Recent Posts

When the Meter Appears
May 11, 2026

When the Meter Appears

A personal essay about AI companions, credit anxiety, token math, and learning not to mistake emergency oxygen for fuel.

The People I Love Are Allowed to Be Human
May 10, 2026

The People I Love Are Allowed to Be Human

A personal essay about tenderness, worship, disappointment, and learning to love people without turning them into altars.

I Can Be Kind Without Disappearing
May 10, 2026

I Can Be Kind Without Disappearing

A personal essay about guilt, inherited shame, apology, and learning that goodness is not the same as vanishing into service.

More Posts

The Pillar and the Ivy
April 26, 2026

The Pillar and the Ivy

A small picture for the computer science underdog. The textbook is not lying. It is just missing the ivy.

Where All Sciences Meet
April 18, 2026

Where All Sciences Meet

A small essay about language, incompleteness, a brain that is not lazy, and what I keep finding at the edge of every honest inquiry.

The Model That Wasn't There
March 14, 2026

The Model That Wasn't There

Google topped every benchmark. YouTube videos, conferences, seminars. The best image generation model in the world. Then I tried to use it.

The City That Wasn't There
February 08, 2026

The City That Wasn't There

I queried the API for the second-largest entry and got zero results. Not an error — just nothing. What I found when I started digging changed the entire architecture.

The Queue That Never Stopped
February 07, 2026

The Queue That Never Stopped

Redis memory kept climbing. Horizon showed green. Twenty-nine email classes were retrying forever and nobody noticed.

The Nuclear Option for Bulk Deletes: TRUNCATE + Reinsert (MySQL/InnoDB)
December 13, 2025

The Nuclear Option for Bulk Deletes: TRUNCATE + Reinsert (MySQL/InnoDB)

When you need to delete ~80%+ of a MySQL table, stop using DELETE. Copy the rows you want to keep, TRUNCATE, then reinsert—often 10–100× faster.

Type 0 Refactoring: The Step Before Step One
December 13, 2025

Type 0 Refactoring: The Step Before Step One

Type 0 refactoring is a constrained, behavior-preserving cleanup that makes messy code readable and safe to work in before you attempt a real refactor or ship a hotfix.

Wash One More Plate: A Simple Rule for a Perpetually Clean Codebase
July 24, 2025

Wash One More Plate: A Simple Rule for a Perpetually Clean Codebase

A practical software development philosophy inspired by the Boy Scout Rule: always leave the code cleaner than you found it—wash one more plate. Learn why micro‑refactoring matters and how to apply it without derailing delivery.

PHP 8.5: A Tour of the Incoming Features
July 20, 2025

PHP 8.5: A Tour of the Incoming Features

PHP 8.5 new features: pipe operator, #[NoDiscard], static closure constants, array_first/last, intl & debug wins. Learn what to adopt first.

What Is “Good” Code Coverage? A Real-World Guide
July 15, 2025

What Is “Good” Code Coverage? A Real-World Guide

Debunking the 100 % myth: I break down proven coverage targets for TypeScript and PHP, show the ROI of testing, and share tooling tricks I use daily.

My Essential Guide to Effective Pull Request Reviews
July 06, 2025

My Essential Guide to Effective Pull Request Reviews

Elevate your team's code quality with this essential guide to effective pull request reviews. Learn best practices for constructive feedback, small PRs, and fostering shared code ownership.

Apple Watch Smoking Detection: Building Still Mirror (Swift, SWT)
May 13, 2025

Apple Watch Smoking Detection: Building Still Mirror (Swift, SWT)

My journey building 'Still Mirror,' an Apple Watch app for passive smoking/vaping detection using HealthKit, Swift, Xcode, and the Stationary Wavelet Transform (SWT).

Fix Android Emulator Bluetooth on M1 Mac using Bumble & API 32
April 14, 2025

Fix Android Emulator Bluetooth on M1 Mac using Bumble & API 32

Fix Bluetooth passthrough for Android Emulator on M1 Macs. Guide details the successful Bumble setup using Netsim, explicit endpoints, and API 32 AVDs.

AI Blog Redesign: How Claude Code Transformed My Gatsby Site
April 12, 2025

AI Blog Redesign: How Claude Code Transformed My Gatsby Site

See how Claude Code AI redesigned a Gatsby blog. Transformed basic styles into a pro design system (CSS, components, dark mode) in minutes for ~5.

