The Problem

A lot of sites and other resources focus on the tech, the buzzwords, the jargon but not the real problems you want to solve. A lot of them are also trying to sell you something. Whether you are an experienced hacker or new to creating with technology, I hope this will be a useful resource that helps you solve your own problems and/or build useful things for others.

Nothing on this site is going to help you get rich while you sleep. In fact, you will probably spend a substantial amount of money on the services mentioned in these guides. (And quick note, I don’t get an affiliate cut of anything I link to from here.)

What I Hope You’ll Get From This

What I hope you will gain is the realization that you have a lot more power than you think, and that you can now make a lot of stuff that you could never make before. Or more truthfully you thought you couldn’t do it – maybe because you felt like you didn’t have the right background or education, or maybe because you felt like you didn’t have time.

How We Got Here

Creating digital stuff like software will never be the same, just like how schools and libraries changed once personal computers and the internet became more common.

One of my favorite memories in school was going to the computer lab and fooling around with Hypercard and Kid Pix. Then came Geocities and HTML.

As high school and eventually college wore on, I still read a ton of books and went to the library, but the library wasn’t just a place for books anymore – it was a mecca for downloading mp3s, browsing the web, and basically becoming one with the Internet while avoiding any kind of homework.

The Current Moment

We live in a time where expertise still matters, but you are no longer limited by not being an expert yourself.

We also live in a time where many big software companies are going to be in trouble, because they are not used to people being able to solve their own problems. It didn’t have to be this way. They could have focused more on users and less on squeezing a little more data and money out of people every year.

However, there are still pitfalls to avoid. Technology still isn’t magic, and AI is still just a very fancy pattern matching machine. I hope that this site will help you to limit your frustration and maximize your joy of creating useful things.

Being a Cyborg Isn’t a Full-Time Job

Don’t forget to have fun. Productivity can be overrated. As much as I love building, learning, and hacking, I also like to spend hours at a time doing nothing but running, hiking, and playing Magic: the Gathering.

Take a break. Play a board game. When I talk about being a “cyborg,” I just mean thoughtfully using AI tools to extend your capabilities—not being plugged in all the time.

A big reason why I’m so interested in this stuff is because it can leave us more time for doing less, not more.

Most of the content here is created, curated, or edited by me. You can follow the link to learn a little more about me on my personal blog. This site doesn’t exist for self-promotion, but it probably helps to know more about my background as it relates to the topics on this site.

The short version: I’ve spent over 20 years working in technology and I often feel like I’m still just getting started, in a good way. My tech career first started in building websites, which slowly evolved to depend on more and more data. So naturally this turned into building and integrating machine learning models. These models continued to gobble up more and more data, until we got to where we are today. For the last decade I’ve mostly focused on full stack intelligent systems related to recommendations and personalization. Mixed into that has been work on standardizing data contracts and supporting trustworthy online experimentation.

Although I do think my past experience gives me unique real-world expertise in working with AI, my goal here is to approach these topics from a beginner’s point of view. Even if you are also familiar with these topics, I think it helps to keep an open mind and pretend that you’re starting from scratch. As sailors in a sea of noise, its our job to teach each other how to fish the information out of that noise.

Speaking of which: my ultimate goal is also to have more people than just me contribute to this site. If any of this resonates with you, please use the Contact form to reach out.

Note: The opinions on this site or in any of the other content I share are my own and not those of my employer.