Everything I've shipped, in one stream.
Essays, projects, experiments, talks — 14 years of trying to do software well, in chronological order. Filter to taste.
2026
45 entriesI built this site with an AI. Here's what that was like.
Two old sites became this one over about a fortnight of conversations with Claude. A field report on the collaboration, the decisions, what worked, what didn't — with the original sites preserved as before/before/after.
Read →md
A markdown editor that doesn't suck. Side-by-side, source-mapped scroll sync, edit local files in place.
Open →stream of connections
Same export, lean lens: dormant ties as inventory waste. Networking as VSM.
Open →connection constellation
Drop your LinkedIn export. Network becomes a side-scroller you jump through.
Open →pipeline garden
Drop CI stages onto a landscape. Fast = buildings, slow = swamps, failing = ravens.
Open →dot's dev pipeline
A fake CI pipeline narrated by Dot the CRM bot, who treats stages as relationships.
Open →speak-your-stack
Speak about your project. The page tags hesitations and EXIFs your delivery.
Open →tui roulette
A terminal frame that swaps identity every keystroke. Same content, three TUIs.
Open →exif confessional
Drop a photo. Personas read your EXIF and write one sentence about your life.
Open →persona pager
The same project, told by five different reviewers from The Guild.
Open →dependency watershed
Drop a package.json. See your deps as a river system. Stale tributaries show.
Open →meeting tide chart
Paste an .ics. Year heatmap of meeting load + the longest focus block per day.
Open →budget topology
Place infra on an isometric grid. Cost, latency, blast radius. Pareto live.
Open →exif ocean
Drop a folder of photos. Scatter them by camera settings. See your unconscious defaults.
Open →latency atlas
Live ping the world from your browser. Map of where the internet is slow today.
Open →persona constellation
20 Guild personas plotted on a 2D grid. Click one to highlight its allies and rivals.
Open →keystroke cartography
Type and watch your keyboard light up. Bigram arcs. Self-portrait of habits.
Open →repo topography
Paste git log --numstat. See your repo as terrain. Peaks where the work is.
Open →polish
Rub the dull plaque to reveal the engraving. Velocity squeaks. 95% earns the ding.
Open →brew
Drag projects into a cauldron. Get a generated potion label and a shareable recipe URL.
Open →settle
Type letters that fall, collide, and settle into a physics pile. Shake to reshuffle.
Open →tune
A horizontal string. Pluck it. Stack chords. Shift to bow. Theme picks the timbre.
Open →knock
Knock a rhythm on the door. The right secret beat opens it. The wrong one says "hm."
Open →scrub
Wipe dust off a CRT terminal to reveal a hidden message from one of the projects.
Open →pour
Tilt the vessel. Letters spill into the catch jar with friction and surface tension.
Open →forge
Hammer the spacebar in rhythm to shape an ASCII ingot into a tool. Off-rhythm cools it.
Open →cat house
Two hundred videos. Seventy-five named cats. Five rooms, five themes that retype the page in front of you.
Open →the loop
A 16-step circular sequencer. Each step blips. Share the groove as a URL.
Open →morpheme
A single huge letter you can stretch, pinch, and torture. Fossilise the casualties.
Open →gravity doodle
Draw a line. Drop a marble. Watch them obey. Flip gravity, shake the page.
Open →fire-tui
Terminal UI for the Firebase + GCP commands you actually use.
Open →mirror room
Move your cursor. Mirrored ghosts trail you across symmetry axes. Save the mandala.
Open →pocket constellation
Click to place stars. Three or more nearby become a constellation. With a name.
Open →cursor garden
A zen sand garden. Drag to rake. Click to drop stones. The sand remembers.
Open →ascii aquarium
A tank that lives in your browser. Fish that remember when you were last here.
Open →typeweather
Whatever you type makes weather. Vowels grow clouds. Capitals throw lightning.
Open →restraint-meter
Drop a CSS file. Get a 0–100 score and a sorted hit-list of what to delete first.
Open →scope-cutter
Type your pitch. Get back 1-week, 1-day, and 1-hour versions. Pick one.
Open →feedback-loop-stopwatch
Click START on save. STOP on signal. See your dev loop as a histogram.
Open →The Network
A contact app, rebuilt from scratch.
Open →commit-message-diff
Strips the "what" out of your commit, leaves only the "why". Watch the signal collapse.
Open →eight clicks counter
Tap once per click. Get a screenshot-shaped receipt indicting the tool.
Open →opinion-slider
A claim. An essay that refuses to pick a side until you do.
Open →side-project graveyard
Paste your repo list. See which side projects are dead. Write the eulogies.
Open →standup-killer
Watch your meeting cost real money in real time. Then ship a decision.
