2026 on Andy M Mallon - AM²

Using an AI agent to finish a website migration

Tue, 17 Nov 2026 00:00:00 +0000

When I returned to writing, I said AI belongs alongside the other tools I use to get work done. Finishing this migration is a useful example—especially the last 20% I called out in the intro.

With the pipeline running and the archive reviewed, that judgment becomes the main job. Cody can produce changes pretty quickly. I still need to decide whether they’re right.

Moving a blog without breaking the archive

Tue, 10 Nov 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Last time, we got the replacement site running. Now comes a migration question that should sound familiar to database people: how do you know you brought everything you needed?

Counting imported posts is useful. It won’t tell you that the SQL in one of them has turned into a single unreadable paragraph.

WordPress to Hugo: Cooking up a new website

Tue, 03 Nov 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Last week, I described getting a working copy of my blog on a new test domain. This week, let’s talk about getting the tech properly assembled into a delicious dish, and about how I got from a half-baked but impressive-looking website to a full migration in a few days.

am2.co just got a new look

Tue, 27 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This site was starting to get a little dusty. Things change fast in tech—as database folk, we often think of technologies, languages, and capabilities—but design and UX are constantly evolving, too. The styling and the design were both starting to look a bit dated, and “a bit dated” is not a term I want associated with my professional blog/website. I haven’t been writing a ton of new content, so I also haven’t been putting in the incremental upkeep. Anyway…let’s talk about my updates.

Crawling out of my hole to write more

Mon, 26 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I haven’t been blogging much over the past couple of years. I’m crawling out of my hole to write again, and I hope to post more regularly. That’s what everyone says when they come back, though, so we’ll see if I actually follow through.

What’s bringing me back to writing? One reason is that AI has become a practical tool in my day-to-day work, and I want to write about how I use it. Expect the familiar topics—HA/DR, performance tuning, and professional development—with AI alongside SSMS as a standard part of the toolkit.

Your documentation belongs with your code

Tue, 13 Oct 2026 11:02:59 -0400

For years, I’ve advocated for keeping developer documentation in the same code repository as the code it describes. In the age of AI, that practice has become even more important.

The reason is simple: the easier we make it to maintain documentation, the more likely it is to stay current.

Clear, Concise, Complete, and Correct: Avoiding AI Slop

Mon, 28 Sep 2026 16:58:36 -0400

There’s a particular kind of writing that has become increasingly easy to produce: technically plausible, grammatically correct, reasonably well organized, and almost completely exhausting to read.

You know the stuff–it has a lot of words. It has headings for everything. It explains things that don’t need explaining, repeats the same point three different ways, and somehow manages to leave out the details you actually needed.