Hi, I'm Russell, a writer and programmer.
"That is well said," Candide replied, "but we must cultivate our garden." - Candide, Voltaire (trans. Peter Constantine)
This site is my digital garden. I'm constantly adding to it, but sometimes I update old posts as well.
Favorites
Here are some of my favorite things I've written:
Pattern Language
A guide to some of the concepts I return to a lot.
Folk Mental Models
Exploring how folk mental models develop.
Farmers & Foragers
Two kinds of people that often don't like each other very much.
Calendrical and Cartographic Thinking
Comparing how we think when looking at calendars and maps.
How to Read a Lot
My tips on reading a lot.
A Cancer on Liberalism
On two ideologies of the 20th century
The Bridge
Borgesian short fiction about a creepy bridge.
28 Pieces of Advice for 28
Doling out advice for my 28th birthday.
Cinema as the cathedral of modernity
Are films the modern equivalent of medieval cathedrals?
Modernism as Global Monoculture
Is modernity a single cultural 'package'?
Safari is the Lightest Browser
Explaining why I like Safari (hint: it's the vibes).
Small Things To Make Life Better
Cheap but lovely gifts to give at a surprise white elephant party.
A REPL for Writing
As a writer, should I deliberately practice time-to-feedback?
Writing Compiler
My preferred way of thinking about large language models.
Software Engineers and the Illusion of Explanatory Depth
Are software engineers less vulnerable to this bias?
How many programmers does it take to fix a lightbulb?
Fermi estimation in programming interviews as discipline error.
Strange Things About Melbourne
Interesting things I noticed while vacationing in Melbourne.
Communities of Practice
Why I find it hard to intentionally practice photography.
Region-Based Undos
A concept for better undos
New Absurdism
In which I try to give a name to a new genre I see emerging.
What’s the use of useless questions?
Should we care who wrote the Odyssey?
My Favorite Bookstore Is A Library
Many libraries are willing to buy books for you!
In Which I Wax Nostalgic for My Lost Youth
A navel-gazing quarter-life crisis post.
CV
Professionally, I am a software engineer. I'm on the User Journeys team at Descript and was formerly a product engineer at Asana (see my resume). I have a bachelor's degree in computer science & mathematics from the University of British Columbia. I live in San Francisco with my wife Sherry and our small canine companion Rooibos.
Colophon
This site is built with Astro. It primarily uses the Transitional fonts from Modern Font Stacks. The site is served via Cloudflare Workers. You can see the full source on Github.
Copyright
Unless otherwise specified, all content on this site is licensed under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license.
After an initial flurry of opening hellos, he and Russell — the wonderful girl's brother's name was Russell, a name which to Arthur's mind always suggested burly men with blond mustaches and blow-dried hair who would at the slightest provocation start wearing velvet tuxedos and frilly shirt fronts and would then have to be forcibly restrained from commentating on billiards matches — had quickly discovered they didn't like each other at all.