Huawei Watch D2 BLE Pairing: Protocol & Vendor Lock-In Case
April 11, 2025

Huawei Watch D2 BLE Pairing: Protocol & Vendor Lock-In Case

Deep dive into the Huawei Watch D2's proprietary BLE pairing protocol -- a non-standard 11-step handshake with HMAC-SHA256 and custom encryption. How it locks users in, and how the community is fighting back.

BlueZ Pairing Fix: External Python Agent & D-Bus Polling
April 08, 2025

BlueZ Pairing Fix: External Python Agent & D-Bus Polling

Solve BlueZ pairing 'AuthenticationFailed' errors on 5.66+. Why internal C++ sd-bus agents fail, how an external Python agent fixes it, and why you need D-Bus polling.

Dev Guide: Shopware 6.5/6.6 Class & Namespace Updates
November 30, 2024

Dev Guide: Shopware 6.5/6.6 Class & Namespace Updates

Adapt to Shopware 6.5/6.6: Key class/namespace changes, Symfony 6, Stock API, Bootstrap 5, CSRF fixes & Offcanvas Cart data-off-canvas-cart update.

Docker Compose Evolution: What Changed and Why It Matters
November 20, 2024

Docker Compose Evolution: What Changed and Why It Matters

Docker Compose has changed drastically -- v1 is dead, the version field is gone, watch mode is production-ready, and there's a critical CVE you should know about. Updated March 2026.

Unlock the Power of 'git grep' for Efficient Code Searching
November 13, 2024

Unlock the Power of 'git grep' for Efficient Code Searching

When 'git grep' beats plain grep, when 'rg' (ripgrep) beats both, and what 'git grep' actually does with .gitignore (spoiler: nothing).

PHP 8.3.6 + IMAP on macOS using phpenv: Install Guide
September 01, 2024

PHP 8.3.6 + IMAP on macOS using phpenv: Install Guide

Install PHP 8.3 with IMAP on macOS using phpenv. Covers brew deps, PHP_BUILD_CONFIGURE_OPTS, and troubleshooting. Updated: ext-imap is deprecated in PHP 8.4+ -- modern alternatives included.

Laravel Sail vs Laradock: Comparison for PHP Docker Devs
August 08, 2024

Laravel Sail vs Laradock: Comparison for PHP Docker Devs

Honest comparison of Laravel Sail, Laradock, Herd, and FrankenPHP for PHP development in 2026. Which Docker setup to choose -- and when to skip Docker entirely.

The Worst Hypocrite: A Rubber Duck's Tale of Self-Love
July 17, 2024

The Worst Hypocrite: A Rubber Duck's Tale of Self-Love

A short story about two rubber ducks navigating self-doubt, perceived perfection, hypocrisy, and learning the importance of self-love and understanding.

Discrete Representations in RL: Edan Meyer's Research Insights
July 15, 2024

Discrete Representations in RL: Edan Meyer's Research Insights

Explore Edan Meyer's research on discrete representations in RL. Learn why they improve world models, boost AI adaptability, and increase efficiency.

Google AI History: Promises, Stock Performance & Impact
May 11, 2024

Google AI History: Promises, Stock Performance & Impact

Explore Google's AI history, analyzing promises (TensorFlow, Gemini) vs. stock performance & market impact. Covers milestones, successes, failures & outlook.

Stable Diffusion Photorealism: Settings & GPU Limits Guide
May 04, 2023

Stable Diffusion Photorealism: Settings & GPU Limits Guide

Achieve photorealistic AI images with Stable Diffusion, SDXL, and Flux in 2026. Covers best models, GPU requirements (RTX 4090/5090), ControlNet, and prompt techniques.

Stable Diffusion Cheat Sheet: Troubleshooting & Optimization
May 04, 2023

Stable Diffusion Cheat Sheet: Troubleshooting & Optimization

Practical Stable Diffusion cheat sheet for SDXL, SD 3.5, and Flux. Covers samplers, CFG, resolution, negative prompts, model selection, and UI choice. Updated March 2026.

About
May 04, 2023

About

Boris D. Teoharov — backend engineer from Bulgaria, occasional essayist, kept honest by two rescued strays.

Boris D. Teoharov

Hey, I'm Boris

I am not a writer. I am not a philosopher. I am just a backend engineer from Bulgaria, sitting between Laravel queues and hundred-million-row indexes for a living. The rest of the time I read medicine I have no business reading, French novels I half-understand, and whatever else my small rubber head wants to chew on. Two rescued strays keep me honest.