Who Am I

I watch systems, not surfaces. I look for the pattern underneath the pattern. That instinct has kept me ahead of structural shifts - the internet (1995), experiential education (2011), decentralized finance and economics (2012), and now AI.

What I bring to custom software development: pattern recognition, technical depth, and the judgment to know what matters.

"I don't build things that need a team to maintain. I don't take projects where the client can't tell me what's broken."

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The Through-Line

In 2005, I started building websites and apps when most businesses still thought the internet was a brochure. In 2011, I opened a cookery school in the UK — experiential learning, hands-on skill transfer, the kind of thing that's now called "embodied education" by people who discovered it last year. By 2015, I was deep in decentralized finance — not as a speculator, but as someone fascinated by trustless systems, decentralised security, and what happens when you remove middlemen from money.

Each time, I wasn't chasing trends. I was following a thread that made sense to me before it made sense to the market.

The same thing happened with AI.

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Twenty Years of Thinking About Thinking

My degree was in computer science, but not the kind most people imagine. I specialised in artificial intelligence, bioinformatics, and nature-inspired computing — genetic algorithms, swarm intelligence, systems that learn by mimicking biology.

This was the early 2000s. AI wasn't a consumer product. It was an academic curiosity. And one of the questions that hooked me then still drives my work now: how do we think about our own thinking?

That question has a name — metacognition. It's the ability to observe your own cognitive process, to notice when you're stuck, biased, or outsourcing your judgment to something else. It's rare. Most people don't have it. And AI is exposing that gap on a massive scale.

I've been studying this for twenty years. Long before ChatGPT made everyone suddenly interested in "how to use AI properly."

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Building Things, Breaking Assumptions

I helped co-found an architecture studio that has been running for more than 15 years. I wasn't the architect — I helped build the systems, find clients, produce and manage photography and video, and most importantly, watched what happened when creativity met regulation.

What I saw was sobering. Old buildings have charm because they were built by people responding to place, climate, materials, and human scale. New buildings often fake that charm — stuck-on shutters, decorative mouldings that serve no purpose, "character" as a checkbox. The regulations that were meant to protect quality became a straitjacket that killed vernacular intelligence.

That tension — between real knowledge and performative compliance — shows up everywhere once you see it. In business. In education. In spirituality. In how people use AI.

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Cross-Domain Learning

I also spent time teaching survival skills. I know how to make fire - not with a lighter, but with friction, preparation, and patience. There's a psychological confidence that comes from actual competence. When you know you can solve problems with what's in front of you, you think differently.

I play music, learned carpentry, photography, video and image creation and editing, music production - first on analog equipment, then digital when computers arrived. I know how to physically cut tape and how to build apps that cut digital tape. I learned cross-domain thinking through music, photography, video, cooking, and architecture. They all share similar fundamental concepts.

This matters more than most people realize. We've outsourced so much fundamental knowledge that we've forgotten what genuine capability feels like. AI is accelerating that outsourcing. Most people don't even notice it happening.

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Seeing Through Systems

I've spent years studying things that aren't supposed to go together: philosophy, psychology, mythology, political systems, economics, spiritual traditions. What I found is that they do go together — they're all attempts to encode pattern, meaning, and navigation through uncertainty.

Most of what passes for insight in these fields is recycled. The same structures appear in myth after myth, culture after culture. The same psychological traps repeat across generations. The same corruptions infect every institution that grows past a certain size.

Once you see the underlying architecture, you can't unsee it. And you start to notice when someone is selling you a surface without the structure.

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What I Do Now

I build custom AI-powered software for businesses. Not generic apps. Not prompt engineering tutorials. Actual products that replace multiple subscriptions and solve specific problems that off-the-shelf tools can't touch.

The market is drowning in generic AI apps and people who just copy-paste code from ChatGPT without understanding what they've built. I wrote about this problem here — why the next wave isn't more apps, it's better ones.

My approach is different. I combine domain expertise with technical competence and twenty years of learning to watch my own thinking. That means I can evaluate AI output, spot when it's wrong, and know when to override it. Most people can't. They outsource their judgment to the machine and call it innovation.

The bottleneck isn't the tool. It's the person using it.

If you can't observe your own reasoning, you can't evaluate AI output. If you don't know what good looks like in your field, you'll accept mediocre. If you've never built real competence — with your hands or your mind — you won't notice when the machine is doing your thinking for you.

I build tools for people who understand their craft and need a technical bridge. Custom solutions that do exactly what you need, nothing you don't, and cost less than you think because AI has collapsed the economics of bespoke software.

Not more apps. Better ones.

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What's Coming

I'm learning how AI fits into current human evolution - the acceleration and its effect on humanity. I've decided to ride this particular wave and see where it takes me. It's new, exciting, and slightly dangerous. I like that.

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The Short Version

I've been building businesses since 2005, studying AI and metacognition since my degree, practising real-world skills for three decades, and paying attention to patterns most people miss.

I don't teach AI usage. I don't sell prompts. I build custom software that solves real problems — combining technical expertise, domain knowledge, and the judgment to know when AI is helping and when it's getting in the way.

Now I help others do the same — with AI as the multiplier, not the replacement. Clear thinking. Real competence. Non-generic solutions.

If that resonates, we should talk.

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