The Critical Path
What SpaceX's Starship documentary teaches about the critical path, the chain of gated events that decides when you actually ship. How to spot your team's stage zero, put paranoia in the right places, and run the scary test early.
vblinden
Software engineer at team.blue. Online I’m @vblinden. This is where I write down things I’ve found useful, important, or worth keeping.
Latest posts
Undesign it
Teams get good at adding features, abstractions, and process, but very few get good at taking things away. On noticing when the reason for something has faded, and making removal a first-class outcome.
A players vs B players
Pavel Durov explains why one weak hire slows down an entire engineering team, and why letting that person go can actually increase productivity. On focus, demotivation, and having the courage to protect your A players.
Acronyms
Elon Musk's 2010 company-wide email on why made-up acronyms are a creeping impediment to communication at SpaceX, archived here in full. The key test for any acronym is whether it helps or hurts communication.
Simplicity is a feature
Developers love building for imaginary what-ifs, until a simple feature turns into a small framework. Why boring, straightforward code beats speculative abstractions, and how to stop when the solution is sufficient.
Projects
usefizz.dev
Deploy Laravel, Next.js, or static apps to your own VPS with Git push deploys, automatic HTTPS, and easy rollbacks.
checkeroni.com
Uptime monitoring with flexible check types. Instant alerts when something goes down, plus public status pages.
mailsurge.dev
Lean transactional email for developers. A simple API with domain verification, signed webhooks, and analytics.
pennymetrics.dev
Privacy-friendly web analytics without cookies or consent banners. The numbers that matter, nothing else.
chatwithyoursite.com
Turn your site, PDFs, and notes into a grounded chatbot and search API that answers from your own content.
moyouai.com
Describe a brand and generate production-ready SVG logos. Export clean vectors ready for web and print.
absurge.com
A/B testing and session replay in one tool. Run experiments and watch real sessions to see why a variant wins.
goutipedia.com
Clear guidance on gout symptoms, triggers, and treatment. Practical advice for day-to-day life with gout.
staravatars.com
Deterministic space-themed avatars from any name, email, or path. The same input always gives the same avatar.
nederboard.nl
A Dutch meme soundboard with viral clips and internet classics. Press a button, blast a sound.
iloveitshipit.com
Replay Scott Hanselman's "I love it, ship it" whenever a project is almost done and just needs a push.