Hi there 👋

Welcome!

My name is Ben (which you probably guessed by now), and this is the completely revamped version of my blog. Read on to learn more about the site, about me, my Halloween obsession, and a few other tidbits.

About this site

I've written about this elsewhere on the site, but here's a quick summary in an evergreen location on the site.

Up until late-2016, I was pretty active blogging at this domain, but on a very different looking website. I wrote about tech in general, and specifically about my journey learning new technologies, frameworks, and tools for building software.

(If you're looking for those old posts, I have yet to migrate them here, but I will in the coming weeks.)

My focus was on helping others on similar paths or struggling with the same challenges, and writing about it all in a very thorough but approachable way.

I'm back to do more of that, because I want to inspire, to learn, to challenge myself, to encourage others, to be a teacher and a student, to try, to fail, to succeed, and to do it all in service of hopefully helping someone else to do the same.

From a tech perspective, that means I'll be writing a lot about the AT Protocol (the thing that Bluesky is built on), building for large scale as a solo dev, working with new Node.js frameworks I haven't before, and an tools that support that journey.

But one new thing here will be writing more about my opinions. Opinions on tech in general, yes, but more importantly, how to be better stewards of the internet, and the social, moral, and ethical responsibilities that everyone involved in software should have and uphold.

Having worked in tech for over 25 years, and with computers since I was 6, I've been fortunate to have been around some great open thinkers of computing and the early internet, but am heart-broken by the turn that it has all taken in more recent years.

That's what has got me back into the game as a solo designer/developer. When you see something, do something. More on this elsewhere on the blog in the weeks to come!

About me

I'm a creative/maker/builder person (yes I made the bear in the image above), living with my wife, teenage son, and a malamute/husky mix in the Pacific Northwest.

Privately, I am focused on caring for my family day-to-day and professionally I am working on revitalizing this blog, and a new project (soon TBA).

Words about my career

(I hate self-promotion, hate it)

• Originally I went to school for architecture, then became a digital designer, programmer, product manager, and a zillion other roles in technology.
• I've worked for a lot of early stage startups, big companies, started two of my own (working on a third now), and tried just about everything in between.
  • Some day I will write about that journey, but given that only a half-dozen people would care, it's not really all that pressing right now.
• If you care about that sort of thing, you can check out my LinkedIn
• I've written for several online tech publications, authored a tech book published by Manning, contributed to a few open source projects, and built a handful of tools you may have used
• A big part of me still longs to design and build buildings once again, but my family is not at the right life stage for me to take that big of a leap.

Some non-tech facts about me

(For added clarity and/or confusion)

• Enneagram #5 through and through
• Avid reader (physical books) and language / word lover
• Love all animals; grew up with horses, goats, rabbits, dogs, cats ...
• Vegan since 2013, and working on a recipe collection for y'all soon
• Buddhist practitioner since 2011
• I have another, ancient, hyper-personal blog at A Life Alone that also needs rescuing and updating

And now, fun things!

Well, pictures mostly.

Our dog, Shadow

Halloweek, aka my Christmas

Every October, expect to find me outside doing something like this ...

See also https://www.halloweek2023.com/ and look for the previous year's sites linked there as well.