https://some-natalie.dev/ Things I'm learning, working on, or thinking about. All opinions and snark my own. 2026-10-08T12:49:59-04:00 Natalie Somersall https://some-natalie.dev/ Jekyll © 2026 Natalie Somersall /assets/img/favicons/favicon.ico /assets/img/favicons/favicon-96x96.png 2026-10-02T00:00:00-04:00 2026-10-02T17:09:21-04:00 https://some-natalie.dev/blog/four-years/ Natalie Somersall

A few observations and thoughts about writing on the internet for four years. Doing fewer, bigger things 📝 This is post #130, meaning only 20 pieces this year. It’s much less than prior years, down from 32 and 42 posts per year the past two. This was my busiest year so far, for better and worse. Writing less seems like a reasonable trade for all the learning. 🎤 It was a thrill to speak a...

2026-09-28T00:00:00-04:00 2026-09-28T00:00:00-04:00 https://some-natalie.dev/blog/slop-reviews/ Natalie Somersall

My AI slop annoys me. Your AI slop annoys me, but probably not as much as my own slop annoys me. We shouldn’t review it more than we have to, yet here we are. 🙄 We need to work together anyways. Let’s talk about how to ask for feedback on your AI slop without ruining your relationships. No judgement … well, not much judgement anyways. Economics 101 A teammate I’ll call Bob asked me t...

2026-09-15T00:00:00-04:00 2026-10-08T12:49:07-04:00 https://some-natalie.dev/blog/bump-vendored-deps/ Natalie Somersall

I have a love/hate relationship with vendoring dependencies in a repository. This enduring trauma and admiration comes from many of the projects I’ve supported over the years. Vendoring is a terribly convenient pattern, doubly so when the upstream source of that dependency could be unavailable when/where you’re running that project. Corporate firewalls or proxies, unstable connectivity on cu...

2026-09-08T00:00:00-04:00 2026-10-08T12:49:07-04:00 https://some-natalie.dev/blog/bump-deps-in-dockerfiles/ Natalie Somersall

There are a ton of weird, non-standard places to manage dependencies that don’t work with software composition tools or package managers. Somehow I seem to find many of these reasons. Each made sense at the time and for the project … but had a hidden cost. Departing from the “paved path” of a package manager means updating and maintaining that dependency becomes a manual process. The tools,...

2026-09-01T00:00:00-04:00 2026-09-01T00:00:00-04:00 https://some-natalie.dev/blog/yum-repo-github-pages/ Natalie Somersall

But why though? I’ve been running a kernel build with a patch to enable addressing of identical hardware individually for around 8 years. Until now, users would have to either build it themselves with those directions or go to the GitHub repo and download a zip file to install the packages manually. Neither are easy or friendly to use. Building the Linux kernel for dedicated hardware VMs ou...