Astro SphereWelcome to Astro Sphere, a portfolio and blog for designers and developers.https://blog.kyrandale.com/Migrating to DaisyUI with Claude Code: Using llms.txt for AI-Assisted Stylinghttps://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-12-10-room-tracker-daisyui-migration-claude-code/https://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-12-10-room-tracker-daisyui-migration-claude-code/How dropping a single context file into a project transformed AI-assisted UI development and made CSS migrations painlessWed, 10 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTBuilding a Patient Movement Recording System: ESP32 Sensors to Svelte UIhttps://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-12-10-room-tracker-movement-recording-system/https://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-12-10-room-tracker-movement-recording-system/Implementing end-to-end gyroscope and accelerometer recording for patient monitoring, from embedded firmware to database to web interfaceWed, 10 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTDelta Lake Time Travel Saved Your Pipeline (Here's How)https://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-12-03-healthcare-pipeline-time-travel-recovery/https://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-12-03-healthcare-pipeline-time-travel-recovery/Imagine: you corrupt production data and need to recover without backups or downtime. Here's how Delta Lake's version history saves the day.Wed, 03 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTThe 30-Second Boot: Debugging Serial Logs When Your Camera Only Wakes Brieflyhttps://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-12-02-room-tracker-30-second-boot/https://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-12-02-room-tracker-30-second-boot/When your device sleeps after 30 seconds, you need to capture logs non-interactively or you'll miss the critical errors.Tue, 02 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTRemote Controlling an ESP32 Camera with Command Polling and a Web GUIhttps://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-12-02-room-tracker-command-polling/https://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-12-02-room-tracker-command-polling/Running an HTTP server on the ESP32 is power-hungry, but having the camera poll for commands gives you remote control without the battery drain.Tue, 02 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTTurning Gyroscope Data into a 3D Time-Lapse Animation with Plotlyhttps://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-12-02-room-tracker-gyroscope-3d-plotly/https://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-12-02-room-tracker-gyroscope-3d-plotly/Plotly's 3D scatter plots with animation frames make sensor data feel alive instead of just numbers in a CSV.Tue, 02 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTThe Documentation Lied: Debugging a Hardware Conflict That Didn't Existhttps://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-11-30-room-tracker-documentation-lied/https://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-11-30-room-tracker-documentation-lied/900 lines of bit-bang I2C recovery code to work around a GPIO conflict that was never actually wired on the hardware.Sun, 30 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTDeep Sleep Isn't Deep Enough: ESP32 Wake-on-Motion Adventureshttps://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-11-28-room-tracker-deep-sleep-wake-on-motion/https://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-11-28-room-tracker-deep-sleep-wake-on-motion/Turns out GPIO reuse for I2C and wake signals creates a deadlock that makes your motion sensor completely unresponsive.Fri, 28 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTBuilding an ESP32 Camera in Docker (So You Never Touch Your Host System)https://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-11-28-room-tracker-esp32-docker-dev/https://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-11-28-room-tracker-esp32-docker-dev/The ESP-IDF toolchain is a nightmare to install, but the official Docker image makes it disappear completely.Fri, 28 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTWhy WiFi Wouldn't Reconnect: The Race Condition in My Disconnect Handlerhttps://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-11-28-room-tracker-wifi-reconnect-race/https://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-11-28-room-tracker-wifi-reconnect-race/Calling esp_wifi_stop() triggers a disconnect event that immediately tries to reconnect, leaving WiFi in a weird half-stopped state.Fri, 28 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTMigrating a Dagster Pipeline from Pandas to Polars and Delta Lakehttps://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-11-26-healthcare-dag-polars-delta-lake-medallion-migration/https://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-11-26-healthcare-dag-polars-delta-lake-medallion-migration/Why and how I'm migrating a production ETL pipeline from Pandas/SQLite to Polars/Delta Lake with a medallion architecture.Wed, 26 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTHow I Went from Zero Tests to Comprehensive Dagster Test Coveragehttps://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-11-26-healthcare-dag-test-overhaul-journey/https://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-11-26-healthcare-dag-test-overhaul-journey/The journey from no tests to data-driven testing with pytest fixtures, mock