Blog

Bitcoin doesn't have accounts or balances. It has unspent transaction outputs. Understanding UTXOs explains fees, privacy, and how Bitcoin ownership actually works.

I ran heathschweitzer.com on WordPress for over a decade. It worked fine. Here's why I rebuilt it from scratch on Next.js — and what I'd recommend to others.

Bitcoin processes 7 transactions per second. Visa handles tens of thousands. The Lightning Network is Bitcoin's answer — and the way it works is more interesting than most explanations give it credit for.

Every Bitcoin transaction sits in a waiting room before it's confirmed. Understanding the mempool explains fees, confirmation times, and why transactions sometimes feel slow.

Most people take Bitcoin on faith. I decided to stop. Here's what I learned setting up a Bitcoin node and why it changed how I think about the whole thing.

After 20+ years of learning new technologies through books, courses, videos and tutorials, I tried something different by using AI as a genuine collaborator on a real project with real stakes. Here's what changed, what surprised me, and what it means for how experienced developers learn.

PM2 is essential for running Node.js apps in production — it automatically restarts crashed applications, handles logs, and keeps your processes running through server reboots. Without it, you're manually restarting crashed apps and waking up to angry customer emails instead of sleeping through the night. Set it up once properly with startup scripts and save commands, and your Node.js applications will run reliably regardless of crashes or server maintenance.

After 20+ years of building on the LAMP stack, I decided it was time to dive deep into something modern and useful. This is the story of rebuilding heathschweitzer.com from WordPress to a Next.js, Prisma, and TypeScript stack — including a WordPress content migrator, a custom CMS, and a production deployment on CloudPanel. What I learned, what surprised me, and what transferred directly from two decades of PHP experience.