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Hi, I’m the person behind this site
I make stuff. Circuits, code, half-finished projects, the occasional small fire. This is where I write about it.
The short version
I’ve got a math degree from The Evergreen State College, a school with no grades where they write you a paragraph instead of a GPA. That tells you something about how I like to learn. Then I spent years trying to break into actuarial science. Passed the P/1 exam. Passed FM/2. Kept knocking on a door that never quite opened.
That’s a whole story, and it’s not a happy little “and then I found my calling” arc. It’s messier than that. I’ll tell it properly in its own post: how I tried to make a living out of math and it didn’t go the way the brochure promised. Short version: I’ve got a master’s in business analytics from the University of Washington now, and a lot of feelings about the gap between “being good at something” and “being let in.”
The Olympia years
In the late 90s I grew up in the Olympia punk scene. Went to shows constantly. Hung out with punks from bands like C Average, Gossip, Thrones. Had my own band called The Icicles where I played keyboard, which is not very punk. I wore a three-piece suit to shows thinking I was punk-adjacent. Turns out, in a room full of people trying to look different, the guy in the suit was actually the different one. I didn’t realize it at the time. I thought I was blending in. I was not blending in.
What this place is
This is a workshop notebook, not a portfolio. You’ll see first attempts and wrong turns. Right now I’m working through Ben Eater’s projects, building a clock circuit and then an actual working processor on breadboards, wire by wire. It’s slow and it’s glorious and I will absolutely show you my mistakes.
You’ll find electronics, retro computing, robots, synths, programming, AI, data science, and math here. Not because I’m an expert in all of it. I’m learning all of it, out loud, where you can watch.
A few things about the vibe
I make things because I find them interesting, not because I’m trying to monetize a hobby. This isn’t a content strategy. There’s no posting schedule. If I don’t have something worth saying, I don’t post. The projects come first. The writing comes when there’s something real to write about.
We’re a little punk about all this. Do it yourself. Don’t wait for permission. Don’t trust anyone who tells you the front door is the only way in.
On AI
I don’t love AI. I think a lot of it is corporate slop dressed up as progress. But it’s here, and pretending otherwise doesn’t help anyone. I use it as a tool where it’s useful, the same way I use a multimeter or a search engine. It doesn’t get credit for my thinking, and it doesn’t replace doing the work yourself.
The one rule of this website
Read the thing, then go do the thing.
That’s it. This site is not here to keep you scrolling. It’s not here to be your new feed. Every post is trying to get you off the internet and into your own hands: building, breaking, thinking with a soldering iron or a pencil instead of a screen. The goal isn’t to keep learning about the thing forever. The goal is to do the thing. Read, close the tab, go make something. If you leave this site to go build, I did my job.
Find me / feed me
🔗 github.com/professor314 (where the code lives)
☕ ko-fi.com/imadestuff (if something here helped you or made you laugh, a coffee keeps me building)