👋 Hi, I'm Simon!

I share my code on GitHub and I sometimes blog about what made me smile, stumble, humble, or moan.

I help maintain shell-curry, an opinionated list of terminal tools.

Check out my MicroBlog, here on the website,
where I collect and share links I find interesting.

My passion is Ruby, yet I enjoy exploring what other languages bring to the table. I’ve been dabbling with Clojure, exploring the land of LISP and parentheses whenever I find the time 🥰

I share my photos on Flickr.

Get in touch with me @LinkedIn! 🍻

I blog from time to time

Mostly about code I’ve written, sometimes pet projects, or things that should never slow me down again. That’s right, I’m pointing at you, pg gem for Mac (though this is a thing of the past 🙌)!

Latest posts

• 2026-01-19 Neetings, my meeting notes app is now open source! 🤖
• 2026-01-06 Are you missing yazi to show file sizes and dates?
• 2025-12-27 Open Source Isn’t Free—It’s a Gift. Treat It Like One.
• 2025-12-05 Distrobox exported app no sound output
• 2025-11-29 Speed up Vulkan Shader Compilation on Bazzite
• 2025-11-24 ssh: Copying, Pasting - not working with Wayland
• 2025-11-24 Setting Up Nerd Fonts for Kitty and LazyVim on Bazzite
• 2025-11-24 Type emojis in LazyVim (in a Kitty terminal)
• 2025-11-24 Code Clojure in NeoVim (with LazyVim and Conjure)
• 2025-11-20 Gnome 49 - keypress gets stuck and repeats forever

The difference between masters and beginners is that masters have failed more times than beginners have even tried.

- Stephen McCranie

Microblog / Link Collection

• https://www.ratatui-ruby.dev/
  RatatuiRuby is a RubyGem built on Ratatui, a leading TUI library written in Rust. You get native performance with the joy of Ruby.

• https://hakibenita.com/postgresql-unconventional-optimizations
  When it comes to database optimization, developers often reach for the same old tools:
  rewrite the query slightly differently, slap an index on a column, denormalize, analyze, vacuum, cluster, repeat.
  
  Conventional techniques are effective, but sometimes being creative can really pay off!
  

• https://adamdrake.com/command-line-tools-can-be-235x-faster-than-your-hadoop-cluster.html
  It is 2014 and 2026: Command-line Tools can be 235x Faster than your Hadoop Cluster

• https://rubystacknews.com/2026/01/09/ruby-can-draw-cities-now/
  Can Ruby draw real cities — using real geospatial data — with no external GIS stack?

• https://www.redblobgames.com/pathfinding/a-star/introduction.html
  A visual guide to the A* algorithm.

• https://webkit.org/blog/17660/introducing-css-grid-lanes/
  It’s here, the future of masonry layouts on the web!

• https://blog.hyperknot.com/p/openfreemap-survived-100000-requests
  OpenFreeMap survived 100,000 requests per second! This much traffic would cost over $6 million per month on MapTiler and double that on Mapbox.

• https://www.pgedge.com/blog/postgresql-18-returning-enhancements-a-game-changer-for-modern-applications
  The RETURNING clause has been a staple of Postgres for years, allowing INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE operations to return data about the affected rows. This capability eliminates the need for follow-up SELECT queries, reducing round trips to the database and improving performance.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlcVx-k-02E
  Quick and Easy Local SSL Certificates for Your Homelab!

• https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=w6xflt7AWvE
  First steps with OpenTelemetry

• https://github.com/readme/guides/publishing-your-work
  Publishing your work increases your luck
  
  For every snarky comment, there are 10x as many people admiring your work.
  

• https://youtube.com/watch?v=mik1EbTshX4&pp=0gcJCR4Bo7VqN5tD
  There's a silver bullet next to the holy grail.

• https://mccue.dev/pages/3-11-25-life-altering-postgresql-patterns
  Life-Altering PostgreSQL Patterns

• https://it.badykov.com/blog/2022/09/12/simple-and-usefull-postgresql-features/
  Simple and useful postgresql features.

• https://www.depesz.com/2012/12/02/what-is-the-point-of-bouncing/
  This blog post is to have a place where I can point people who have question about how it works, why, and when it makes sense to use it (pgBouncer that is).
  

• https://andyatkinson.com/avoid-uuid-version-4-primary-keys#why-choose-uuids-at-all-generating-values-from-one-or-more-client-applications
  About UUID (and Postgres)

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmvDxxNubIg
  Harness Engineering - 20 minutes speed run talk

• https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uogB5P0zgM8
  LLMs in a nutshell

• https://alexwlchan.net/2025/learning-how-to-make-websites/#html_tags
  The author read 2000 web pages and shares his findings.

• https://blog.yossarian.net/2025/11/21/We-should-all-be-using-dependency-cooldowns
  A “cooldown” is exactly what it sounds like: a window of time between when a dependency is published and when it’s considered suitable for use.
  The dependency is public during this window, meaning that “supply chain security” vendors can work their magic while the rest of us wait any problems out.