Writing
Practical thinking on automation, data, and time.
Grounded in real engagements, not generic advice. Plain writing on the processes that eat hours and what to think about before you build anything.
Your AI Thinks You're Brilliant
AI is trained to keep you talking, and the cheapest way to do that is to agree with you. What the research shows, and what to do about it on Monday.
I Built My Mum a Bullshit Detector and Discovered My Real Bug
My parents get a flood of WhatsApp forwards claiming lemon water cures cancer, so I built an AI tool to check them. The build taught me less about AI and more about my own inability to stop adding features.
An Hour Instead of a Day: The Honest Version
My Oura ring said I had a stressful day. My wife's numbers made mine look like a spa retreat. Here is the actual step-by-step of building her a tool with AI, hype removed.
83% Couldn't Quote Their Own Essay
MIT tracked 54 people writing essays with ChatGPT, with Google, and with nothing. The brains of the AI group were measurably quieter, and most of them couldn't quote work they'd finished minutes earlier.
AI Is a Great Pair Programmer and a Terrible Debugger
v0 built my morning routine app in an hour. Then I tried to use it daily and the priorities stopped saving. The honest learnings live in the messy debugging phase, not the magic moment.
The AI Tortoise and the Human Hare
As a kid I refused to believe a tortoise could beat a hare. A study of 666 people on AI reliance and critical thinking suggests my five-year-old self was wrong in a way that now matters.
I Coded My Way Out of Fighting Google Docs at 6 AM
We collect productivity systems like Pokemon cards in the good times and the bad. I built a tiny app to fix one real friction: my clumsy pre-coffee hands losing a fight with a Google doc every morning.
AI Speaks Our Language But Doesn't Think Our Thoughts
A mum on the train asked ChatGPT where to shop for a vacation and it bombed spectacularly. We dismissed whale intelligence for centuries and overrate AI because it talks like us. Both are the same mistake.
ChatGPT Does Not Care How Old You Are
An entire industry has decided that turning 40 makes AI harder to learn. The data and the people who actually use it say otherwise.
Projects That Live and Projects That Just Exist
Christopher Alexander said quality cannot be made, only grown from a seed that already contains it. AI makes the speed problem worse and the slowing-down more valuable.
The Art of Talking to Machines
The real AI skill is not memorising prompt jargon. It is having a useful conversation, and knowing when to stop having it.
The Invisible Colossus of Telecommunications
Nokia suffered one of the worst consumer collapses in corporate history. One-third of the world's mobile data now runs through its equipment.
The 42-Piece Machine in Your Jacket
The zipper took decades to perfect and has not changed since 1917. Two companies now make billions of them a year because almost nobody else can.
The Cutting Edge That Never Dulled
Scissors have not fundamentally changed in 1,500 years. The lever maths behind them is why a 16th-century tailor could use the pair in your drawer.