Open →2025
7 entriesThingDB
A database for the stuff in your life. Books, gear, cables, kit.
Open →The Guild
Code review by 53 personas, played as a side-scrolling platformer.
Open →LinkedIn Connections Explorer
Your LinkedIn export, made explorable. 100% local.
Open →Value Stream World
See your process. Feel the waste. Fix the flow.
Open →Gooku
Google Cloud Run + Cloud SQL, but as a keyboard.
Open →Speak
See what you say — and how you're saying it.
Open →Devpipe
Local pipeline runner — CI feedback before you push.
Open →2024
1 entryCI/CD Pipeline Game
Design a CI/CD pipeline. $1000 budget. Make tradeoffs.
Open →2023
1 entryTips for how to use 3 Musketeers to supercharge your Developer Experince
Tips for how to use 3 Musketeers to supercharge your Developer Experince
Read →2022
3 entriesThe Network — v1 (2022)
Coffee-themed prototype. The first attempt before the 2026 rebuild.
Open →Optimizing for a Cloud-native Developer Experience
Optimizing for a cloud-native developer experience
Read →A Well Architected Landing Zone
A Well Architected Landing Zone
Read →2021
10 entriesValue Stream Map (VSM) Visualization
Value Stream Map (VSM) Visualization
Read →How to implement Good Software Delivery in 30 seconds
Good Software Delivery (GSD) is the term we use for the set of practices that help deliver, well, good software. There’s a focus on short…
Read →The great tech debate
The great tech debate
Read →Miro Masterclass
Miro Masterclass
Read →Technical Principals at Contino
Technical Principals at Contino
Read →3 Musketeers for an epic Developer Experience
We all want to reduce toil and improve the developer experience (when starting new applications or joining the team). Developers have had…
Read →AWS 2021 Highlights
AWS updates their services so quickly they literally have thousands of updates each year (1,284 the last time I checked)…
Read →Good Software Delivery — Trust and Verify
I’ve decided this week is Good Software Delivery week! #goodsoftwaredelivery
Read →How Cloud Transformation at Scale can enable Good Software Delivery
Why should you transform?
Read →The Manager README
When I discovered that someone had developed a README for humans my geeky heart was overjoyed. A Manager Readme is your quick reference to…
Read →2020
10 entriesFrom DevOps to Good Software Delivery
From DevOps to Good Software Delivery
Read →From DevOps to Good Software Delivery
From DevOps to Good Software Delivery
Read →Optimizing for Developer Experience in a Cloud Native World
Optimizing for Developer Experience in a Cloud Native World
Read →Creating a Vision
Creating a vision with your team is rewarding and filled with benefits you might not have thought of. Learn how to run a vision workshop!
Read →Principals for (Technical) Principals
Join me on an exploration of all things consulting & leadership and all the fun stuff in-between.
Read →Minimum Viable Thursdays
A monthly live audio show on Good Software Delivery. 2020–2022, archived.
Open →Driving change and building a high-performance DevOps culture
DevOps/Agile & “what execs want”. The “frozen middle”? People with the best of intentions can get it wrong, so what does good look like?
Read →Optimizing for DX — The Developer Experience
How Optimizing for the Developer Experience can change your life as a developer and free you up work on everything that’s awesome.
Read →Why Business Value eats DevOps for breakfast
Business Value, Curiosity & asking “Why” beat DevOps, Agile & “Requirements”. Unlock simple but powerful ways to supercharge your teams.
Read →Teaching DevOps in one afternoon
A non-technical friend of mine approached me wanting to know everything they could about DevOps. He asked if he could have a few hours of…
Read →2019
13 entriesDrew's Manager README
A guide to working with me. What you can expect, what I expect, and how we'll know it's working.
Read →One DevOps Please — Part 2
“One DevOps Please” — Part 1 recap:
Read →New to DevOps? Start here.
Some time after I got my first job “in DevOps” (I was one of those shiny new DevOps Engineers and really excited about the role) I…
Read →One DevOps Please — Part 1
One DevOps Please — An Enterprise Journey to a DevOpsy-Cloud
Read →Automating Google App Engine
Google App Engine is an amazing service. Let me show you how to deploy code into Google Cloud in a few minutes with a few lines of code.
