Recent writing
Essays, TILs, deep divesGet Lamp
On dark software factories, where they work, where they might not, and a tool we built to explore the gap.
Building Bootc Images from Scratch
The upstream Fedora bootc images ship 523 packages. We built one with 255 using dnf --installroot and a Containerfile. No rpm-ostree, no treefile, no inheritance. It boots, runs containers, manages users, persists journals, upgrades, rolls back, and layers ZFS modules without modification.
Kernel Modules as Multi-Stage Container Builds
A pattern for building ZFS and NVIDIA kernel modules in multi-stage container builds for bootc immutable images. No DKMS, no gcc, no kernel-devel in your production OS.
LLM-Mediated Experimentation
Giving an LLM access to a real test bench transformed a year-old debugging effort. The root cause was not what anyone thought.
AI Harnesses Are For Everyone
A harness is a set of files that turns a stateless AI model into a persistent collaborator. The major labs are racing to move inference closer to your work. This series teaches you to meet them halfway.
Go Architecture for LLM-Maintained Codebases
Structural choices in a Go project built mostly by LLMs — making wrong code fail to compile rather than fail code review.
Projects
Things I've built
Estate · active
Nomograph Labs
Composable tooling for AI to interact with engineering models. Benchmarks to measure AI performance. Exploring the results.
Project · active
Immutable
An open-source estate for building signed, immutable bootc container images with ZFS and NVIDIA kernel module support. CentOS Stream 10 and Fedora 42.
Life
Travel, cycling, food, reading
February 2026
Birthday at the Theater
Alasdair turned three and we threw him a party at the theater — which required splicing together TV episodes, phone-recorded introductions, and Ken Burns effects on Route 66 maps.
September 2016
Iceland and the United Kingdom
Three weeks across Iceland, Scotland, and England. Waterfalls, geothermal lagoons, the best Thai food we've ever eaten, and sneaker waves at Reynisfjara.
September 2016
Travel Planning
How we planned the 2016 Iceland, Scotland, and England trip — flights, logistics, and the pleasure of planning months in advance.
July 2016
Las Vegas
Things to do in Las Vegas that don't involve gambling or sitting poolside — the Hoover Dam, Red Rock Canyon, and the strip from a distance.