resources, and proper asset validation.Wed, 26 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTTesting Dagster Assets Without Real Databases: The Mock Resource Pattern That Actually Workshttps://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-11-26-healthcare-dag-testing-dagster-assets-mock-resources/https://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-11-26-healthcare-dag-testing-dagster-assets-mock-resources/How I learned to test Dagster assets properly using mock resources and pytest fixtures, moving from brittle tests to reliable ones.Wed, 26 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTWhy I Chose Overwrite Over Merge (And When You Should Too)https://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-11-26-healthcare-pipeline-overwrite-vs-merge/https://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-11-26-healthcare-pipeline-overwrite-vs-merge/Turns out full table overwrites beat complex merge logic for most real-world data pipelinesWed, 26 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTRequestAnimationFrame to the Rescue: Killing Slider Laghttps://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-11-23-vehcology-requestanimationframe-slider-lag/https://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-11-23-vehcology-requestanimationframe-slider-lag/Moving a slider was triggering 7000+ array iterations and nine console.logs per frame - no wonder it lagged.Sun, 23 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTBuilding an Evolution Dashboard: Status Bars, Pagination, and Test Tableshttps://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-11-22-vehcology-evolution-dashboard-build/https://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-11-22-vehcology-evolution-dashboard-build/From raw database dumps to a polished interface for tracking neural network evolution runs across multiple vehicles.Sat, 22 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTThe Ground That Wouldn't Stop: LunarLander's Phantom Landingshttps://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-11-21-vehcology-lunarlander-phantom-landings/https://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-11-21-vehcology-lunarlander-phantom-landings/Our lunar lander kept detecting collisions after landing, turning successful touchdowns into catastrophic failures.Fri, 21 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTBronze Stage Encryption: The Just-in-Time Pattern That Almost Workedhttps://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-11-20-healthcare-pipeline-encryption-pattern/https://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-11-20-healthcare-pipeline-encryption-pattern/Building column-level encryption for healthcare PII taught me that the simplest solution is often dropping the data entirelyThu, 20 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTSvelte 4 to 5 Migration: Why Tween Animations Stopped Being Reactivehttps://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-11-20-vehcology-svelte5-tween-reactivity/https://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-11-20-vehcology-svelte5-tween-reactivity/Migrating to Svelte 5's new reactivity system broke our animation tweens until we discovered the hidden trap.Thu, 20 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTRefactoring Evolution: Building a Consistent Vehicle APIhttps://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-11-19-vehcology-vehicle-api-refactoring/https://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-11-19-vehcology-vehicle-api-refactoring/Seven different vehicles, seven different APIs - time to unify the chaos and extract the common patterns.Wed, 19 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTAnonymization vs Encryption: What Healthcare Data Actually Needshttps://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-11-18-healthcare-pipeline-anonymization-vs-encryption/https://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-11-18-healthcare-pipeline-anonymization-vs-encryption/I built encryption, then realized anonymization with irreversible hashing was the right answer all alongTue, 18 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTDRY Your Vehicles: Eliminating Redundancy in Physics Simulatorshttps://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-11-18-vehcology-dry-your-vehicles/https://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-11-18-vehcology-dry-your-vehicles/Seven vehicles, identical CTRNN setup code copy-pasted everywhere - a case study in when and how to apply Don't Repeat Yourself.Tue, 18 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTBuilding a Delta Lake Pipeline Without Sparkhttps://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-11-17-healthcare-pipeline-spark-free-delta-lake/https://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-11-17-healthcare-pipeline-spark-free-delta-lake/DuckDB plus delta-rs gives you Delta Lake in pure Python without the JVM overheadMon, 17 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTEscaping CSS Hell: Our Migration from Pico to Tailwind + DaisyUIhttps://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-11-16-vehcology-css-migration-pico-to-tailwind/https://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-11-16-vehcology-css-migration-pico-to-tailwind/Fighting with custom CSS was eating development time, so we nuked it all and went full utility-first.Sun, 16 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTFrom Firebird to Gold: ETL for Healthcare