JOURNAL / 31 ENTRIES
Things I've learned, things I'm learning, and things I may completely change my mind about later.
Chuck Keith treats networking as something you can build, break and explore rather than memorise. He is one of the reasons I started chasing the CCNA, and a large part of why this site is a workshop rather than a CV.
My grandad left school at fifteen and learned his trade in a workshop. Cabinet maker, carpenter, building inspector, and eventually overseas development work in Botswana, Malawi and Nigeria. Also, a door that apparently didn't fit.
Growing up among aircraft, woods, pillboxes and the remains of another world. An ordinary Berkshire town with an aerodrome underneath it, and a childhood spent climbing into things to find out what they were.
Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally's oral history is funny, candid and occasionally ridiculous. Underneath the jokes, it's a book about finding your person without losing yourself.
Nick Offerman on nature, friendship and conservation, from someone who openly admits he is no authority. You don't need to know everything before you're allowed to care about something.
Woodworking, theatre, comedy, food, failure and a healthy amount of stubbornness. Underneath it all, one simple idea — build a life that is actually yours.
Nick Offerman assembles a room full of gutsy, curious, constructive troublemakers and invites you to pull up a chair. A book about people, not pedestals.
Racing driver, constructor, engineer, problem solver. Three completely different cars, one philosophy: take something good, understand what is holding it back, and make it better.
There is something about the 1950s that has always sung to me. Not the decade itself — their idea of the future, and the confidence that somebody would go and build it.
Some shows you watch and forget. This one became part of the furniture, because it celebrates exactly the sort of people who need to understand things.
Most people found Guy Martin through motorcycles. What's always fascinated me is his curiosity, and his habit of getting stuck in.
Can small businesses escape the template, subscription and sameness trap? An experiment in websites that feel like the business and actually belong to it.
Watching the American Electrician has a dangerous side effect. You start wondering whether there's a beautifully engineered German version of every tool you own.
Following the engineering trail left by my grandpa, Anthony "Tony" Cleveland, from Bristol aero engines and the Olympus era to pipelines, turbo-expanders and a company sign with a daisy on it.
There is a dangerous side effect to watching too much John Malecki. You start looking at your tools differently, and then at the tools you don't own.
I found Nick Offerman through what he does. I keep following him because of how he thinks, and because he shows you don't have to be just one thing.
Some programmes are entertaining. MythBusters quietly changed the way my brain works, and its fingerprints are all over my workshop.
Adam Savage's book isn't really about tools. It's about curiosity, and curiosity is the thread connecting almost everything I do.
Why knowing who to ask can be just as important as knowing the answer.
Twelve months with Precor x Peloton Commercial, a new industry, countless miles and a reminder that engineering is ultimately about people.
Understanding the network behind the technology — and turning "I think this works" into "I know why this works".
Field Service Engineer at Precor, August 2025 to present. Where the mechanical, the digital and the questions about field service itself all meet.
Residential & Crisis Children's Support Worker. No wiring diagram, no error code, and the most important tools I carried were very different ones.
Craigavon TV Service Centre, June to September 2024. Four months of opening the television rather than working around it.
10 years, 4 months. One career that became several.
Account Manager at Chef Direct UK, November 2012 to January 2014. Where I learned that the product is only part of the customer's experience.
Call Centre Representative at Thames Water, May to October 2012. Six months where communication wasn't part of the job — it was the job.
The Ships Photographer, 2011–2012. Six months at sea with a camera, learning that the hardest part of the job was never the camera.
Westcoast Ltd, November 2010 to November 2011. Where I first learned the commercial side, and first started staring at a process thinking there had to be a better way.
How my brain works. Why I disappear down rabbit holes, build tools, simplify complicated information and keep asking whether there is a better way of doing things.
Tesco, September 2008 to November 2010. A rota, a radio, and my first real lesson in what managing people actually means.
Nothing in the notebook matching that yet.
TRY A DIFFERENT FILTER, OR COME BACK WHEN I HAVE BUILT ONE