Hi!
I’m Don Nguyen - a software developer, dad, husband, and builder. This blog is where I share my experiences, insights, and maybe a few dad jokes along the way.
Posts
20 Mar 2026
I Gave Google AI Studio a Real Challenge: Build a Multiplayer Game in a Day
I tested Google AI Studio by building a real multiplayer number game in a single day. Here’s what happened — and what surprised me.
11 Mar 2026
186 Visa Granted: 359 Days Later, We Made It
After 359 days of waiting, refreshing, and hoping—our 186 visa has been granted. Australia is officially home.
3 Feb 2026
Welcome to the world, Soc!
14 Jan 2026
Why I Built the 186 Visa Tracker: Finding Clarity in the Wait
The story behind the 186 Visa Tracker app—turning the anxiety of the ‘black box’ wait into a tool for transparency, community, and peace of mind for Australian visa applicants.
3 Dec 2025
Building an Australian Mortgage Calculator: The Next Step in Our Home Search
After building a school catchment property finder, the next tool I needed was a mortgage calculator that actually understood Australian quirks—stamp duty by state, LMI thresholds, offset accounts, and the real cost of that dream home.
11 Nov 2025
From Web App to Mobile: Wrapping a Next.js Property Finder with Capacitor
After building a school catchment property finder in a weekend, turning it into mobile apps for both iOS and Android took just hours—thanks to Capacitor’s pragmatic approach to wrapping web apps.
5 Nov 2025
Building a School Catchment Property Finder in a Weekend
How Claude Code helped me build a complete property search tool for Victorian families looking for homes within school zones—from idea to deployment in days, not weeks.
8 Oct 2024
New Project Launch: Digital Passport Photos Made Easy (and Free!)
Building a free passport photo tool gave me an excuse to test SQLite in production, Hotwire for real-time updates, and Kamal 2 for deployment—three technologies I’d been wanting to try but hadn’t found the right project for until now.
16 Sep 2024
Rails, APIs, and That Time My Payload Went Missing
How a custom MIME type in a Content-Type header caused Rails to silently ignore half my API payload, and why third-party integrations always surface the assumptions you didn’t know you were making.
15 Sep 2024
Cracking the GCP Billing Code: My Two-Month Odyssey to Solve a Ridiculous Egress Charge
When a mysterious $300 egress charge appeared on my GCP bill, I spent two months being passed between support teams before discovering that the standard monitoring tools couldn’t see the problem at all.