At four years old, I set out to understand things — machines, systems, people, language, why some structures hold and others collapse. Once I understood them, I found immense pleasure in helping others understand and use them.
I’m also an independent DevRel consultant and technical writer — 30 years in the field, six at Canonical as developer advocate for MAAS. Work with me.
Proof of work
Making technical systems legible
MAAS from the CLI — Eight-part walkthrough of installing, configuring, and operating bare metal provisioning infrastructure using only the command line. Covers PostgreSQL setup, DHCP, machine commissioning, deployment, SSH/SCP, and two deep-dives into jq for human-readable CLI output. Written while working as developer advocate at Canonical. Includes a live show-and-tell session recorded for the MAAS community.
Networking Tutorial — Ground-up explanation of TCP/IP and the OSI model for people who want to understand what’s actually happening on the wire. Covers network architecture, Ethernet framing, ARP, IP packets, routing, and TCP — written for operators, not theorists.
My Emacs Configuration — Annotated init.el covering 21 sections: org-roam networked notes, org-babel literate programming in ten languages, org-super-agenda, org-clock, a custom journaling system, and the design philosophy behind all of it. Self-installing on a fresh machine.
Making complex systems legible to everyone else
How to think like a grandmaster — Chess mastery as a model for pattern compression and working memory management. A grandmaster doesn’t think faster — they think in larger pieces of time. The same cognitive architecture applies to any domain where expertise looks like intuition.
How to think like an ER physician — Slow thinking in the fastest room on Earth. How emergency physicians build composure under pressure, triage attention, and make irreversible decisions with incomplete information — and what that discipline looks like when you take it out of the ER.
How to think like a professional novelist — A novelist doesn’t track every sentence — they think in shapes of intention. Pattern compression applied to creative work: how to hold an entire structure in working memory and still have bandwidth left to make art.
Recent writing
March 31, 2026
Destructive Interference Of Imprecisions
Destructive Interference of Imprecisions
March 26, 2026
The weird physics of asteroids and crowd wisdom
In 2020, a spacecraft nearly got swallowed by an asteroid. There’s an important lesson for all of us here.
March 23, 2026
Hey, Spock, this way.
Seventeen principles from every swamp, forest, and dead-end road I ever walked.
March 22, 2026
God of the Gorilla Glass
Looks like everyone’s praying these days.
March 19, 2026
Pizza and paper
On the virtues of doing your own thing for your own reasons