Iterations are where the great stuff happens — Replay.io makes a time-traveling debugger, which is as helpful and awesome as it sounds. A few months ago I wrote up the background thinking for a feature we call “Focus Mode” that lets you, well, focus on a certain point in a recording. …

A peek into the design of our latest feature — Replay records software so you can play it back later, which means you spend a lot of time navigating video through a timeline. But as we’ve learned from YouTube, it can be hard finding one key moment in a long video. For example, here’s David Byrne dancing with a lamp…

Five Books in 2021 Journal, Issue #19 — I just ordered my fifth and final book for the year, meaning I’m done! A quick FAQ about the project and what’s next. Q: How’s it feel? A: Great! Q: Where can I learn more and buy copies? A: That’s a whole other project. These copies are for my own bookshelf…

At least, not in the same way — I like Twitter and Medium a lot. I like writing and discovering on both platforms. I don’t hate them, and I’m not leaving them angrily. It’s just that they’re both designed as public stages meant for short-term consumption. And both parts of that equation don’t really line up with my…

Behind the scenes on replay.io’s product team — I love writing detailed explanations of product design. You might have seen my Design Explosions series, where I wrote 10,000 words comparing Apple Maps and Google Maps. Today I’d like to aim some of that energy towards the design my team and I have been working on for the last…

A local woodworker in my community — [This was a 400 word article I wrote for my neighbourhood’s local newsletter. It features Brian Allen, a local woodworker. I have two of his breadboards in my house, as do many people in the area!] Woodworkers often set up shop in a garage or a side room. Brian Allen…

Five Books in 2021 Journal, Issue #18 — Stuff’s getting real, y’all. It’s crunch time, meaning transitioning from artist mode and into project manager mode. It’s time to make sure we ship! I need to be done in a month I use blurb.com for my books, and I live in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Oh, and there’s a shipping crisis. And Christmas is coming…

I’m briefly un-retiring from talking about politics — I’m the guy who recorded a short video in 2016 explaining exactly how the Democrats were going to take power back in 2018, and that’s what happened. I’m the guy who wrote How the 2020 Election Will Go and got it right. (Yes, including unpopular Biden winning the primaries.) I’m…