If someone you love is spending the holidays in another country this year (a sibling on a work posting, a friend who moved, a son or daughter on a gap year), the usual problem shows up around now: international parcels are slow, customs fees land on the recipient, and anythi...
Written by the Puzzlify team. Puzzlify is our product, so read this with that in mind; the second half of the post is ideas that have nothing to do with us.
Every year the same thing happens: the costume took two weekends to make, the kids wore it for three hours, and the pe...
Written by the Puzzlify team. Puzzlify is our product, so read this with that in mind; the second half of the post is ideas that have nothing to do with us.
Anniversaries have a way of sneaking up. You know the date, you meant to plan something, and suddenly it's Thursday an...
Written by the Puzzlify team. Puzzlify is our product, so weigh this accordingly; we've also listed other ideas at the end that have nothing to do with us.
You come home from a trip with a phone full of photos, and within a week they're buried under screenshots and receipts....
Written by the Puzzlify team. Puzzlify is our product, so read this with that in mind; a good part of this post is ideas that have nothing to do with us.
When someone you care about is in hospital, or stuck at home recovering from an operation, the days get long in a very pa...
Written by the Puzzlify team. Puzzlify is our product, so read this with that in mind; a good part of this post is ideas that have nothing to do with us.
Retirement send-offs at work tend to follow a script: a card that goes round the office in an envelope, a collection for ...
Note: This has been cross-posted to my company's blog, in case you think there is some use in sharing with someone in a format that looks more authoritative. Link here.
I strongly believe there are entire companies right now under heavy AI psychosis and it’s impossible to h...
Pre-script: I've got a podcast episode out with Ed Zitron available here.
It has been a year and a half since I quit my job to start a consultancy. It took me years to build up to quitting, and I had not only a chip on my shoulder, but to quote Seth Sentry, “the guac and the...
It’s my last day of writing for the year, so I’m going to try keep this one quick – it was knocked out over three hours, so I hope you can forgive me if it’s a bit clumsier than my usual writing.
For some strange reason, one of the few clear memories I have from growing up i...
I haven’t written anything in four months. This period of prolonged silence is best explained by the unexpected difficulties of the business that I started in 2024, on the assumption that it must be possible to make an ethical, human-centered business on the basis of how inc...
A few days ago, I was presented with an article titled “My AI Skeptic Friends Are All Nuts” by Thomas Ptacek. I thought it was not very good, and didn't give it a second thought. To quote the formidable Baldur Bjarnason:
“I don’t recommend reading it, but you can if you wan...
Note: This is an edited re-post of something I wrote in 2019 on a now-defunct blog, apparently a month before I started my first job in tech. I need to reference it in a future post. As a result, it is a little bit different stylistically from my current writing. I hope you ...
Can't leave rap alone, the game needs me
'Til we grow beards, get weird and disappear
Into the mountains, nothin' but clowns down here
I. Judging A Book By Its Cover
The most treasured object in my home is the cheapest bookshelf I could find. It has been overflowing for ...
The steps in this guide have generated A$1,139,000 in salary (updated 25th September, 2026), measured as the sum of the highest annual salaries friends and readers have reached after following along, where they were willing to attribute their success actions in here. If it w...
I.
A few years ago, I had an annual one-on-one with the Chief Technology Officer of an employer with more than ten thousand staff.
Senior management absolutely fawned over this person — extremely politically savvy, they would say. Amazing at acquiring funding. Really cares a...
I've been absolutely slammed over the last few weeks, between moving to a new house, a large number of readers visiting Melbourne over the holidays and wanting coffee, and doing work for clients at the ol' consultancy. However, writing will pick up again in mid-January, more...
Why do I bother getting angry about software?
When I started writing, it came from a place of ennui — absolute despair at the amount of waste I was seeing in the technology sector since leaving university. I was paid spectacularly well, but nothing I produced had any value. ...
It is 9:59 AM in Melbourne, 9th October, 2024. Sunlight filters through my windows, illuminating swirling motes of dust across my living room. There is a cup of tea in my hand. I take a sip and savor it.
I text the other senior engineer, who unlike me is full-time, on the te...
With the decision to focus on our consultancy full-time in 2025, my time as an employee draws to a close. My attitude has become that of an entomologist observing a strange insect which can miraculously diagnose issues, but only if the diagnosis is "you weren't Agile enough"...
I gave you the chance of aiding me willingly, but you have elected the way of pain!1
Every few weeks, I receive an email or have a conversation that makes me reflect on whether I'm living up to my own ideals.
The emails talk about how refreshing it is to see someone sayin...
Mecatol Rex.
A blasted hellscape, scarred and pitted, haunted by the ghosts of ancient custodians who await the next fools to aspire for lordship over its husk-corpse. A million billion xenos of species innumerable have spilled synth-blood and soul across flagstones that ha...
I. This Escalated Quickly
I mentioned one post ago that this blog has done approximately 2M+ lifetime views, with over a million of them being in the past two weeks in response to the now-infamous rant about AI, then I went out of my way to not write the most maximally viral...
This blog did so many hits last week that the host platform experienced timeouts. I've been invited onto podcasts, and offered both small technical projects and journalism work, of all things. It was a crazy time. But the internet moves on, as it always does, and I am left, ...
Synergy Greg would like to see you in His office,
it is the one down the hall,
past the cubicles and dreary faces,
uplifted only when He deigns to venture forth.
You will know Him when you see Him,
He is the one composed,
of a thousand writhing forms,
of a thousand professio...
The recent innovations in the AI space, most notably those such as GPT-4, obviously have far-reaching implications for society, ranging from the utopian eliminating of drudgery, to the dystopian damage to the livelihood of artists in a capitalist society, to existential thre...
A few weeks ago, friend of the blog Nat Bennett wrote this article on lying to get jobs. It is strongly against lying, and the central thesis is that habitually lying is going to put you into a world where everyone is lying all the time, and every morning you wake up and thi...
Growing up, my friends and I were in the unenviable position of being first language English speakers who were enamored by Western culture. The life of eleven year olds that read Eragon instead of playing football was isolated, to say the least. The main escapes we had in a ...
I.
I turned 30 today.
I've taken a few stabs at this post, and nothing came out feeling right. I wanted to write about Terry Pratchett, the writing process itself, programming, improv theater, career nonsense, direction, and all the other bits in life that warrant reflection...
A few weeks ago, I popped open the Y-Combinator application form and saw that one of the only things they ask for is a story about hacking a non-technical system. Well, I don't really have a reason to beg for money, lacking an unprofitable idea to beeline for an IPO1 with, b...
It is a cold Anzac day in Melbourne, and I am brooding.
I've followed through on my commitment to interview in the tech industry without relying entirely on in-network referrals as I normally do (for a good reason - my network consists largely of the most competent people at...
