Journal

Notes from things that broke.

Short write-ups on correctness, infrastructure and the specific bugs that changed how I build. RSS.

6 August 2026

Matter.js calls preventDefault on every touch, and traps your page

A physics toy on a phone stopped the page scrolling. Not when you touched an object — when you touched anywhere near it.

2 min · JavaScript · Mobile · Canvas

30 July 2026

A portalled <dialog> does not fire React's onClose

Closing the modal left the app permanently frozen. The event was firing. React just was not listening for it.

2 min · React · Accessibility · Debugging

23 July 2026

Multi-tenant isolation belongs in the data layer, not in every query

One endpoint missing a WHERE clause shows one customer another customer's drafts. You find out from the customer.

2 min · SaaS · PostgreSQL · Architecture

16 July 2026

Designing for the spike, not the average

A platform that is quiet for days and then serves an entire region inside two minutes. The load shape decided the architecture before any feature did.

2 min · Architecture · AWS · Scaling

9 July 2026

Cloudflare was revalidating every hashed asset on every page load

Workers Assets ships a default cache header that is correct for hand-written files and wrong for every file a bundler emits.

2 min · Cloudflare · Performance · Deployment

2 July 2026

setPointerCapture on pointerdown silently kills every click

A draggable marquee where none of the cards were clickable. The drag code was correct. It was one line, in the wrong handler.

2 min · JavaScript · UI · Debugging

25 June 2026

Never trust the delta your frame loop hands you

An unclamped frame delta made a WebGL hero teleport instead of resume, and pushed an interpolation past its target into negative values.

2 min · Animation · Performance · WebGL

18 June 2026

overflow-x: auto quietly makes a vertical scroll container too

Three full-bleed carousels on a phone ate every upward swipe. The cause was one line of CSS that does something the property name does not say.

2 min · CSS · Mobile · Debugging

← Back to Syed’s work

Notes from things that broke.Notes from things that broke.

Matter.js calls preventDefault on every touch, and traps your page

A portalled <dialog> does not fire React's onClose

Multi-tenant isolation belongs in the data layer, not in every query

Designing for the spike, not the average

Cloudflare was revalidating every hashed asset on every page load

setPointerCapture on pointerdown silently kills every click

Never trust the delta your frame loop hands you

overflow-x: auto quietly makes a vertical scroll container too

Notes from things that broke.Notes from things that broke.

Matter.js calls preventDefault on every touch, and traps your page

A portalled <dialog> does not fire React's onClose

Multi-tenant isolation belongs in the data layer, not in every query

Designing for the spike, not the average

Cloudflare was revalidating every hashed asset on every page load

setPointerCapture on pointerdown silently kills every click

Never trust the delta your frame loop hands you

overflow-x: auto quietly makes a vertical scroll container too

Notes from things that broke.

Notes from things that broke.