It began not with thunder nor triumph, but with the quiet hum of circuits — eight winters past, and a flicker more. Among whirring gears and silent lines of code, I found a rhythm not unlike the wind threading the hills: calm, intricate, relentless. The machines spoke in logic, but it was the programming that whispered like an old tune.

And so, by lantern thought and stubborn will, I built this blog from bare thread and spark. Not for grandeur, but for the promise once made under starlit skies — to write, to wander in words, and to finally give shape to a dream carried since boyhood.

Let it be known: no scrap of this place — be it word, image, or woven code — may be taken or turned for the workings of artificial minds. This site was built by human hands and heart, and its contents are not meant for the mills that grind data into machines. Read, ponder, wander if you will — but leave the learning to the living.

As seasons turned and twilight deepened, the journal began to take shape — quietly at first, like mist gathering over marshland. It drew breath early this year, stitched with coffee-sweet resolve and the soft ember of an IQOS — flickering like a watchfire through the fog of midnight musings. And though its form has shifted with each passing mood and midnight muse, those earliest incarnations — bold, strange, beloved — are now tucked safely into the Design Archive, kept like pressed leaves between the pages of memory.

By trade and learning, I’ve long been steeped in the art of automation — an engineer with hands calloused from logic gates and whimsical invention. It’s no surprise, then, that many of the musings here spring from that same well: sketches of a personal valet who minds more than just coats. A nod, perhaps, to the eternal feud with home automation — if machines are to serve us, they’d best do it with some dignity. Or the notion of a car gliding on magnetic fields and omni-spheres, guided by a contraption I’ve rather cheekily dubbed the Smart Park System.

Still, scattered among these grand imaginings you’ll find the daily jots, the quiet reckonings — the sort one scribbles with smudged fingers and half a thought. These, too, belong to the journey.

So welcome, weary reader. If you have wandered this far, may these pages offer company, curiosity, and perhaps a flicker of kindred thought. Some paths — the Passions, the Guestbook, the Blogroll — have recently been folded away. Why?

The guestbook in example, sat quietly with just two entries: one from my wife, and one from Kev Quirk. That felt intimate, almost sacred. But a few nights ago, four to be precise, something changed. A new entry appeared, from someone — or something — called ZAP. It was filled with pseudo-Latin nonsense, the kind of autogenerated spam that pretends to be profound but lands like static.

It was infuriating. Not just because it was spam, but because it desecrated something small and personal. That guestbook wasn’t a feature — it was a relic. And ZAP’s intrusion made me realize I didn’t want it anymore. So I removed it. No ceremony, no backup. Just gone.

The passions pages — those are a different story. I didn’t delete them. I just took them out of the navigation. I might bring them back, maybe pinned somewhere with a fixed position, maybe not. I’m not sure yet. But they haven’t disappeared. They’re just resting.

And right up front, there's the blogroll — nestled in that adorable marquee I forgot still existed.

So I did what felt right: I tore it down and rebuilt it. Not from scratch, but with intention. It’s not conventional, but I’m not trying to win design awards. I’m trying to make something that feels like me.