One Man Tribe (Vol. I)
Liner notes for my new album: eight instrumental tracks on African and Afro-Latin grooves, written for Amparo.
Code,
music,
words.
I've built software for 30+ years. I also make records, collect words and write about whatever won't leave me alone.
Songs
My new album: nine original tunes, complete with downloadable lead sheets in PDF and MuseScore format.
My Noises Presets
A collection of user presets I made for Noises, the beautifully crafted noise generator instrument by AudioThing.
2 min read
Touch ID for sudo in Ghostty and zellij
How to get the Touch ID prompt to work with sudo on macOS, including the pam_reattach workaround needed inside terminal multiplexers like zellij and tmux.
2 min read
The shell's until loop
A practical tour of the until loop: syntax, when it reads better than while, and five real-world examples for waiting on services, files, ports, retries, and background jobs.
3 min read
Pizza Paper Specs
On the checkered paper under the pizza, the sketches drawn between a Margherita and a Diavola, and the grease ring that landed squarely on the retry policy.
4 min read
After the diagnosis: the privilege of being able to afford it
An adult autism diagnosis shouldn't be a luxury. Two reflections: on the privilege of being able to afford one, and on how to start understanding yourself even before a formal diagnosis.
4 min read
Fifty-one years for a word
In June 2026, at fifty-one, I was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder, level 1. It wasn't a surprise: it was a confirmation.
2 min read
A madman
Paolo Nori says a madman is a useless masterpiece. I think exactly the opposite: he is an extremely useful masterpiece, in fact a necessary one.
A door taken off its hinges, then a mind taken off its hinges, then a compliment. The slow journey of a metaphor that still works because of the hinge it pictures.
Earlier words
More →- Hectoring How a Trojan prince's name became a verb for browbeating. The seventeenth-century London gangs that stole it, and what hectoring still names that argument and anger do not.
- Frolic An old word for an old kind of joy — where frolic comes from, why its k quietly fell off, and what the word still protects that its more serious cousins do not.
- Rabbit Hole The small doorway that swallows an afternoon — where the phrase comes from, why the internet turned it into a verb, and how to tell a good rabbit hole from a bad one.