Music
Songs

My new album: nine original tunes, complete with downloadable lead sheets in PDF and MuseScore format.

Mental health
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.

Word of the Day
Unhinged

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.

Word of the Day
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.

Word of the Day
Frolic

An old word for an old kind of joy β€” where frolic comes from, why its k quietly fell off, and what the word still protects that its more serious cousins do not.

Software Development
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.

Software Development
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.

Word of the Day
Rabbit Hole

The small doorway that swallows an afternoon β€” 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.

Word of the Day
RAG

Retrieval-Augmented Generation β€” how language models learn to reach outside themselves for facts, and why it matters that they do.

Word of the Day
Stochastic Parrot

A sceptical metaphor for what large language models are doing when they sound like they understand us β€” where the phrase came from, and why it still stings.

Word of the Day
Uncanny Valley

The small wrongness of an almost-human face β€” why it unsettles us, where the term comes from, and why the valley is no longer confined to robotics labs.

Software
Untracker

I built a $0.99 app that strips tracking parameters from every URL you copy. Here's why, and how it works.

Music
My Noises Presets

A collection of user presets I made for Noises, the beautifully crafted noise generator instrument by AudioThing.

Word of the Day
Ego Death

The experience of the self dissolving β€” what it is, where the term comes from, what neuroscience is starting to say about it, and why it matters.

Word of the Day
Monotropism

A cognitive theory of autism that frames it not as a deficit, but as attention flowing in a single, deep channel rather than many parallel ones.

Word of the Day
Sycophancy

Flattering the powerful at the cost of the truth β€” an ancient corrosive habit, and its strange comeback as a technical term in AI alignment.

Word of the Day
Roll, Pitch, Yaw

The three rotational axes of any rigid body moving through space β€” tilt, nod, turn β€” and why these three nautical words ended up running half the modern world.

Word of the Day
Interoception

The sense of the internal state of the body β€” how the brain perceives signals from inside you, and why it matters for emotion, intuition, and health.

Software
Krik

A static site generator developed entirely with Claude AI assistance, showcasing the power of AI-driven development in Rust and the revolutionary impact of AI coding tools.

Music
Missa

An improvised music album inspired by ecclesiastical themes, featuring the sound of Hans Zimmer's organ from Interstellar and reflections on my early days as a church organist.

Music
Ballads

A personal collection of piano ballads featuring jazz standards and heartfelt interpretations, recorded with sincerity and minimal editing to capture authentic musical moments.

Music
Ear Candy

A musical collection inspired by the simplicity and beauty of Bach's approach to composition, featuring personal interpretations and reflections on the joy of music-making without pretense.

Music
Until Further Notice

The story behind my album Until Further Notice, a week of improvisation on keyboards inspired by passive-aggressive office jargon.

Software
Bruce: cryptography in Java made easy

Bruce is a Java library that simplifies cryptography operations, making it easy for developers to implement secure encryption, decryption, and hashing in their applications.

Software
The Matrix Screensaver for Commodore 64

A Matrix-style screensaver implementation for Commodore 64 written in 6502 assembly, featuring multiple display modes and interactive controls, inspired by the legendary xmatrix screensaver.

Music
Kind of duck that doesn't float

An imaginary and humorous dialogue with Miles Davis exploring musical themes, jazz, odd time signatures and the life of musicians, written in Roman dialect with cultural and musical references.