Read →Learning Ansible — The quick way
Are you strapped for time but wanting to learn Ansible? I’ve got your back! I’ve been using Ansible for several years now…
Read →DevOps in 10 minutes with Google App Engine
Okay, now that I have your attention let’s talk about Google App Engine for a minute and how you can achieve your DevOps dreams with a…
Read →The True Cost of Being Cloud-Agnostic
Let’s talk about the real cost of cloud computing, and by that I don’t mean hourly pricing models, network charges, and licencing…
Read →Things I learnt working for an I.T Consultancy
aka Ramblings from a “DevOps Engineer”
Read →Introducing the UOCT
Here’s something you’ve never heard of before (because I just made it up). UOCT is pronounced “You-Oct” and it stands for…
Read →Application Modernization Workshops (Minneapolis, New York and Chicago)
Application Modernization Workshops
Read →A comprehensive guide to “Being Agile”
What does effective communication have to do with Agile, and do I really need that retro? Who makes the rules in this Agile world?
Read →The cost of failure is education
If you’ve ever been responsible for software running in production, you should already be well aware of failure. But how important is it?
Read →2015
2 entriesMelbourne Docker Meeting - Docker Datacenter
Melbourne Docker Meeting - Docker Datacenter
Read →DevOps - Australasian Architecture Network
DevOps - Australasian Architecture Network and Xpand
Read →2013
1 entryIntroducing Puppet to the Enterprise
Introducing Puppet to the Enterprise
Read →2012
1 entryMelbourne Developer Meetup (2013-2015)
Melbourne Developer Meetup
Read →I built this site with an AI. Here's what that was like.
Two old sites became this one over about a fortnight of conversations with Claude. A field report on the collaboration, the decisions, what worked, what didn't — with the original sites preserved as before/before/after.
Recent writing
All 29 pieces →Tips for how to use 3 Musketeers to supercharge your Developer Experince
Tips for how to use 3 Musketeers to supercharge your Developer Experince
reportOptimizing for a Cloud-native Developer Experience
Optimizing for a cloud-native developer experience
essayValue Stream Map (VSM) Visualization
Value Stream Map (VSM) Visualization
essayHow to implement Good Software Delivery in 30 seconds
Good Software Delivery (GSD) is the term we use for the set of practices that help deliver, well, good software. There’s a focus on short…
essay3 Musketeers for an epic Developer Experience
We all want to reduce toil and improve the developer experience (when starting new applications or joining the team). Developers have had…
noteAWS 2021 Highlights
AWS updates their services so quickly they literally have thousands of updates each year (1,284 the last time I checked)…
Good Software Delivery
Eight essays on what shipping software well actually requires — beyond DevOps slogans, into the operating practices.
One DevOps Please — Part 1
3 Musketeers for an epic Developer Experience
One DevOps Please — Part 2
Why Business Value eats DevOps for breakfast
I build small, careful things that change how teams work — tools, experiments, and the occasional ten-page report nobody asked for.
____ ____ _______ __ _ ___ _ ___ _ _ ______ __ | _ \| _ \| ____\ \ / / | |/ / | | |/ _ \| | | | _ \ \ / / | | | | |_) | _| \ \ /\ / / | ' /| |_| | | | | | | | |_) \ V / | |_| | _ <| |___ \ V V / | . \| _ | |_| | |_| | _ < | | |____/|_| \_\_____| \_/\_/ |_|\_\_| |_|\___/ \___/|_| \_\|_|
useful tools · side projects · the occasional rabbit hole
- md A markdown editor that doesn't suck. Side-by-side, source-mapped scroll sync, edit local files in place. tool · 2026
- Devpipe Local pipeline runner — CI feedback before you push. tool · 2025
- The Network A contact app, rebuilt from scratch. website · 2026
- The Guild Code review by 53 personas, played as a side-scrolling platformer. website · 2025
- fire-tui Terminal UI for the Firebase + GCP commands you actually use. tool · 2026
- ThingDB A database for the stuff in your life. Books, gear, cables, kit. website · 2025
- Value Stream World See your process. Feel the waste. Fix the flow. website · 2025
- Gooku Google Cloud Run + Cloud SQL, but as a keyboard. tool · 2025
- LinkedIn Connections Explorer Your LinkedIn export, made explorable. 100% local. website · 2025
- Speak See what you say — and how you're saying it. website · 2025
- CI/CD Pipeline Game Design a CI/CD pipeline. $1000 budget. Make tradeoffs. tool · 2024
- The Network — v1 (2022) Coffee-themed prototype. The first attempt before the 2026 rebuild. website · 2022
- Minimum Viable Thursdays A monthly live audio show on Good Software Delivery. 2020–2022, archived. podcast · 2020
From the field notebook
all 29 essays →I built this site with an AI. Here's what that was like.
Two old sites became this one over about a fortnight of conversations with Claude. A field report on the collaboration, the decisions, what worked, what didn't — with the original sites preserved as before/before/after.
Drew's Manager README
A guide to working with me. What you can expect, what I expect, and how we'll know it's working.
Tips for how to use 3 Musketeers to supercharge your Developer Experince
Tips for how to use 3 Musketeers to supercharge your Developer Experince