About

I grew up in the US, live in the Netherlands, have spent most of adult life in Ukraine and lived in China, Saudi Arabia and Kyrgyzstan for brief stints.

English is my first language, but I speak Russian at home with my wife and cat.

I’m a language nerd. My first career was teaching English as foreign language before switching to content design.

I love books, especially paper ones. I’m always fighting the pull of the screen to spend more time reading higher-quality stuff.

Being typography obsessed is a double edge sword. I notice every incorrect dash, poor font choice and layout fail.

I like older internet tech like RSS and personal blogs but with modern touches like responsive sites, accessibility features and semantic HTML.

I’ve been cycling my whole life, never worn lycra though. I’m not that kind of cyclist.

Design and urban planning fascinate me. Not just bikes, City Beautiful, Living big in a tiny house are my YouTube favs.

I use overly complex note taking systems for personal knowledge management. I still haven’t found The Perfect™ system, but I fiddle with a personalized take on zettelkasten and building a second brain.

Religion, spirituality and philosophy have always interested me, even if I wouldn’t exactly call myself religious. Instead, I’m an avid meditator and enjoy silent retreats.

I respond to emails from strangers on the internet! I enjoy the odd conversation about internet stuff, please write to me.

Somehow I try to reconcile being excited about the latest Apple device with a feigned neo-luddite stance to tech.

Spending hours writing code to automate a task that takes seconds is a good use of a rainy day.

I still haven’t figured out a low-tech way to do an email newsletter, and much prefer RSS anyway. Subscribe to my feed or read about RSS if you’ve never heard of it.

My relationship to social media is meh. LinkedIn for professional stuff, Instagram for cat pictures, Twitter for something that I haven’t figured out yet.

The code for this site is open source, check it out on GitHub if that’s your thing.