The golden window of tech may have expired. In 2010, I came across a video of Mick Jagger being interviewed (text version here). It was for a re-release of Exile on Main Street with 10 new tracks. During the interview he says this: But I have a take on that — people only made money out of records for a very, very...

Tracing my musical journey. Months ago, Jason Dettbarn, creator of music community Crucial Tracks, kindly asked if I would be up to participate in the Crucial Interview series. There are some great people in there, some I'm familiar with from the indie web, but most notably, my first exposure to it was reading Zach...

The antithesis of slop. It's been a few years since I'd attended the SF Zine Fest. Friend Scott Boms had a table with his Matter Editions wares, and it's a 10-minute walk from home, so Jen and I had to go. Held at The Hibernia, it was a treat to actually go into this historic building that I've wondered about for as...

Software is hard. I’m getting close to 50. Tech has developed a new religion. The power dynamics have shifted, yet again. I asked myself in the last two years, what does work look like? What does it look like for me? I’d been working as a creative director and product designer at a VC firm, and as a founding...

Collaborative writing is rewarding. In the past few months, I’ve been writing a lot. Not as much here, but for Aphera. Between our newsletter, blog, direct email feedback, and social media networks, I might spin up a draft and then bounce it off Ryan and Juan, or we volley it back and forth. It’s a remarkable thing:...

Redesigning as a method of interrogation. Okay, okay, okay. I did it again. Sometimes you design a thing, or redesign it, or evolve it, and you think you're there. But this unsettling feeling sinks in, and you think: “I’m not happy with this. What’s the problem?” Friggin' vibes Lo and behold, the structure is fine,...

A time, a place, and humans. Let’s take a moment to consider the font, Instrument Serif. Created by the Portland-based design agency Instrument for their own use — along with Instrument Sans — they open-sourced it on GitHub, where it made its way to Google Fonts, in a generous act. And, guess where LLMs love to get...

Design tooling, LLMs, and why I still use a pencil. A friend and I were talking about AI and the question of where I lie on the spectrum came up: "I'm now on the handmade, artisanal, craftsperson end of the spectrum." A client project recently moved into the LLM layer. Some of the team had already been working with...

AI makes particle board. As a child, woodworking was part of my school’s curriculum. One of our projects was making a simple sailboat, with the kind of shape and blockiness of those wood toys you see for little kids. From a solid block, we chiseled out the center cavity where the hull was, made a hole for an...

What the days look like now. I buzzed my hair down today. I needed to baseline it. I still have a healthy amount of hair, but it’s going. I have a semblance of vanity, but I knew from my father’s own hair loss where mine would eventually head to (hahahaha). I’m not vain enough to pursue hair transplants in Turkey or...

A new homepage and site improvements. Looking at the Colophon from it’s last update, I mentioned that a refresh had happened in February 2025. A year later, another refresh has landed. I wouldn’t normally write about a site update like this, but the goal of the new homepage design allows me to do just that. It’s a...

2,545 feet of elevation gain, microspikes, and age. Jen and I are ascending. The hike starts immediately with it. This was tougher than the last time. That last time was seven and a half years ago. I was 40 then. We’re in Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado’s front range, and this would be our second time...