A place for me to talk about all things that interest me!
Here I mainly talk about engineering, leadership, product, delivery, AI and the occasional side project.
There is also Practice — a small kit for the fortnight, kept separate from the writing.
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16 Sep 2026
Jev: A Better Way to Route AI Tools
I benchmarked TypeSafe AI's Jev model inside PocketRPG to see whether a specialist decision model could route natural-language requests more accurately and efficiently.
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16 Jul 2026
Squad-Based Agentic Workflows: When the Team Costs More Than the Work
Running a squad of AI agents produced my best output ever at fifteen times the cost. What I learned before tearing it out.
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2 Jul 2026
The PocketRPG Helper: Building an AI Chatbot That Never Costs Me a Penny
Building an AI helper for my idle RPG, PocketRPG, that answers players' questions in their own words - and costs me nothing to run.
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27 May 2026
PocketRPG Deepdive
A deep dive into PocketRPG, my browser-based idle RPG that runs on a 600ms tick and costs nothing to host.
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18 Mar 2026
Modern Society: Objectively Great, Subjectively Awful?
A change of pace: why life has never been objectively better, yet so many of us feel subjectively worse.
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18 Mar 2026
Motivation in Engineers
Motivation isn't a task you tick off. Rethinking how engineering managers actually create the conditions for motivated teams.
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17 Mar 2026
Implementing Fuzzy Search with Levenshtein Distance
From a 1965 Soviet error-correction problem to modern string matching - implementing fuzzy search with Levenshtein distance.
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10 Mar 2026
Test Driven Development (TDD) and AI
How test-driven development and AI complement each other, and why writing the test first still matters in an AI-assisted workflow.
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6 Mar 2026
Closing the Feedback Loop
The rhythm of a team, not raw technical ability, defines high performance. Why the feedback loop at the end of every sprint matters most.
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14 Feb 2026
VPNs: The Digital Tunnel You Can't Live Without
What a VPN actually does, why privacy has become a luxury, and how the digital tunnel protects your traffic.
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6 Feb 2026
The Adapter Design Pattern: Making Mismatched Systems Play Nicely
How the Adapter pattern lets clean, modern code work with legacy APIs and third-party systems that refuse to fit your domain.
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16 Nov 2025
Attrition and Mindset
Engineers move on roughly every 16 months. Here's how the right hiring process and mindset turn high attrition from a threat into an advantage.
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13 Aug 2025
Semantic Caching
Cut LLM costs at scale by caching on the intent of a query rather than exact strings - and get consistent answers for free.
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12 Aug 2025
Solving Abbreviations with AI
Business abbreviations cause confusion and waste time. Here's how a small AI tool can decode them and keep everyone aligned.
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9 Aug 2025
MCP Servers
Letting an LLM act directly on your systems is risky. How the Model Context Protocol gives AI safe, auditable access to your tools.
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8 Aug 2025
Retrieval-Augmented Generation
How RAG grounds AI answers in your real documents instead of guesswork - ideal for internal tools and compliance-heavy systems.
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8 Aug 2025
Vector Space and Azure AI Search
A visual tour of vector search and Azure AI Search, where meaning is measured by semantic closeness rather than keywords.
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5 Aug 2025
Initiative and Challenging the Default
Why initiative and the courage to challenge the default are the traits I value most, and how to nurture them in a team.
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5 Aug 2025
AI Empowered Engineering Teams
Why engineers should treat AI as a pair-programming partner rather than an oracle, and how to stay in control while moving faster.
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2 Aug 2025
Empowering Product with AI
Leading a team with no product function for eight months, and how AI helped fill the gap without dropping the ball.
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29 Jul 2025
The Importance of Iterative Development
Iterative development isn't just about building things - it's about building the right things in a way that empowers the team.
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29 Jul 2025
Radical Candour
Building trust through Caring Personally and Challenging Directly - how Radical Candour shapes the way I lead a team.
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29 Jul 2025
Passion and Burnout
The fine line between passion and burnout, and what engineering leaders can do to protect the people on their team.
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29 Jul 2025
Defensive Programming: Building a Fortress in Code
Defensive programming as a team philosophy - building a fortress in code that separates good engineering teams from great ones.
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29 Jul 2025
AI in the Microsoft Ecosystem
A manager's map of the AI landscape - from AI, ML and deep learning fundamentals to how it all fits together in the Microsoft ecosystem.
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19 Jun 2025
My Thoughts on One Piece Flow
Why single-piece focus beats juggling tasks, and how context switching quietly destroys the quality of engineering work.
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28 May 2025
The Daily Scrum
The daily scrum loses its value when it becomes a status update. How to turn it back into real-time collaboration.
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27 May 2025
The Work Request Template
A simple work request template to bring structure to vague stakeholder requirements with a common entry and exit point.
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1 May 2025
The Last 5% Rule
Engineers often hold back the most valuable 5% of a story. How creating safety unlocks the feedback that really matters.
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29 Apr 2025
9 Powerful Tips to Command Any Room
Nine practical tips for commanding any room, building rapport and leaving a lasting impression.
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15 Apr 2025
44 Engineering Management Lessons
A short, punchy field guide for new engineering managers - the skills to pick up and the habits to shed when you move from building software to building teams.
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15 Apr 2025
Project Deadlines
Why fixed deadlines aren't the answer in a high-performing tech team, and what to reach for instead.
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15 Apr 2025
My People
In the end, the people in the team are what make the job. A reflection on what really matters as an engineer and a manager.
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15 Apr 2025
Live in the Present
A reminder to enjoy the present in work and life, rather than endlessly chasing the next promotion, pay rise or milestone.
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15 Apr 2025
Getting Things Done
A practical look at David Allen's Getting Things Done method for organising tasks, reducing stress and staying productive.
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15 Apr 2025
Definition of Ready
The requirements a piece of work should meet before it enters a sprint, so the team starts with clarity instead of guesswork.
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15 Apr 2025
Definition of Done
What it really means for a story to be 'done' - a shared set of conditions that keep sprint quality consistent.
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