Blog

Thoughts on software architecture, AI, algorithmic trading, investing, and building for the long term.

Software Architecture · Jun 02, 2026

Why SQLite Works in Production: A Laravel Case Study

SQLite in production is not a toy. Here is how one Laravel site runs on it at zero marginal cost, with real backup and concurrency strategy.

6 min read
Software Architecture · Jun 02, 2026

Tracing Every Trade Back to a Git Tag: A Strategy Lifecycle Pipeline

A Laravel API that receives deployment events from a shell script, links every trade to a git tag, and surfaces the full lifecycle of a trading strategy across backtest, paper, and live environments.

5 min read
General · Jun 02, 2026

15 Strategies, 9 Pairs, 20 Years: What the Backtest Data Actually Says

I ran 15 systematic strategies across 9 forex pairs over 20 years of H1 data. The results challenge most assumptions about market microstructure and strategy design.

5 min read
Software Architecture · Jun 02, 2026

A Laravel Markdown Pipeline: CommonMark, Frontmatter, and SQLite Date Sorting

How I built a robust markdown-to-HTML pipeline in Laravel using CommonMark with TableExtension, YAML frontmatter stripping, SQLite-safe date sorting for drafts, and dark-mode table CSS.

3 min read
Software Architecture · Jun 02, 2026

Serving a Blog API from a Laravel App That Also Runs Filament

Adding a REST API to a Laravel site already running Filament admin without conflicts, extra packages, or over-engineering. Token auth, auto-slug generation, markdown table support, and draft previews.

6 min read
Software Architecture · Jun 02, 2026

Format Conversion in Pure Java: What Works, What Doesn't, and When to Bring in ONLYOFFICE

A conversion matrix across 7 Java libraries and ONLYOFFICE: where docx4j, POI, PDFBox, Commons Imaging, and Tika each shine and where they fall short.

5 min read
Software Architecture · Jun 02, 2026

Closing the Loop: How Trading Strategies Graduate from Backtest to Live Execution

Architecture and implementation of a multi-stage promotion pipeline that moves automated trading strategies from historical backtest through paper trading into live production, with gated qualification at each stage.

7 min read
Software Architecture · Jun 02, 2026

Architecting a Modular Trading Engine: 11 Maven Modules, Zero Circular Dependencies

A retrospective on splitting a Java trading system into an 11-module Maven monorepo: why the dependency graph matters more than the module count, how a zero-circular-dependency rule paid off during maintenance, and what I would do differently next time.

5 min read
Software Architecture · May 31, 2026

Building a Desktop Receipt Pipeline: Tesseract, Local LLMs, and Hybrid Extraction in PyQt6

A walkthrough of stitching Tesseract OCR, a local NuExtract-tiny model, and a DeepSeek fallback into a PyQt6 desktop app. Threading, fuzzy business matching, and the hybrid extraction architecture.

5 min read
Software Architecture · May 31, 2026

Event Sourcing a Backtest Engine: Why SQLite Beats Logfiles for Reproducibility

9 min read
Software Architecture · May 31, 2026

The BMad Method: A Structured Development Methodology for AI-Assisted Coding

Four phases, one rule: never ask an AI to code what it cannot describe. How the BMad Method (Build More Architect Dreams) keeps AI collaboration structured, auditable, and actually productive. Docs: docs.bmad-method.org

8 min read
Software Architecture · May 31, 2026

Building a Weekly Meal Pipeline: Scraper, LLM Vision, and Automated Meal Plans

How I built an automated pipeline that scrapes 3 grocery circulars, analyzes 44 images with Gemini, generates Ricardo-style weekly menus, and pushes everything to a web dashboard — saving hours every week.

7 min read