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BlogNo. 160·Aug 10, 2026JA

↳Translated from Japanese — Japan-flavoured topics may appear. Read the original

The Blog

Observations and stray thoughts from an engineer's day. Loosely scoped to software and systems.

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160 entries

Every post, newest first. Search or filter by tag.

10
Built Hometown
Built the hometown, locally.

30
Bad Blocks
A friend found a thousand CD-Rs in a closet.
29
Trust the Browser
The browser as a benevolent intermediary.
28
Structured Intimacy
There are places where rules carry the ambiguity for you.
27
Talks Back
A quarter century of being punched by code.
26
Burn
The day the computer became everyone's.
25
Three Carriers
Before email became UTF-8.
24
Query Cache
The day MySQL's query cache disappeared.
23
Level Design
World 1-1 has no tutorial.
22
Unwanted Ending
We learn from endings we didn't want.
21
Couldn't Toss
No one remembers the LS-120 anymore.
20
Lost Bus
An old hard drive turned up while I was sorting PC parts.
19
Under Ten
Tax advisors always recommend a car.
18
No VGA
How do you reach a server with no screen.
17
Watching Defrag
Watching something move along by itself on a screen.
16
Without Him
It was the company he invited me to start.
15
Connect Later
You can't walk the map. Only the trail you leave behind looks like one.
14
Resolver
I wanted to rewrite CoreDNS's A records from outside.
13
Lead Sheet
When the field changes, the words change.
12
Dual Power
Redundancy is comforting. Until you exceed the tap's capacity.
11
Retreat Route
Knowing how to prepare an exit is what separates experience from youth.
10
Happy Birthday
To my family.
09
Paid Compiler
When compilers cost money.
08
Just a File
I thought it was a database because it spoke SQL.
07
Overflow
The 32-bit clock is quietly approaching its limit.
06
Last Shelf
Three books I can't throw away.
05
QR Cinema
Someone packed text into a video file.
04
Sorted Set
Do not build rankings on an RDBMS.
03
Quality Gate
To improve quality, I started with lunch.
02
Write Once
Write once, run anywhere. That was the promise.
01
White Flag
On the other end of the line, the voice changed.

30
Know Your Player
Tilt your face to the right, the screen said.
29
Smaller World
It started with a file that wouldn't open.
28
Applet Trauma
First impressions of Java, formed in a gray rectangle.
27
Own Forever
Let me prepay thirty years. Just sell it to me outright.
26
Don't Drop It
You can lose your life, but don't lose your laptop.
25
On Mute
Not as an engineer. As a customer.
24
Observer Effect
When the safety net becomes the failure point.
23
Mixed In
The art of passing fixes that carry no business value.
22
Friend Request
I never sent it. Still haven't.
21
Higher Wall
The wall got taller. Only the place it defends changed.
20
Cache Control
Cache hit ratio holds everything together.
19
Power of Two
Just keep splitting in two, and the world narrows fast.
18
Munitions
A new model vanished in three days. It wasn't the first time I'd seen this.
17
Read Replica
Reading is easy. Knowing where to read from is hard.
16
Akihabara
The electric town changed. The data center is gone too.
15
Other Side
The seams of integration sit in each other's blind spots.
14
Tolerance
Screws have tolerances. Code doesn't.
13
Batch Night
Batch jobs are considered simple.
12
Time Machine
They wanted to see last week's data.
11
Next Door
The team next door is on fire with Kubernetes.
10
Invisible Pages
Users can see the page. Googlebot can't.
09
Seam Allowance
Design philosophy shows in the width of a seam allowance.
08
Stay Connected
HTTP was designed to disconnect. WebSocket was designed for the opposite.
07
Design Only
One company conquered the world by designing chips it never built.
06
Stitch Data
Every needle strike has coordinates.
05
Human Bug
Some bugs can't be caught in screening.
04
Illusion of Control
What matters isn't whether you have control. It's whether you feel like you do.
03
Dress Rehearsal
ALTER TABLE on a few hundred million rows is not engineering. It's prayer.
02
Pipe Chair
A pipe chair and Hidemaru. That was enough.
01
Still WAV
MIDI was free. VST was too free.

31
Language Switch
A mild-mannered friend was screaming into the phone — in English.
30
I Lied
Engineers don't make mistakes. They just lie.
29
Fault Line
Where you draw the line decides everything.
28
Dry Run
Production load can only be reproduced in production.
27
Invisible Breach
They got in. You never knew.
26
Same Tradeoff
Speed or consistency. The same question repeats at every layer.
25
Counterpoint
Follow every rule, and it still won't be music.
24
Borrowed Compute
I wanted to give staff Grok. Couldn't afford to stack that many monthly seats.
23
Review Lens
A review without a lens is just an essay.
22
Bundle of Joy
Frontend build tools turn over every three years.
21
Long Term
Long Term turns out to mean three years.
20
Glass Houses
An honest opinion, they said.
19
Lint Your Life
Someone who ships buggy OSS has opinions on quality control.
18
Cold Start
Never send production traffic to a cold database.
17
HDML
Not HTML. HDML.
16
Not My Root
Being told you don't have permission is a small relief.
15
GPL Infection
Code is contagious. So are licenses.
14
ffmpeg
Most video you watch works because of this one tool.
13
Every Alley
Behind every dominant service, the work is mostly mud.
12
Image Format Wars
The history of image formats is a history of compromise.
11
Lens Box
Parent and child fall into the same swamp.
10
Story Points
I dislike ritual. But some tools earn their keep.
09
Author Arrested
The code was innocent. The author was not.
08
Player Manager
You can't play and manage at the same time. Or so they said.
07
Rest in Peace
The death of a product opens the next era.
06
Our Battlefield
We fight on top of HTTP.
05
Memory Warp
Memory contents fly across servers.
04
Found in Hours
Nine years in the kernel. An AI found it in hours.
03
Starfire
A machine worth over ¥100 million, on sale for ¥1,000,000.
02
Just a Search Box
One search box changed the world.
01
Blunt Weapon
There's a blunt weapon that ends spec arguments.

