Articles

Crab bucket Britain

The British instinct to pull people back down, where it comes from, and why I notice it more the closer we get to leaving London.

Four hours

I shipped an MCP server, a REST API, documentation, and 30+ SEO pages in a single evening after work. The cost of testing an idea has collapsed.

The tip of the spear

A chart that reminded me how early we still are, and why I need to keep my eyes open for what to build next.

The tools finally caught up

You don't need Figma to explore ideas. If you have a design system, or even just Tailwind and a sense of direction, code is the fastest prototyping tool you've got.

So why aren't you full stack?

LLMs have made it practical for product-minded engineers to work across the entire stack. The era of staying in your lane is over, especially if you care about outcomes.

Ticket takers vs ticket makers

There's a difference between engineers who pick up the next ticket and engineers who decide what the next ticket should be. Most engineering cultures accidentally reward the wrong one.

The not worth doing pile

I mentioned bad kerning in a heading to Claude and it rewrote the font files. One prompt. I would never have attempted this myself.

That iron in him

What an ang moh from Wales admires about Singapore, what slightly worries him, and why radical pragmatism matters when you're building a life there.

I tried building in public. I'd rather just build.

I gave building in public five months. The scroll trap, the audience mismatch, and why I stopped posting to focus on the work.

Lots of companies have the same problems, this book explains why

John Seddon's book was written about service organisations, but the ideas apply directly to how we build software. Here are the ones that changed how I think about work.

The supplier was blamed for years, turns out it was us

Warehouse staff couldn't hit their targets. Everyone assumed it was a supplier problem. It wasn't. What happened when the engineers actually tried to do the job themselves.

Respecting the Craft: Branding is hard

I've always respected what good branding does. Working in teams, I'd seen it done well. Then I tried it solo and understood a different dimension of how hard it actually is.

Do you have a moment to talk about 35mm film?

I have recently fallen in love with film photography. Let me drone on about nostalgia for the 90s and 00s for 2 - 4 minutes.

Man in mid twenties discovers value of reading

I came to reading late. Mostly non-fiction, mostly filling gaps. Here's what I gravitate towards and why.