All Essays

June 2026

1. I’m Going to WordCamp US

May 2026

1. A First With Claude Code
2. Google Reader API in WordPress Reader

April 2026

1. Blurt Marketing Gone Wrong
2. My Take on WordPress Social (Blurt)
3. Where’s the AI Max Headroom?
4. Updates to RSS Cloud Server
5. Working on the RSS Cloud WordPress Plugin
6. Defending the Open Web Is Not Enough

March 2026

1. Learning Modern WordPress Plugin Development
2. Testing Out WordLand
3. WordPress Migration

December 2025

1. Team Lead

October 2025

1. Pausing Keto Diet

September 2025

1. Defending Speech We Disagree With

June 2025

1. Trying Claude Code
2. Tarot Journaling
3. When Growing Means Letting Go

May 2025

1. When Everything Important Becomes Nothing Important
2. The Secret To Better Parenting Is Being Nearby, Not Being Perfect
3. How the Most Important Parts of My Life Never Made It to My Journal
4. I Just Quit My Job of 5 Years — And I’m Terrified

April 2025

1. I Didn’t Realize Growth Could Leave Me This Exhausted
2. How Preparing Became My Biggest Distraction
3. Why I Treat My Questions Like a Learning Compass
4. Why you’re great at setting bad goals — and how to fix it in 3 steps
5. How I’m Trying to Learn Before It’s Too Late
6. Why I Avoid Tracking (And Why I Need To Start)

March 2025

1. How I Channeled Unfocused Curiosity Into Clear Insight
2. How I’m Making My Learning Actually Useful
3. The Discipline of Doing Nothing Helped Me Get Clarity
4. How I’m Deciding Which Projects Are Worth Pursuing Right Now

February 2025

1. Think You Can’t Turn It Around in Your 40s? Read My Story

November 2024

1. Tackling Database Migration to Restore a Legacy Site

October 2024

1. 30 Years of Scripting News and My Blogging Journey

August 2024

1. A Brief History of Me Programming

May 2024

1. How To Build A Time Tracking App In React
2. Transforming Fitness Goals: From Lag to Lead Metrics

April 2024

1. First Define, Then Refine: How Goals Shape Successful Systems

February 2024

1. WebFinger for ActivityPub Feed Discovery

July 2023

1. What does “done” look like?

February 2022

1. Andrew Shell Headshot 1

November 2021

1. That’s All Folks
2. Don’t Ask for Permission
3. My Weekly Checklist
4. Fostering Confidence
5. My 3 Favorite Productivity Books
6. How To Get Things Done
7. Finding Clarity in “Why?”

October 2021

1. Small Pieces, Loosely Joined
2. Goal Brainstorming
3. Don’t Fight Inertia
4. Don’t Burn Out, Level Up
5. How to Make Intentional Choices
6. Why I Use a Daily Log
7. Feedback Loops
8. Changing Direction
9. Validate Your Lead Metrics
10. Lead vs Lag Metrics
11. You Need a Goal Funnel
12. Margin Helps You Live Life
13. My Favorite Useful and Weird Book
14. Aligning with Success
15. 5 Ways to Leverage Your Subconscious Mind
16. Are You Productive?
17. Teaching is an Unfair Advantage
18. The Importance of Margins
19. The 3 Enemies of Shipping
20. 8 Steps to Decide Project Priorities
21. 20 Questions for Overcoming Procrastination
22. Letting Go of Toxic Stories
23. Why I’m Shipping 30 for 30?

May 2021

1. My iPad Setup

March 2021

1. FedWiki Demo
2. Avoiding the Final Death
3. Douglas Engelbart and Linked Data

February 2021

1. Personal Productivity: Through the Lens of Executive Functions
2. Async/Await for callback users

January 2021

1. The Federated World Tesseract

December 2020

1. Alternate Linked Data Syntax
2. Linked Data and the Semantic Web
3. Fediverse of Federated Things

November 2020

1. My Growing ThinkTank Collection
2. Developing Better Developers
3. Philosophy in re RSS 2.0

October 2020

1. How Frontier got started
2. Free standing rssCloud testing tool
3. My thoughts about rssCloud
4. Little Outliner and rssCloud?
5. Rethinking Blogs

April 2020

1. Music, Media, and Mood

February 2020

1. Updating rssCloud Server

January 2020

1. Feeling School Nostalgia

November 2019

1. Understanding Javascript Object References

March 2017

1. What is the best way to inject a logger?

November 2016

1. What is the best git branching strategy for small teams?

October 2016

1. Using Action-Domain-Responder on the command line
2. Introducing Cadre.Module
3. Tracking Multiple Connections with PHP Debug Bar and Atlas ORM
4. Collecting Data from Atlas ORM with PHP Debug Bar
5. Complex Database Relationships with AtlasORM
6. LazyArray Officially Part of Aura.Di

September 2016

1. Symfony Forms and Radar – Part 2
2. Symfony Forms and Radar – Part 1
3. Discovering Clean Architecture
4. Radar Under the Hood
5. FutureProof Your Code

December 2015

1. Getting started with Radar

June 2015

1. What is rssCloud?
2. Rebooting rssCloud

May 2015

1. Facebook Comments

January 2014

1. Identifying my priorities

October 2013

1. What is a social network?
2. Building a better Meetup

August 2013

1. The future of PHP (and JavaScript)
2. Improving My Code

July 2013

1. Can You Be a Reading Roll Model With an iPad?
2. Fourth of July in New House

May 2013

1. Heart Surgery

March 2013

1. Joining Hyperboria

December 2012

1. A better social news experience?

September 2012

1. Dead Drops ‘How to’

June 2012

1. PHP Functions on the Fly

May 2012

1. Introducing DocCloud: Using RSS Cloud for more then just RSS

March 2012

1. World Outline Podcast #7
2. RT Proxy

February 2012

1. Apple and the future of TV

January 2012

1. Digital Decentralism

June 2011

1. Rock-It at Work – Start a Group

May 2011

1. What does it mean to have character?
2. Developers and the Growth Mindset
3. Following Outside of Twitter

April 2011

1. Shipping is Scary

March 2011

1. Nofollow Links
2. Data Minimalism
3. Rebooting The News #86

February 2011

1. Giving Up On Web Ownership?
2. Putting your life on autopilot

December 2010

1. What would you do with 60 hours?
2. Technology delegation vs abdication
3. Structured data via RSS

October 2010

1. Interview with Ryan Healy and Ryan Paugh

September 2010

1. Conflict with Minimalism

August 2010

1. Expanding Your Passion
2. RSS, FlipBoard and Me

June 2010

1. Interview with Greg Tracy

May 2010

1. Kickstart Madison Coworking

December 2009

1. How do you know what you stand for?

March 2009

1. PHP Frameworks are Governments

August 2008

1. Yahoo and the semantic web

August 2007

1. Drains of Canada: An Interview with Michael Cook

September 2006

1. PHP Works 2006
2. PHP/DB | Works 2006

December 2004

1. First PHP Meetup