FIELD NOTES
Articles & engineering notes.
Architecture, cloud infrastructure, automation, and the experience behind the work.
From the blog
October 13, 2026
Sources I Follow ↗
This is a living list of the sources I return to for ideas, technical depth, practical techniques, and a better understanding of where software and technology are going. It is intentionally broader than a list of …
July 30, 2026
Homeschool Dashboard Business Idea ↗
A quick video sketch exploring how a curriculum progress and living-books dashboard could become a useful product demo.
July 12, 2026
Starting This Blog ↗
Why I’m writing about cloud architecture, SRE, and AI engineering.
July 11, 2026
Purpose-Built AI: A Field Toolkit for Engineering Operations ↗
General-purpose AI assistants have an infinite goal space and no defensible perimeter. The fix: build AI that does one thing, for one domain, with a defined scope.
June 8, 2026
My Current OpenClaw Setup: Practical Local AI Agents with Private Routing ↗
A field report on running two OpenClaw instances — a Raspberry Pi business agent and a Mac mini personal assistant with private iMessage routing.
June 2, 2026
How I'm Getting the Best Results from AI Lately ↗
The most success I’m having with AI lately is using it as a thinking partner, not just a generator — five steps that make the difference.
May 2, 2026
Why I Love Trunk-Based Development ↗
Trunk-based development makes shipping code less stressful and a lot more fun — everyone works in the same place, all the time.
Technical articles & working examples
TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Architecture Studio — C4, ADRs, and Diagrams as Code ↗
The Microsoft Build 2026 refresh positions the Architecture Studio as a practical engineering surface for communicating cloud architecture. The SPA renders an interactive C4 model, lets viewers drill …
TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Agentic Web — Skills, MCP, and the New Operator Loop ↗
Microsoft Build 2026 reframes the agentic web around a practical loop: the user states intent, the agent selects a reusable skill, MCP exposes a trustworthy tool surface, an action is proposed, and th…
TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Azure Policy at Scale — Modify, Audit, Deny, Remediate ↗
The Microsoft Build 2026 refresh frames the SPA as an Azure governance operations dashboard. It shows how a platform team manages 29 active assignments across modify, audit, deny, and DeployIfNotExist…
TECHNICAL ARTICLE
CAF Naming — The Convention That Scales ↗
The Microsoft Build 2026 refresh turns the CAF matcher from a simple puzzle explainer into a governance article about naming that scales. The SPA teaches the same muscle memory platform teams need in …
TECHNICAL ARTICLE
ClojureScript REPL Playground ↗
Live in-browser ClojureScript evaluation powered by SCI (Small Clojure Interpreter). No server is required; code is evaluated locally in the browser, examples are injected into the editor, and Ctrl+En…
TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Cloud Platformer — Navigating Azure Infrastructure ↗
Retro 8-bit game where you collect Azure resource icons across cloud platforms. Under the hood it is a compact ClojureScript canvas game: a single atom holds world state, requestAnimationFrame drives …
TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Copilot-Ops Console — Where AI Meets the Ticket ↗
The Copilot-Ops Console is a portfolio demo of an AI-assisted operations desk where the operator does not ask a chatbot what to do next; they orchestrate a disciplined work system. Six ticket lanes, c…
TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Fabric Capacity Tuner — Size F-SKUs, Tame 430s ↗
Microsoft Fabric capacity sizing is a balancing act between cost, concurrency, and throttling risk. The Fabric Capacity Tuner demo turns that tradeoff into a live model: choose an F-SKU, select the mi…
TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Fabric Medallion Pipeline — Microsoft Build 2026 ↗
This Microsoft Build 2026 refresh explains the SPA as a production-style Microsoft Fabric medallion architecture: raw events or files enter Bronze, PySpark notebooks cleanse and conform them in Silver…
TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Incident Triage: AD, GPO, DNS & SQL/VM ↗
A sub-5-minute incident-response playbook spanning the on-prem identity layer and the VM/SQL Server layer: how to triage a GPO that isn't applying, a hostname resolving to two different IPs, a cross-f…
TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Infrastructure as Code — AVM, OIDC, and Deployment Stacks ↗
Microsoft Build 2026 refresh of the IaC pipeline behind the SPA: a trunk-based GitHub Actions path where Bicep composes Azure Verified Modules, authenticates through OIDC federated identity, deploys w…
TECHNICAL ARTICLE
M365 Administration — JML, Access Packages, and Copilot Governance ↗
The Microsoft Build 2026 refresh turns the M365 administration demo into a governance operating model for the M365 tenant. The SPA shows how Entra lifecycle workflows, access packages, Intune complian…
TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Platform Engineering Console — Self-Service Provisioning ↗
The Microsoft Build 2026 refresh reframes the console as a self-service provisioning surface for Microsoft Fabric workspaces. The SPA demonstrates how an infrastructure team can offer safe paved roads…
TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Pricing & Cost Optimizer — Fabric, AI Foundry, and Commitment Terms ↗
The Microsoft Build 2026 refresh turns the demo into a FinOps planning surface for Azure, Microsoft Fabric, and AI Foundry. The SPA now compares six SKU categories, applies commitment-term discounts p…
TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Real-Time Log Pipeline — Event Hub to Eventhouse KQL ↗
Microsoft Build 2026 portfolio deep dive for a real-time security and application log pipeline. The SPA shows the operational path: emit structured events, buffer them through Azure Event Hubs, route …
TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Space Invaders — Defending Against Misconfigurations ↗
Classic space invaders reskinned with Azure security threats as enemies. The SPA turns governance failures into a readable threat catalog, then implements the game loop with a compact ClojureScript st…
TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Tech Breakout — Smashing Through Azure Services ↗
Brick-breaker where bricks are Azure services and the paddle stands in for a delivery pipeline keeping the platform alive. The implementation is a clean example of small-game physics in ClojureScript:…
TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Workflow Toolkit — File-Driven AI Ops ↗
File-driven operations beat yet another SaaS dashboard because the operator keeps ownership of the truth: tickets, time, follow-ups, approvals, and standup notes are durable markdown files that can be…
TECHNICAL ARTICLE
🌀 Particle Storm — Rust + WASM ↗
JavaScript is fast, but for tight inner loops updating thousands of particles per frame, Rust's zero-cost abstractions and LLVM-optimized WASM output provide measurably smoother animation. The particl…
TECHNICAL ARTICLE
🔮 Raytracer — Rust + WASM ↗
For each pixel, a ray is cast from the camera through the image plane into the scene. The ray tests intersection against every sphere. At the hit point, we compute lighting (diffuse + specular) from t…
TECHNICAL ARTICLE
🚁 Choplifter — Rescue Mission ↗
TL;DR: A homage to the classic 1982 Choplifter by Broderbund. Fly your helicopter into enemy territory, land near buildings to rescue hostages, and fly them back to base — while dodging tanks and jets…
TECHNICAL ARTICLE
🧬 Game of Life — Rust + WASM ↗
Each cell follows four simple rules:…