I’m Adam. I love making fun stuff on the web.

Hey hey! 👋

Welcome to my digital garden on the web. I’m Adam, a 43-year-old (he/him) living in Salt Lake City, UT, with my wife, Marilyn, and our 5-year old black golden doodle, Bucky.

I’d describe myself as an optimistic builder who enjoys creating and optimizing things in their life. Some weeks, I’ll get really into a new recipe; other times, I’m digging into a data visualization. Occasionally, I’ll get obsessed with a project for weeks (or months), while other projects take only hours.

I spend most of my days programming in Ruby on Rails at Libro.fm and evenings and Hardcover in Rails, React.js and Inertia.js. Fortunately, I really like books and Rails. 😂

Other than that, I love experimenting with new technologies, exploring the world through food, hiking, playing board games & video games, and generally just trying to enjoy life.

Not all of my interests are healthy 😅. I also enjoy drama-filled reality TV (Love is Blind, The Bachelor, Masterchef), I make a variety of cocktails, drink way too much caffeine, have an unhealthy amount of screen time, doom scroll often, and have an addictive personality.

This site is primarily a blog of what I’m up to, a list of projects I’ve worked on (or are working on), and an abbreviated version of what I’m reading and what I’m up to right now.

The blog section of this site spans all of my writing on the web across multiple other blogs.

Growing Up

When I was a kid, my dad would bring home his Macintosh computer from work. I don’t remember the first time I used it, but I do remember feeling it was just another tool like a VCR or a TV.

My earliest memory is using a computer to draw. I’m guessing this might’ve been a precursor to Photoshop back in the 80s – something with minimal options. I never worried about “messing things up” on the system — it wasn’t a concern. Instead, I focused on important things like how to change the icon for a folder. Later on, learning how to format and reset a system was like learning a superpower. It guaranteed that my playground would be working.

I’m 40+ now and computers (and the web) are still my playground.

My Life

I live with my wife of ~19 years in Salt Lake City, UT. We both grew up in Florida and met in a computer networking class at a moment when we shared a major (talk about luck)!

Like most people, I never wanted to spend my entire life in the same place I grew up. In 2018 Pluralsight acquired Code School (the startup I was working for at the time). We jumped at the chance to move from Orlando to SLC. It’s been an amazing decision and we absolutely love it here.

Within a few months, I’d traded in my swimsuit and Disney Annual pass (yes, we’re adult Disney fans) for hiking shoes and an ever-growing AllTrails list. It’s been amazing to have an entirely new side of the world to explore. If you have any favorite hikes in the western US I’d love to hear about them!

In 2022 I tore my ACL in my right knee (steeping down from a box at CrossFit). I had surgery for it (using my quad tendon) and spent the next year recovering. I’m back to 100% now, went skiing in 2024 and feel back to normal. I did lost most of my endurance – going from running a marathon in 2021 to rarely running now a days.

Here’s the tl;dr of a few things I’m most passionate about.

Making websites – Ever since I built an anime fan site in high school I’ve loved building stuff on the web. Technologies change, but the desire to create things that anyone in the world can see still excites me. Related: All the projects I’ve ever built
Minimalism – After my mom passed away when I was 24 I inherited the house I grew up in and a lifetime of stuff. This experience strongly shaped my mindset on bringing things into my life. Related: There is No Such Thing as a Minimalist Life
Mindfulness – I’ve been journaling online in some way since cringy LiveJournal posts back in 2001. Self-reflection and a growth mindset are important parts of my relationship with myself. Related: My 52 Beliefs
Finances & Investing – I focus on investing for retirement using a buy-and-hold strategy of low-fee, tax-optimized, index funds in the right type of accounts. Related: An Interactive Guide to Early Retirement and Financial Independence
Beer, Wine & Cocktails – I wasn’t a partier in college. Later on, I realized how much I enjoy trying new beers and cocktails. I have a special place for sours, Belgians, saisons, gin and chartreuse.
Activism & Anti-religion – Hot take here. I’m a super-left (basically communist), pro-choice, feminist who thinks republicans are destroying America. I’m an Athiest and believe any religion that expands into politics should be taxed.
Goals & Future Planning – Having goals and plans for my life (or year, month, week, etc) helps me focus. I can go overboard and work too hard on these, but they can also bring me joy. Related: 101 Things I Want to Know, Have, Do or Be
Board & Video Games – I had an NES and a Power Glove in the ’80s. I’ve been a Nintendo fan ever since. I lean towards console games and strategy board games. Some of my recent favorites are Final Fantasy 7 Remake, Hollow Knight, The Last of Us Part II, Settlers of Catan and Wingspan.
Travel – Growing up we’d go on long road trips from Seattle to Key West, Maine to Los Angeles. Since then my wife and I have begun to explore the world (Japan, Vietnam and Germany are a few of my favorites).
Personal Growth – In my late 20s, I learned about the concept of growth mindset, the belief that abilities and intelligence can be developed through effort and learning. Since that discovery, I’ve had an ever-changing list of interests (learning Japanese, playing the Piano, SVG animations, and AI art just to name a few).

