blog · the_log

Thoughts From
The Deep.

Web dev, fishing, AI, and the Florida Keys, written between charters and deploys.

AI & Tech2026-08-16· 6 min read

Your robots.txt Changed Last Tuesday. You Just Don't Know It Yet

Plugin updates, hosting migrations, and WAF rules silently block AI crawlers all the time. I built a monitor that re-scans your site every week and emails you the moment ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, or Gemini loses access.

Florida Keys2026-08-23· 6 min read

DirtyBoat: What the Boat Taught Me About Building Software

DirtyBoat is a 42 foot Custom Liberty Express out of Robbie's. It is also the reason my code got better. Here is what the boat taught me.

Florida Keys2026-08-09· 6 min read

DirtyBoat: The Name, The Boat, The Codebase

How DirtyBoat became a 42 foot Custom Liberty Express at Robbie's, and why the booking engine looks nothing like a template.

Florida Keys2026-08-02· 6 min read

DirtyBoat: What the Name Runs On

DirtyBoat is a 42 foot Custom Liberty Express out of Robbie's at MM 77.5. Here is the operation behind the name and the code that keeps it booked.

Web Development2026-08-01· 8 min read

The Charter Business That (Mostly) Runs Itself

DirtyBoat Charters runs on two codebases I built from the dock: a 300-page marketing site and a custom CRM that books trips, answers texts, chases balances, and now sends customers the story of their own trip. Here's the whole feature set.

Florida Keys2026-07-12· 6 min read

DirtyBoat: What the Name Actually Means to Me

The name was never supposed to stick. Why it did, why it is honest, and why the slip at Robbie's matters as much as anything I have ever built on the web.

Web Development2026-07-11· 7 min read

Six WordPress Plugins I Built Because Nobody Else Would

I kept running into the same problems on client sites: broken schema, invisible trip catalogs, zero AI-readiness. So I stopped complaining and started shipping plugins.

Web Development2026-06-21· 7 min read

Building Websites for Keys Charter Captains

Ten years webmastering Robbie's and a stack of charter sites. Here is what consistently works for captains in the Florida Keys, and why my own boat became the proof of concept.

Florida Keys2026-06-17· 6 min read

DirtyBoat: The Charter, The Code, The Booking Engine

How the DirtyBoat booking engine actually works. Astro, Supabase, Stripe direct, and a Claude agent that books charters while I am offshore at Robbie's MM 77.5.

AI & Tech2026-06-13· 8 min read

Can ChatGPT Read Your Website? Five Tests Every Site Needs

ChatGPT and Perplexity send real referral traffic now. Here are the five tests I run to make sure they can find your site, parse it, and cite it.

Web Development2026-06-08· 9 min read

Why Angelo and I Brought Vice Alliance Back After 18 Years

Vice Alliance returns after 18 years. Why the agency model is broken, why two principals beat twelve, and what an orchestrated pool of frontier agents now makes possible.

AI & Tech2026-05-09· 4 min read

Plugging the Leaks With AI

A charter captain was bleeding $20k/year on ice. So he bought an ice maker. Then he started looking at every other leak the same way, and rebuilt his entire business stack with AI.

AI & Tech2026-05-01· 9 min read

AI Isn't the Problem. Cookie-Cutter AI Is.

Sites built BY AI are not the same as sites built WITH AI. The honest case for using AI in the workspace, the security concerns that actually matter, and why Astro plus Supabase.

AI & Tech2026-03-20· 7 min read

I Built This Site With AI. Here's What I Learned

This entire site was built with AI assistance. Not generated by AI, built with it. The difference is what makes AI-assisted development actually work.

Web Development2026-03-15· 5 min read

Why Every Charter Captain Needs a Website That Actually Works

Your boat is dialed. Your crew is sharp. Your Insta is popping. But if your website looks like it was built in 2012, you are leaving bookings on the table. Here is the fix.

Web Development2026-03-10· 6 min read

Florida Keys Developer's Toolkit: Astro, Tailwind, Salt Air

Why I chose Astro and Tailwind CSS as my go-to stack, and how building websites from a dock in Islamorada shaped my approach to web development.

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Thoughts FromThe Deep.