When you write a document or essay, you are posing a question and then answering it. For example, a PRD answers the question, “What should we build?” A technical spec answers, “How should we build it?” Sometimes the question is … Read more
A programmer’s text editor is their castle Toy software performing a task when the stars align and the bytes hold their breath is one thing. Ingesting whatever freakish data the real world has to offer and handling it gracefully is … Read more
A single file containing all cataloged AI writing tropes. Add it to your AI’s system prompt to help it avoid these patterns (let’s play cat and mouse!). Disclaimer: Creation of this file was AI-assisted. If you thought I was going … Read more
Yes, writing code is easier than ever. AI assistants autocomplete your functions. Agents scaffold entire features. You can describe what you want in plain English and watch working code appear in seconds. The barrier to producing code has never been … Read more
Back in 2024 I learned about SDF (signed distance field) rendering of fonts. I was trying to implement outlines and shadows in a single pass instead of drawing over the text multiple times in different styles. I intended to use … Read more
This was a fun project for a couple of days, but I will probably shelve it for now so I can continue what I was already working on before. Read on to follow along with my journey. Spoilers: I didn’t … Read more
One of legal tech’s clichés is that “lawyers live in Word”. This is demonstrably incorrect. I, for example, am a lawyer and in fact live in London, England. But what they mean to say is that lawyers spend much of … Read more
A special appeal to support Res Obscura on its Crystal Anniversary I was 25 years old when I started writing the blog version of Res Obscura, which ran from 2010 to 2023 (and still exists here). This was the early … Read more
Note: this post is also applicable to AGENTS.md, the open-source equivalent of CLAUDE.md for agents and harnesses like OpenCode, Zed, Cursor and Codex. ## Principle: LLMs are (mostly) stateless LLMs are stateless functions. Their weights are frozen by the time … Read more
Letter from George Boole to his sister Maryann, 18 December 1850. Archives of University College Cork, IE/BL/PP/BP/1/A/1/1/51. To summarize the theme of this newsletter recently: Use AI, not too much, mostly to connect with the intelligence of other human beings, … Read more