Feed - Aaron Francis

I built a Google Docs for me and Claude 🔗

I was marking up a printed draft with a pen and filming the pages for Claude. So we built Margin: a private, git-backed web app where I leave notes on [...]

Become known for a thing 🔗

If you want more opportunities to come your way, become known for one specific thing. [...]

Strategies for increasing your odds of success 🔗

Five practical strategies for increasing your odds of success and becoming more resilient. [...]

You can't trust a nice guy 🔗

They're always up to no good! [...]

A cookieless, cache-friendly image proxy in Laravel (inspired by Cloudflare) 🔗

Transforming and serving images from Laravel in a cache-friendly way. [...]

I was a kid once too 🔗

The joy of getting a high five. [...]

Year in review: 2024 🔗

Looking back on a tough 2024 and forward to a better 2025. [...]

Reputation is portable 🔗

Thoughts on the Twitter to BlueSky migration [...]

Reservable models in Laravel 🔗

Using Laravel's atomic cache locks to reserve models and prevent errors. [...]

This doesn't warrant a blog post 🔗

But that doesn't matter, publish it anyway [...]

Make 5x faster outbound requests in Laravel 🔗

Boost your app's speed with this simple Laravel Octane trick [...]

Setting up Tailscale and Synology for sharing video files 🔗

Sharing terabytes of data across the internet with Tailscale [...]

Configuring (and viewing!) logs in Laravel 🔗

Laravel's logging system is powerful and flexible. Learn how to configure it to suit your needs. [...]

Because I wanted to 🔗

"Because I wanted to" is a perfectly valid reason to build something. [...]

SQLite is not weakly typed! 🔗

See how SQLite's flexible typing can be a powerful feature and how you can enforce strict typing when needed. [...]

Finding missing orders with a recursive CTE 🔗

Finding missing data in a sequence using recursive CTEs in SQL [...]

Clean up after yourself 🔗

Clean up after yourself! Touch a file, delete a file. Start a process, kill a process. [...]

Laravel's higher order collection proxies 🔗

Simplifying our codebase with a neat higher order collection proxy trick. [...]

Don't undo what you haven't done 🔗

Avoid this subtle, but insidious little bug. [...]

An argument for logging off 🔗

It might be time to log off, or at least to drastically reduce your information intake. [...]

File based routing in Inertia.js 🔗

Laravel + Inertia file-based routing for simple pages. [...]

You're always doing something wrong 🔗

You're always doing something wrong, but that's ok. [...]

What if you tried hard? 🔗

I wonder what would happen if you tried really hard. [...]

Do literally anything 🔗

Feeling overwhelmed? Don't know where to start? Do literally anything. [...]

Year in review: 2023 🔗

Looking back on 2023 and forward to 2024 [...]

Shipping SQLite to Lambda (with Laravel Vapor) 🔗

Using a SQLite database on AWS Lambda. [...]

Creating a custom Laravel Pulse card 🔗

Creating a custom Laravel Pulse card to show outdated composer dependencies. [...]

Rendering Blade components in Markdown 🔗

Rendering Laravel Blade components in markdown files. [...]

Targeting only inline code elements with Tailwind Typography 🔗

Only target code blocks that are not inside of pre tags. [...]

Self-healing URLs in Laravel 🔗

Reading the docs straight through, like a book, can provide outsized benefits for your career. [...]

Read the docs like a book 🔗

Reading the docs straight through, like a book, can provide outsized benefits for your career. [...]

Datetimes versus timestamps in MySQL 🔗

Learn the differences between datetimes and timestamps in MySQL, the DATE, YEAR, and TIME columns, timezones, and when to use each. [...]

Generated hash columns in MySQL 🔗

Creating generated hash columns in MySQL for faster strict equality lookups. [...]

Finish your projects 🔗

Starting a project can be full of excitement, hope, and blissful productivity. Finishing that last ten percent, however, can feel like too much. Here’ [...]

Using redundant conditions to unlock indexes in MySQL 🔗

Using redundant conditions as a method to unlock obfuscated indexes and improve performance in MySQL. [...]

Character sets and collations in MySQL 🔗

Understanding the differences between character sets and collations in MySQL. [...]

Why isn’t MySQL using my index? 🔗

There are several reasons why MySQL might not consider your index, and in this article we’ll explore some of the most common ones. [...]

Year in review: 2022 🔗

Looking back on 2022. [...]

Dynamically Generating Thousands of OG Images for a Viral Twitter Campaign 🔗

Learn how Tuple dynamically generated thousands of Open Graph images based on user input using Netlify Edge Functions and Puppeteer. [...]

Laravel's safety mechanisms 🔗

A comprehensive overview of Laravel’s many safety features that can help you prevent painful mistakes. [...]

Indexing JSON in MySQL 🔗

Learn how to index JSON in MySQL with generated columns and functional indexes. [...]

Sometimes they say yes 🔗

The GitHub ReadME Project did a profile on me. This is the story of a me learning to advocate for myself, embracing excitement as a strategy, and over [...]

Pagination in MySQL 🔗

An overview of the different ways to paginate in MySQL including limit/offset pagination and cursor pagination plus the pros and cons of each. [...]

Is COUNT(*) slow in MySQL? 🔗

When to use COUNT(*) vs COUNT(id) in MySQL. [...]

Marketing for maintainers 🔗

Marketing your open source project can be intimidating, but three experts share their insider tips and tricks for how to get your hard work on the rig [...]

Aaron Francis