joshtronic

Blog

Click around aimlessly or search the archives. The choice is yours.

You don't need a /now page

Earlier this year I moved my blog from WordPress to Eleventy. During this process I had rediscovered /now pages. After consuming all of the confirmation bias out there that's trying to suck up to Derek Sivers (nothing personal, I think [...]

Creativity needs to be DRM-free

While I much prefer to play guitar and bass in my music, I do love me some soft synths. They afford you a ton of options on the cheap. Sure, they aren't as "warm" or whatever, but there's ways to [...]

Stop judging your mix by your phone's speakers

While I know my mixes aren't perfect, I do take pride in trying to make things sound good. And by good I mean, good enough for my ears. I'll pine for hours, tweaking small things, notching the EQ, and all [...]

Streaming services playing art police

I've been doing a ton of genre-dipping with my current musical project, sorority hamster, as I try to figure out my voice. In doing so, I've ventured deep into the hyper niche of grindcore / cybergrind. By definition, grindcore songs [...]

How to rate-limit requests with NGINX

This so-called "AI Era" is a fucking mess. The web is full of low-quality slop articles and made up imagery. Self-hosting is more of an exercise in DDoS mitigation than anything else. What a time to be alive. All you [...]

Move fast and make noise

Ever do something sorta as a joke and then the lines start to blur a bit? That's where I'm at right now. After watching the DEVO documentary a while back, I was really fired up to make some new music [...]

Creating links in Slack

Depending on if you have the "Format messages with markup" option selected, you may or may not have a button to create links available to you. Here's some notes on both scenarios. "Format messages with markup" option disabled If you [...]

Fallacies of AI-driven product research

The customer is always right. But what if the customer was lied to? If a sales person over promises, and the product under delivers, the customer won't be happy. This often leads to a cancellation and refund request. But what [...]

Notes on Diablo IV's Eternal Realm after 10 Seasons

I've been playing Diablo IV since launch, having partaken in every season since the first. That was until season 9, when I opted to continue my lovely Torment 4 Necromantress in the Eternal Realm rather than chase this season's "collect [...]

AI Coding Tools I Use to Ship Faster - Q4 2025

Back in June I wrote about the AI coding tools that I was using to be productive. Fast forward through Q3, a lot has changed in the market. Newer tools and shinier LLMs, sometimes both in the same week. I'm [...]