Analyticshttps://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-11-15-healthcare-pipeline-firebird-to-gold/https://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-11-15-healthcare-pipeline-firebird-to-gold/Building a complete data pipeline from legacy Firebird databases to clean analytics with Delta Lake medallion architectureSat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTSchema Evolution in the Wild: When Your Bronze Layer Grows New Columnshttps://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-11-14-healthcare-pipeline-schema-evolution/https://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-11-14-healthcare-pipeline-schema-evolution/How Delta Lake's schema merge mode turned schema changes from incidents into non-eventsFri, 14 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTMigrating to Medallion Architecture: The Parquet-to-Delta Journeyhttps://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-11-13-healthcare-pipeline-parquet-to-delta/https://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-11-13-healthcare-pipeline-parquet-to-delta/How we moved from CSV exports to Delta Lake without breaking production dashboardsThu, 13 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTTeaching Robots to Land: CTRNN Networks Meet Genetic Algorithmshttps://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-11-13-vehcology-ctrnn-genetic-algorithms/https://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-11-13-vehcology-ctrnn-genetic-algorithms/How we evolved continuous-time recurrent neural networks to control lunar landers without any training data.Thu, 13 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTSystemd + Git Hooks + Tailscale: Zero-Downtime Deployment for Personal Appshttps://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-11-05-todo-txt-systemd-deployment/https://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-11-05-todo-txt-systemd-deployment/You don't need Docker or Kubernetes for personal projects—systemd and a post-merge hook are enough.Wed, 05 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTTodo.txt Format Meets Modern Web: Parsing Plain Text in a Reactive Worldhttps://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-11-04-todo-txt-parsing-plain-text/https://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-11-04-todo-txt-parsing-plain-text/Building a parser for the todo.txt format means understanding a spec from 2006 and making it work with reactive frameworks.Tue, 04 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTThe CartPole That Wouldn't Budge: A Tale of Two Vehicleshttps://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-11-04-vehcology-cartpole-debugging/https://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-11-04-vehcology-cartpole-debugging/When your evolved neural network achieves perfect balance by never moving the cart at all.Tue, 04 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTSwipe Gestures in Svelte: The Touch Events Nobody Talks Abouthttps://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-11-03-todo-txt-swipe-gestures/https://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-11-03-todo-txt-swipe-gestures/Implementing swipe-to-complete on mobile means wrestling with touch events, vertical scrolling, and CSS that fights you.Mon, 03 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTWhen $effect() Destroys Your User's Input: Svelte 5 Reactivity Gotchashttps://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-11-02-todo-txt-effect-destroys-input/https://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-11-02-todo-txt-effect-destroys-input/Svelte 5's $effect() can silently erase user input if you're not careful about when you trigger updates.Sun, 02 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTJWT Authentication Across Ports: Multi-Server Auth Without Session Cookieshttps://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-12-05-jwt-authentication-multi-server/https://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-12-05-jwt-authentication-multi-server/Building a blog platform where authentication flows seamlessly between a main site and multiple blog instances on different portsSun, 05 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMTSvelte 5's $effect Rune: When Third-Party Libraries Need Reactive Initializationhttps://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-12-05-svelte-5-effect-rune-reactive-initialization/https://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/2025-12-05-svelte-5-effect-rune-reactive-initialization/How $effect solves the initialization dance with libraries like Box2D when props arrive asynchronouslyFri, 05 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMTProject Onehttps://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/project-1/https://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/project-1/Lorem ipsum dolor sit ametFri, 18 Mar 2022 00:00:00 GMTProject Twohttps://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/project-2/https://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/project-2/Lorem ipsum dolor sit ametThu, 17 Mar 2022 00:00:00 GMTProject Threehttps://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/project-3/https://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/project-3/Lorem ipsum dolor sit ametWed, 16 Mar 2022 00:00:00 GMTProject Fourhttps://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/project-4/https://blog.kyrandale.com/projects/project-4/Lorem ipsum dolor sit ametTue, 15 Mar 2022 00:00:00 GMT