On the side

I'm continuing to build OTLO in the spare moments I have and decided to work towards making it available to others too. I have a holding page up where you can register your interest↗. (If you're not sure what it is, there's a blog post about it.)

Frustratingly my shop is still not live and out in the world. It's been a combo of a lack of time (2026 has been a lot so far), and an annoying EU VAT issue to work out, which I'm still procrastinating about.

On the side

In the run up to the Christmas break, I spent a chunk more time on Otlo, an app I've built for myself to bookmark and organise images, videos and websites. It's proving to be a really effective way to keep track of things I want to remember or reference later, as well as a means to hone my design sensibilities and taste.

I've been adding more involved features, learning what I need as I build it, and I'm afraid I'm finding myself writing a blog post about it. Please accept my sincere apologies in advance.

On the side

Despite plans to get my new print shop online by the end of summer, it's just been a bridge too far to get it live in time and to a standard I'm happy with. But... I’m getting much closer now and will share more as soon as I can.

Thanks for all the sign ups to get notified when it goes live. If you haven't yet, you can add your email to the waitlist↗ and I'll send you a message along with an early bird discount.

On the side

It's taken me a long time to truly realise that 'taste' is possibly the biggest differentiator between a good designer and a great one. In the age of AI, my sense is that this will become increasingly important.

With this in mind, I've been spending a little time with Claude Code↗ and Codex↗ to build my own personal bookmarking tool to help me catalogue and reflect my taste back at myself to see what I learn. And I have to say, that without the distraction and noise of a social graph as with Cosmos, Pinterest, etc, it's really insightful and useful, and also feels way more personal and special.

The added bonus of it running locally is that it feeds an ever-changing, randomised screensaver on my Macbook.

On the side

As mentioned last time, I'm in the process of reviving my online shop where I sell art prints I design. It's going well and will go live a bit later in the summer when I've ironed out a few of the remaining kinks.

If you want to be notified when it goes up, you can add your email to the waitlist↗ and I'll send you a message along with an early bird discount.

On the side

Alongside the 3D printing fun I've been having, I've also made the decision to relaunch my online shop. Thankfully, I've found a way to make it work without it eating up all my time like it did before. As some of you will remember, it was quite a bit of work last time.

I'm currently in the process of designing new prints and getting my online shop back up and running. It's a little way off, but I'll update here when it's ready.

Bluesky↗ is a good place to follow along with this in the meantime, as I'll very likely share any updates there first.

On the side

Any side project time I've had in the last month or so has been spent tinkering with 3D printing. I'm experimenting with printing type and learning about filament and multi-coloured prints in the process.

If you're interested in this you can follow along on Bluesky↗ where I'll be sharing my progress and experiments every now and then. I have a pipe dream of making typographic 3D prints of a high enough quality, and with a strong enough aesthetic that I could then go on to sell. I guess I'm currently in the ’proto-type-ing’ stage or something.

On the side

I'm very excited to have a Bambu Lab A1 Mini↗ on order. Ahead of that arriving, I'm schooling myself in modelling in Shapr3D↗ (great software) and watching lots of Youtube videos about 3D printing.

I've got lots of ideas for things I want to design and print and am hoping the kids will want to get involved too.

On the side

I have a pretty restless appetite for learning new things and am currently digging into SwiftUI and iOS development. A potential new string to my bow for design and prototyping. Having an LLM at hand↗ in my editor these days makes this way easier than it once was.

To learn new things like this I have to set a specific goal. For now, this is building a little dream journal for myself. I had my first lucid dream in the summer (an extremely profound experience) and I'm keen to try to have another. And journaling is known to help encourage that.

Maybe there's a blog post in this one day?

On the side

Finally got my hands on an Ableton Push, after wanting one for many years. It's a thing of beauty, and making tunes on it is a real pleasure, getting me away from the screen and twiddling knobs instead.

I just went for a Push 2 as it's perfectly good enough for someone as inexperienced as me. But I love it.

You can have a listen to a little work-in-progress↗ over on Threads.

On the side

Side project time has been in very short supply lately, but I'm trying to find more time to spend on making music. I want to push beyond making little beats and loops to construct something fuller, more track-like. I've been really enjoying using Splice↗ to help me out with this.

I'm also doing my best to compile the next issue of Converge as it's been a bit neglected of late due to work commitments.

Work

I've been working with applied AI lab, Cognition↗ on some new website updates. Cognition is most notable for their work on AI engineer, Devin↗ for which they've garnered a lot of press and attention.

Things have also ramped up again nicely with Adept as they prepare for some exciting updates in the months ahead.

On the side

I keep a lot of screengrabs and videos of my work as I go. And I've been thinking for a while that it'd be cool to get them off my hard drive and start sharing them here.

So I've made a new 'flow' page with an evolving stream of this stuff. It's a mixture of work-in-progress and things left on the cutting room floor.

Work

No big updates here. My work with Adept is close to wrapping for the time being and I'm still scouring the economic wasteland for new projects.

If you think you might have a project that would be a good fit for us to work on together, I'd love to hear from you.

On the side

I've been developing a little exploratory prototype of a new daily game called Pieces.

After a bit of initial iteration on it, it occurred to me it could be a really nice addition to the NYT Games suite (which I'm a huge fan of), so I've made a skinned version of it for that as a demo. If you're interested, read more about it on my blog.

Work

My work with AI start up, Adept will reach a natural pause soon. Excitingly, this means I now have some availability for a new freelance contract.

If you think you might have something that I'd be suited to, please read on and get in touch.

On the side

I've been editing and sending my newsletter Converge for just over 18 months now. It's an occasional newsletter with a selection of curated, interesting links for creative folks. You can have a poke about over on its dedicated site↗

I'm also playing about with the OpenAI↗ API seeing what I can learn from some prompt engineering. Code as material and all that, see what I discover through making and iterating.

Work

I'm still consulting with Adept↗, mainly helping design and build out their marketing website, but also with prototyping and product design.

And I'm still trucking on this portfolio site, trying my best to get it over the line and live, and am pleased to have finally got it live. Still lots more to do like adding missing projects, better photographs and so on, but feels good to get the core of it done.

On the side

Beyond the little soundtracks I've made for my Loopers animations series, I've not pushed music-making as much as I'd like. Mainly because time. Three kids and all that.

To give myself parameters, my main focus atm is finding nice chord sequences and then pairing those with drum patterns I'm making on the MK3. Moog Model D plugin is giving me good synths too.