The journal · writing

Notes from the studio desk.

Field notes on engineering, marketing, and the stuff of running a small practice. We write when there's something worth saying. No listicles, no thought-leadership, no "10 ways to X."

Engineering · featured

What it actually took to move Skateland off WordPress.

A 40-year-old rink, three generations of the family, a CMS decision that took longer than the migration itself. A plain-English writeup of why we self-hosted, what we threw away, and the hosting bill math.

apr 2026 · 7 min read
mar 2026

An admin panel isn't a project — it's a decision about who does the boring work.

The small tools that quietly give a team their afternoons back, and why they so often don't get built.
Tooling
feb 2026

Google Ads on a $400/mo budget: what's honest to expect.

A plain account of what tiny-budget paid search can actually do, and the month-four number nobody warns you about.
Marketing Notes
feb 2026

Self-hosting a newsletter in 2026 without it being a second job.

Listmonk on a $12 VPS, our config, and the one thing that keeps the deliverability honest.
Engineering
jan 2026

We stopped using Figma for design handoff. Here's what replaced it.

Browsers, branches, and a shared Loom folder. Why the mockup-to-production gap was costing us a week per project.
Practice
dec 2025

The year in small studio numbers.

Revenue, project count, average engagement length, the stuff studios never publish and probably should.
Practice
nov 2025

Against the page builder.

A list of what you actually rent when you rent a drag-and-drop, and what it costs to leave.
Opinion