Writing

Personal articles on AI, transformation, leadership, and the craft of getting things done - conceived and written in my own time.

3 min read AI Personal

Nobody watches robot archery

An archer's job is to be a robot, yet nobody would watch a machine do it perfectly. The test for what to automate: does anyone value watching a human do it?

An archer at full draw, bow raised and string anchored, silhouetted against a bright sky.
2 min read AI Personal

We can be human again

When machines take the machine-work, the human-made becomes the premium one. Why the most valuable work of the next decade will carry human fingerprints.

21 min read Personal AI

It started with a muddy stick

How a hand-written scavenger hunt with a muddy stick became Peekabout, the iOS and Android app for parents who want their kids to look up.

Watercolour illustration of a small fox sitting on a woodland path lined with bluebells and ferns under dappled spring light.
13 min read AI Transformation

The Disposable Masterpiece

Why everything I build with AI has an expiry date. The artefact is the vehicle; the understanding of your problem space is the asset that compounds.

Bayeux-tapestry-style triptych of medieval craft scenes. Left panel, ARTIFEX OPVS VETERVM CVSTODIT, shows a carpenter in a workshop guarding his old tools and finished work. Centre panel, MELIORA FERRAMENTA EXPECTANT, shows a robed figure holding a scroll and waiting by an idle forge and scales for better tools to arrive. Right panel, SCIENTIA MANET DVM FERRVM MVTATVR, shows blacksmiths hammering glowing iron at an anvil beside a roaring furnace, knowledge persisting while the iron is reforged. A decorative border of hourglasses, knives, hammers and tongs runs along the bottom.
4 min read Personal AI

The Coffee Link

A teenager downloading freeware in the 1990s wondered who clicked the PayPal coffee links. Twenty-odd years later, I built an app and put one in.

Close-up of the Sunlight app's circular daylight dial: a purple and yellow gradient marking night and day, sunrise, sunset, solar noon and horizon labels around the edge, and '8h 42m daylight today' in the centre.