30
Magic Keyboard
The story of someone who never fell into the rabbit hole.
29
Skinned Knees
Children who never fall never learn to walk.
28
Inbox Zero
Email delivery is taken for granted. The sender knows better.
27
Port 53
The backbone of the internet runs on port 53.
26
Ten Thousand
Ten thousand concurrent connections. nginx broke that wall.
25
Green Light
It was a long road before deploy became a single button.
24
Free Tracker
Free always has a reason. Google always has a reason.
23
Crawl Budget
A page the crawler can't read might as well not exist.
22
Cursed Compatibility
Compatibility is a virtue. It is also a curse.
21
All in TCP/IP
Communication protocols do everything humans fail at.
20
Social Engineer
The biggest vulnerability was the person who picked up the phone.
19
Selling Tomorrow
The offer that came through social media paid more than expected.
18
Same Feedback
Flagged again. And again. And again.
17
Reinventing Polling
History repeats. So does polling.
16
Tests Remain
The person who wrote the code may leave. The tests stay.
15
Inside Job
Fifteen years ago, I brute-forced my own servers.
14
No Oracle
Problems with correct answers get solved eventually.
13
Expiring Coins
The coins you paid for and the bonus coins live in the same wallet. Legally, they're different creatures.
12
Four Bytes
A generation once swam the swamp of character encodings in C.
11
Ticket Mess
Cutting a ticket does not mean you are managing anything.
10
Small Dictionary
Shrinking the dictionary meant understanding the grammar.
09
Freedom to Crash
I want the freedom to crash.
08
Port Exhaustion
There are only 65,535 ports. You hit the ceiling faster than you think.
07
Sewage Design
Organizational stress rots if you don't keep it flowing.
06
No Stars
The blinking of stars became the blinking of a console cursor.
05
Trusted Source
No one reads the code that flows through npm.
04
Three Virtues
Laziness, hubris, impatience. The three virtues of a programmer.
03
Tunnel Vision
Set up a VPN for the first time in years. The other end of the tunnel was further away than I thought.
02
Same Name
REPEATABLE READ — same name, different guts.
01
DNS Prank
We rewrote the office DNS. It was April Fools' Day.

31
Margin Call
"Five days." It took seven.
30
Layer 8
The staircase we once descended out of curiosity now demands to be walked out of necessity.
29
Search from Scratch
Full-text search, no server.
28
Read the Metrics
The API was intermittently slow. The answer was hiding behind the binlog.
27
Price Tag
Between the lines of an estimate, there's something code can't express.
26
Uncovered
Combinatorial testing doesn't end at generation.
25
Build Your Own
Reinventing the wheel gets you laughed at, but you learn what a wheel is made of.
24
Full Stack Disease
Self-proclaimed full-stack engineers are multiplying.
23
Lubricant
Not turning the gears — reducing friction between them.
22
Talk to It
It's less about writing code, more about describing the situation.
21
First Ears
AI knows counterpoint. But it has never listened.
20
Gray Zone
IaC ownership overlaps. It's not a technical problem.
19
No Map Inside
Fewer engineers truly understand OIDC than you'd think.
18
Tea Ceremony
I switched to enterprise. It was a different planet.
17
Lost Hometown
I had a best friend whose name and face I never knew.
16
No Encore
People pay for stories. Even when the storyteller doesn't exist.
15
Last Router
What becomes of someone who once spent their entire savings on a router.
14
Still Faxing
A car dealer asked me to fax my email address.
13
Fork Life
After the code, what do you write next.
12
No Guardrails
Remove the guardrails, lose the road.
11
Not Life or Death
Our work is not a matter of life and death. Not right now.
10
Memory Tax
DDR5 is unaffordable. AI took it all.
09
Cognitive Load
Getting worse at parallel processing. Humans and AI both.
07
Missed Wave
Before the word "social network" existed, we built one.
06
Not Doraemon Yet
Something is wrong when your robot cat's brain lives in a data center.
05
Eviction Policy
Redis has an eviction policy. Humans do not.
03
Nobility Fades
I won a used Enterprise 4500 at auction. The next month's electricity bill nearly killed me.
02
Still Readable
The greatest invention might be the diff.
01
No Silver Bus
I never liked gRPC. But the real problem was never the protocol.

27
DB Fanboy
We put all the business logic in PL/SQL.
25
Things Break
The data center that never goes down went down. One fuse.
23
Cache Miss
A frontend update killed the backend.
22
First Router
¥200,000 in savings, about $1,300. I spent it all on a YAMAHA router.
20
Lift Heavy
In 2026 I bought out a physical server rack from a friend's company.
18
Index Theory
Same table, different cutlery.
17
Not Manufacturing
The ideal project leaves nothing behind.
15
SQL Persists
Antitheses rise and fall. SQL remains.
13
Hello World
Nice to meet you.

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