many hopes from maintaining this site is to improve my own writing, hopefully developing a distinct voice over time in this era of AI-generated, slop content.

Readers beware — the further back you go, the cringier it’ll get.

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  • The Advantages of Advantage: Intro to Probability Convolutions

    — What *is* the advantage of rolling with advantage? Exploring dice roll combinations and probability convolutions. (8 min read)

  • Quartz Widgets: Graphs, Galore!

    — I killed 4 of my blogs trying to implement MDX support. Will this one be next? Using MDX with Quartz to create interactive graphs, diagrams, and demos — clear as day. (9 min read)

  • LLMs; or, How to Run Your Own Hostage Negotiation

    — LLMs: Are we doomed to die, or born to garden? I'd like to make the case that AI is less like Terminator, and more like tomatoes. (8 min read)

  • 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. (6 min read)

  • AI Policy

    — I may not have any control about how AI affects me, but I can at least make a policy for how I use it. (3 min read)

  • Welcome!

    — Articles for the data and engineering consulting practice Chaotic Good Computing, as well as personal notes by Spencer Elkington. (1 min read)

  • LLMs: A Primer Presentation for Our Newest, Scariest Tool

    — 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.

  • Typst Resume Template

    — A beginner-friendly resume template in Typst — 100% less LaTeX, 100% more opinions. (38 min read)

  • Terraform LocalStack Testing

    — $70/mo/seat? Just using live AWS may be cheaper. An evaluation of LocalStack as a testbed for Account Factory Terraform. (5 min read)

  • The Simple Economics of Open Source

    — Why do we do what we do? "Egoboo." Exploring economic models of OSS contributions beyond altruism and ego.

  • College Admissions and the Stability of Marriage

    — 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?

  • Before You Slabtop Your Laptop: A Brief Warning

    — PSA: Check if your laptop needs an LCD for POST before removing the screen. Learned this the hard way after 5 hours and a fried motherboard. Learn from my dumb mistakes. (2 min read)

  • GPTinglish: Unnatural Language Processing

    — The only market crashing is the market for sanitized language. Stay human. Embrace typos. (7 min read)

  • Don't Double Down: Structured Streaming to Wrangle Data

    — Stop reprocessing your entire dataset every time new data arrives. A practical guide to Spark Structured Streaming with code examples and cost logic. (9 min read)

  • The Unbearable Weight of ROBLOX Celebrity

    — Being famous online in 2009 is the highest high I'll ever reach. A love letter to the coolest dork I know, hatemail for client-side exploits, and a limitless supply of Monopoly dollars. (11 min read)

  • Say Goodbye to Untitled (5) — GitHub Actions for Resumes

    — Set up continuous integration to auto-update your resume everywhere. Overleaf, GitHub, and LaTeX automation for the perpetually disorganized. (6 min read)

  • Hello, Blog! (Posts by a dummy, for other dummies)

    — The obligatory "Hello!" post to suss out what this site will be. Python examples as unnecessary as the post itself. (1 min read)

  • Utah Office Consult

    — People problems are the hardest engineering problems. A consult on thinking out-of-the-box to explain morale problems in small companies.