McGarrah Technical Blog

Jekyll Run Plugin: Fixing the Multi-Root Workspace Crash

· 10 min read
The Jekyll Run VS Code extension crashes with 'TypeError: Cannot read properties of null' in multi-root workspaces on macOS. The error is misleading — the real problem is macOS GUI apps don't inherit your shell PATH, so the plugin runs system Ruby 2.6. The fix is rbenv with Ruby 3.3, launching VS Code from a terminal, and understanding why every other approach fails.

The Google Services Tax on a Simple Blog

· 5 min read
Running a technical blog has turned into a maze of Google services, each with its own setup complexity, approval processes, and interconnected dependencies. What started as a simple Jekyll website has become an exercise in Google service integration frustration — and I'm still fighting.

Building a Draft Preview Site for Jekyll — Part 3: The Implementation

· 14 min read
The design is done. Time to build it. This post covers the complete implementation — repo creation, DNS configuration, the final GitHub Actions workflow, Staticrypt testing results, and every edge case I hit along the way.

Why Data Science Follows the Research Model, Not the Software Development Model

· 10 min read
Software development succeeds 4 out of 5 times. Data science succeeds 1 out of 5. That difference is not a quality problem — it is a fundamental difference in the nature of the work. DS follows the academic research model: hypothesis, experiment, documented failure, iterate.

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