Hey, I'm MerceMay.
I write code for a living — mostly backends, mostly Go and Rust, occasionally whatever the oncall rotation requires. This site is where I post longer notes about distributed systems, networking, Linux weirdness, the homelab in my closet, and photographs I take when I step away from the keyboard.
Nothing here is sponsored. Nothing here tracks you.
Recent writing
- TIL: sqlite3 .backup is way better than .dump note
- nix-shell for reproducing bugs from five years ago
- CI dependency graph for a monorepo that doesn't run everything
- TIL: pytest's xfail strict flag fails if the test unexpectedly passes note
- The fzf shell setup that finally stuck
- git worktree as a daily driver, not a party trick
- We tried buildpacks. I don't recommend them for most teams.
- TIL: Go race detector can cause tests to pass that would fail in production note
- Justfile patterns for a crowded monorepo
- SLO math for tired engineers
- Structured logging lessons from four years of zerolog
- Head vs tail sampling: the mental model I wish I'd had
Projects
- httptap — A terminal UI that lets you inspect live HTTP traffic on a process without reaching for Wireshark.
- ripgrab — A Rust log tailer that applies ripgrep-style regex filters and structured field extraction across multiple files.
- tilstream — A static site generator for Today-I-Learned notes. Takes a folder of short markdown files and builds a searchable, RSS-friendly site.
- homelab-compose — My home server stack as a set of docker-compose files, Caddy configs, and a hilariously opinionated backup script.
- dotfiles — My shell, editor, and terminal configs. Managed with GNU stow. Not trying to be yours.