I’m always on the lookout for new hobbies and interests to try with passionate people.

A Short Retirement

One of the more unusual things in my life is that I’ve been very fortunate financially.

Back in 2012, I joined a startup called Code School. We all worked really hard and found a niche (interactive code education), and a voice that resonated with an audience. Related: How I Ended Up (And Stayed) at Code School

A few years later Code School was acquired by Pluralsight – a much larger company in the tech education space. I received some money from the deal (~$400k) and some stock in Pluralsight (a private company), but it was nowhere near enough to retire to an island somewhere.

By 2018 Pluralsight had grown. They IPO’d and suddenly my stock was worth something! After 6 months I cashed it all in (~$700k) and decided to take some time off. Related: It’s Official: I’m Leaving My Job. What’s Next?

From December 2018 to April 2025 I considered myself retired. We’d saved up enough to maybe have enough to not work again if we kept expenses low. After a few years, we realized that wasn’t going to happen.

Those 7 years off were some of the most fun of my life. I went on hundreds of hikes, trained for and ran a half marathon and a marathon, build two major projects – Minafi and Hardcover – along with another dozen smaller projects. Not needing to worry about a job during COVID lockdown was a big plus.

For most of this time, I maintained a steady work ethic. I’d go to the gym or workout 3-5x a week and spend roughly 25 hours a week working on my main project. Sometimes that spiked crazy high when I’d get obsessed with a problem.

The two projects that I spent the most time on are still active.

Minafi

After years of writing on LiveJournal and later on this site about technology, I wanted to try something more focused in a new space. As much as I love tech, I couldn’t work in tech all day long and then come home and write about it.

I started Minafi as a place to write about minimalism, mindfulness and financial independence – topics I was passionate about and kept coming back to. Writing helps me explore my own relationship to these topics while learning and sharing along the way.

One of the first things I launched was The Minafi Investor Bootcamp, a 10-course to learn everything you need to know to invest on your own, handle taxes, plan for retirement and grow your wealth using the stock market. It uses a pay-what-you-want model with the first course free. After years of making courses at Code School, this was a chance to make something in the finance space that I wish I’d had available when I started investing. (tl;dr: Tax-optimized, diversified index fund investing for the long terms in the right accounts).

Hardcover

Hardcover is a social network for readers. It’s a bootstrapped project with a team of people working on it together, with over 20 of us right now.

I’ve been a Goodreads user since 2009. Since they were acquired by Amazon they’ve struggled to iterate and build anything unique. Hardcover is my attempt to compete against a top 100 website in the world (no pressure 😅).

We recently hit 35k members, with almost 400 paid subscribers with almost 100 new people joining every day. It’s an ambitious projects, and much more fun now with more people to build together with.

If you’re an active reader you should give us a try! If you do I’d love for you to reply to and of the emails from Hardcover with your thoughts (those emails go straight to me).

Other Projects

I’m always working on something. You can see what I’m focusing on right now, or check out the details of every project I’m working on.

The Future

What do the next 10 years look like? I have absolutely no idea. When I turned 40 I wrote about what I want my next 10 years to look like – but like everything, it’s just a guess.

What I know is that I want to keep building loving relationships in my life, continue creating stuff online and focus on enjoying life rather than stressing out about money.

I’m an open book, feel free to reach out at any time if you want to chat about anything, or if you’re in Salt Lake and want to meet up.