Not So Common Thoughts

We treat decisions as fixed points when they're really just one step in a continuous process.

My local knowledge base has become the memory for everything I work on and every agent I work with, and it maintains itself.

A 25-million-parameter language model trained from scratch, squeezed into 16 MB, and running entirely on a $25 ESP32: no cloud, no internet, just battery-powered text generation.

Past a certain strength, chess is won one move at a time: each move slants the board a little further, until the weaker player can't find a good move at all.

A name for the way everyone writes now: writing shaped by what the algorithm rewards rather than by what the writer means.

LLMs stopped being bad at math by using a calculator.

A teletext-style e-paper wall my family and my agents can put a page on, and why a slow, flat-colour panel and a format from 1984 suit each other.

A leader once called my younger self an idiot for saying I didn't like politics.

A world-class team that builds and a world-class team that sells.

A renewal notice marked a year of writing here and on LinkedIn.

Modern houses use materials that pretend to be something they're not.

Skip the best-practice posts.

My daughter started drawing trees at a coffee shop.

Markdown files have quietly become the connective tissue of AI-assisted work.

GTD is a judgment practice disguised as a productivity system.

I've kept a bullet journal for years.

AI's rapid feedback loop is either energizing or exhausting.

Real-time transcription makes you edit while you think.

AI makes everything possible and nothing restful.

A practical approach to making AI actually useful: translate your company knowledge into a structured, version-controlled repository that AI can reason from.

Working with AI has shifted my design process from building up to carving away, revealing the essential shape hidden within.

Turning a fascination with strange attractors into an immersive audiovisual experience, from Playdate to iOS and macOS.

Machine learning models across languages, molecules, and proteins are converging toward similar representations—a hint at underlying structure.

Why knowing what you're bad at matters more than knowing what you're good at—for learning, for work, and for building teams that actually complement each other.

Good science fiction changes one thing and builds a world around it.

Building Field Bureau + Werkstatt, a minimal site born from a journal sketch and iterated into existence.

Unintentional imposters optimizing for output over outcome.

Visual UIs and chat interfaces have opposite strengths.

Why organizational change takes time, why resistance is normal, and why momentum eventually works in your favor.

Why organizational momentum is a vector, and why moving fast in the wrong direction is worse than moving slowly in the right one.

How cultural differences in praising children shape mindset and what it means for how we raise our own kids.

Why the M-series neural engine may prove that Apple's so-called lag in AI is actually a head start in on-device intelligence.

Why I ask teammates to think about their CV and what they want it to look like five years from now.

In the age of AI, it's not the UI that becomes ephemeral—it's the software itself.

The three non-negotiables I expect from senior designers: relentless feedback, selling the work, and knowing when each skill should lead.

How shipping MIDI Volume Control proved that no project is too small to pivot when immediate user feedback points to the real product.

How a simple need—controlling my Mac's volume with a MIDI controller—led to building my first desktop app, now available on the App Store.

Building a free chess game analysis tool that stores everything in the URL—no servers, no databases, just instant analytics you can share with a link.

How AI has restored my ability to learn by doing, bringing back the joy of experimentation that growing responsibilities had made increasingly rare.

How I built a personal book collection website to solve the frustrating problem of tracking what I've already read.

A reflection on the 'AI slop' debate, content overload, and why engaging with long-form writing matters more than ever.

A compact cheat sheet for intermediate players (1200+), especially after a break from play.

On the fundamental difference between art and design: one serves itself, the other must serve others.

Turn any playlist into a customizable mixtape—no log-ins, no algorithms, just intentional listening.

While others were affirming that AIs could not truly think or even understand, I found myself wondering if I was any different.

How building a hex map generator brought back memories of creating one of the web's first strategy games.

The art of setting guardrails that empower rather than constrain.

On the growing disconnect between our daily routines and a world in crisis.

How our cultural narratives about AI might be shaping its development more than we realize

The journey of creating a mind mapping tool that evolved from experimental prototypes to a full-featured product.