Series on The Real Ramblings

Understanding Polls and Economics of the Iran War

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 -0500

Five posts taking apart the conventional wisdom about the Iran war’s effect on the 2026 midterms. Each one picks a piece of pundit consensus — gas prices doom Republicans, war polls measure war support, approval ratings predict elections, voters punish the party in power — and walks through why the data refuses to cooperate.

Code Repos and Yak Shaving

Fri, 06 Jan 2017 22:00:00 +1200

Two-part think-piece on the monorepo-versus-focused-repos argument, with no recommendation as to which is right. The question is which yaks you’re willing to shave — and the “but Google does it” defense in particular gets a closer look than its proponents usually want.

Blue Light Experiment

Sat, 30 Nov 2013 08:06:00 +1200

A lifelong insomniac runs an n=1 experiment on whether eliminating evening blue-light exposure actually does anything for sleep. Part 1 sets up the protocol and the science behind it; Part 2 reports two weeks in, with results that surprised even me.

HFLC

Fri, 29 Nov 2013 10:38:00 +1200

A six-week n=1 experiment on a high-fat / low-carb diet, picking up after two months on a deliberately unhealthy Standard American Diet baseline. Part 1 sets the protocol and reports the first week’s measurements; Part 2 reports the second week, with a continued drop in weight and waist size and no cravings worth mentioning.

WordPress Responsiveness

Mon, 27 May 2013 10:00:00 +1200

Three-part walkthrough on making a WordPress site actually load fast. Part 1 covers the layout-and-caching fundamentals you need to understand before turning any knobs; Part 2 tunes WP Super Cache to your specific site; Part 3 pairs it with a CDN via the CDN Sync Tool plugin.