Here’s a look at what I’m up to right now as of March 30, 2025.
New House!
In December 2024, we closed on a new house here in Salt Lake City! In February 2025 we moved in! We had the foundation fixed; adding a new beam in the basement and a bunch of piers around the outside of the house going down 65 feet to the bedrock. The place is solid and should last another 100 years (it was built in 1898).
There’s still a bunch we want to do, but it’s starting to feel like home. ♥️
Fun
After the election, I changed my morning routine and switched from doom-scrolling to reading (well, trying to). This has meant 30 minutes to an hour of reading each morning!
I recently joined Bluesky with (seemingly) the rest of the developer community. If you’re on there, let’s connect! I’m @adamfortuna.com to match this site.
We’re also planning to adopt a dog! I started getting allergy shots earlier this year, and after 18 weeks, I’m now immune! We’re now on the lookout for a furry addition for our household.
I’m playing through Celeste for the first time and loving it. It’s challenging, but every time I successfully complete a room I feel such a huge sense of accomplishment.
I’m also playing through Final Fantasy VII: Reunion (part 2 of the remake). It’s been wonderfully nostalgic. I’m enjoying it even more than part 1!
Hardcover Migration from Next.js to Ruby on Rails
On March 18th, after 5 months of work, I migrated Hardcover from Next.js to Ruby on Rails. It was a long project, but I’m so glad with the results. The site is faster, more reliable, easier to work in and just better overall.
The migration was huge, I’m still working through dozens of issues that came from the code switch. Replacing the entire front-end with Rails meant changing thousands of files – especially since the React.js side used server components throughout. Switching to that and Inertia.js has been a huge change.
I’m also working on a series of blog posts about this migration from a technical side on the Hardcover Blog.
Programming
I recently posted on BlueSky about a few projects I aim to work on more, and as an excuse to spend less time on social media. I’ve made some progress on these since January 21st:
- ✅ Fix Minafi – I upgraded it from Rails 6 and Webpacker to Rails 8 and Vite. It’s running again, and I even blogged there for the first time in years (Why We Traded Stocks for a House Seven Years Into FIRE).
- ✅ Migrate my blog (this site) from Next.js to Astro. I wrote about the process, and open sourced the codebase.
- Migrate ❌ Minafi & ✅ this blog off Heroku. Hardcover is on Digital Ocean, this blog is on Netlify, and Minafi is on Heroku. I’m happy with the current hosting for each right now, so I’ll make this as done.
- 🔜 Build a Minimalist Journal for iOS inspired by this approach. I’ve vibe coded this some, but there’s a lot more to do.
Given the move and the Hardcover migration, I’m proud of myself for accomplishing these goals. Writing them out in a Now page actually helped!
I’ve been using HabitKit lately for my personal tracking, combined with Exist.io. This has bumped the Minimalist Journal down in my prioritization lately. But this idea keeps coming back to me.
Finances
Our finances are at a very odd place right now. With the house purchases, we had to sell a lot of stock. We have a decent cash cushion right now for a few years, but we’re still trying to figure out what this looks like long-term.
Will Hardcover grow to generate income? Will Minafi? Will I get a job? Will the market crash pushing us to make a choice sooner?
I’m not sure yet. I know I don’t want for us to run out of money later in life – and that means earning income now.
Fitness
Now that I’ve mostly recovered from ACL surgery (July ’22), I’ve been exercising more. After working with an online personal trainer for 6 months, I’ve tweaked my fitness routine down to something relatively simple:
- Gym: 3x a week (Monday, Wednesday, Friday)
- Cardio: 2x a week (Tuesday, Saturday)
- Walk 10k steps: On days I don’t work out. 6k steps minimum on days I do.
I switched from going to the gym at 8 a.m. to starting earlier, at 6 a.m. The gym is 1.2 miles away, which is far enough that riding my bike there speeds things up.
I’ve also started taking walks after lunch each day around the park close to our new house. It’s been amazing having that green space just outside my front door.
The mountains usually thaw out by early May. I’m looking forward to putting in an audiobook and going on a multi-hour hike soon.
Travel
2024 was the first year we traveled internationally since before COVID. We went to South Korea for 2 weeks in April, which was amazing.
More recently, we spent the end of October in Barcelona, Spain, followed by a cruise (Barcelona, Spain → Lisbon, Portugal → Porto, Portugal → Tangier, Morocco → Cadiz, Spain → Barcelona, Spain).
If you’re ever in Lisbon and enjoy shellfish, I encourage you to try Cervejaria Ramiro. You need reservations for the main restaurant, but there’s a walk-in version next door. We enjoyed shrimp, tiger shrimp, barnacles, clams and langoustines with a bottle of cava and a beer in one of our favorite meals ever. Thanks to Anthony Bourdain for the recommendation!
For once, we don’t have any travel scheduled for anytime soon. With a new house and dog in the cards, we’re allocating the foreseeable future to that. I have a penciled-in travel plan for 2026, though: work from Japan for a month. I’m continuing to learn Japanese (I took it in college), and I am excited to try my own foreign exchange program. 😂
We’re planning to head to the Dominican Republic later this year for a wedding. I’m crossing my fingers that travel to and from America is still possible then. 🤞
Mental Health
2025 is shaping up to be quite a year. I remember in 2016-2020 I spent a lot of time on Twitter, taking in news from all angles all day long. I wanted to have my ear to the ground to know what new policies and rights were being taken away.
I still want to know those things to stand up to oppression when possible, but I don’t need to know right away. I’m switching from reading news sites to BlueSky, RSS Feeds and the Salt Lake Tribune.
What’s Next?
I’ve been trying to be more lenient when things are going perfectly. Schedules shift, but it’s better to make incremental progress on something than nothing.
Saying no to new projects is a priority now, in order to better focus on everything else.