Security, consulting, and other heavy lifting Security, consulting, and other heavy lifting

Microsoft Build 2026 delivered a refreshingly practical keynote, prompting me to immediately put some of the newly announced Windows 11 features to the test. This post walks through my hands-on experience with the refreshed Run dialog, the long-awaited movable taskbar, native Coreutils command-line tools, and the AI-enhanced Intelligent Terminal. I’ll share quick setup steps, real-world first impressions, and whether these preview features are worth adding to your workflow today.

Apple’s MacBook Neo is marketed as an affordable entry-level laptop. Does it actually handle real-world productivity? After integrating it into my mixed-device workflow alongside a MacBook Pro and a ThinkPad, I was pleasantly surprised. Despite having only 8GB of RAM and a mobile processor, the Neo delivers snappy performance for daily tasks, exceptional battery life, and a surprisingly sturdy build. It will not replace a high-performance workstation, yet at €799, it makes an incredibly smart secondary machine for travel, quick tasks, and staying connected. Read my honest first impressions, real-world performance notes, and find out if this compact notebook earns a permanent spot in my backpack.

I explain how I designed and built a custom content editor to streamline writing for my Astro-based blog, specifically to handle metadata and store images in Azure Storage while keeping Markdown files in GitHub. By leveraging AI-assisted engineering rather than random "vibe coding," I created a user-friendly, offline-capable tool that simplifies the publishing process and makes content creation more efficient.

If you are looking for a personal account of why I left WordPress and Ghost for Astro, this post details my decade-long journey through different blogging platforms and the frustrations with their costs and inflexibility. I explain how my desire for full ownership and visual control led me to finally adopt Astro, allowing me to focus on crafting artisan-quality content without the technical headaches that previously drove me away.

I am sharing how introducing Discord has helped our remote team build a more relaxed company culture by separating casual social interaction from work-related communications. By establishing simple ground rules for a dedicated non-work server, we’ve created a low-pressure space for colleagues to connect without the obligation of constant engagement. This small step reinforces our commitment to asynchronous work and employee autonomy while fostering genuine camaraderie.

If you’re looking to upgrade a self-hosted Ghost instance running in Docker, my experience with migrating to version 6 might save you from some common pitfalls. I detail my rigorous backup strategy and the specific Docker tag workaround I used to successfully complete the upgrade when the standard image wasn’t available for my architecture.