Nearly twenty years of experience writing data engineering, architecture, and automation solutions, focusing on user experience and storytelling to let machines handle the hard stuff and make life easier.

Whether that's working with an elegant ecosystem and thoughtful APIs, or having to stitch together antiquated tools and neglected databases, I start with what exists and build the impossible.

I'd just bought a 1970s heavy wool, plaid coat in a vintage shop in Detroit. $5. It was my third year of uni, running down the stairwell in Varner Hall, and some dude walking past me said, 'Hey, nice jacket.'

Seemed like good enough branding at the time.

I grew up in a darkroom. I grew up camping, sailing, among trees and on water. I grew up on old books. I learned to write code with comb-bound manuals, and spent my allowance photocopying pages of atlases and spreading them out across the floor, imagining the past and the far-flung places that were only grey lines.

Conrad said it best.

Now when I was a little chap I had a passion for maps. I would look for hours at South America, or Africa, or Australia, and lose myself in all the glories of exploration. At that time there were many blank spaces on the earth, and when I saw one that looked particularly inviting on a map (but they all look that) I would put my finger on it and say, 'When I grow up I will go there.' The North Pole was one of these places, I remember. Well, I haven't been there yet, and shall not try now. The glamour's off.

I tried anyway.

After uni, I lived in London for a year. I came back to America and moved as far west as one could. My twenties were spent jumping between twelve month contract gigs to fund six months of travel, and every year I swore was my last in Seattle. I spent a year in Sarajevo drinking coffee and eating burek. I got serious and got married, and we spent a year in Ulaanbaatar setting up an NGO and eating цуйван. We eventualy left for good, to settle in West Cork, where we're now restoring a derelict house by hand.