Self-directed · outside employment
Projects & Technical Development
Automation, AI, Software, Data, Self-Hosted Infrastructure, Creative Technology
My professional work has taught me how important good systems, reliable data and well-designed processes are.
Outside of work, I use personal projects to explore technologies and ideas that I would not necessarily encounter in a traditional workplace.
These projects are deliberately varied. Some are practical automation systems, some are creative experiments and others are attempts to understand what modern AI and self-hosted technology can actually do.
Projects
Arkham — A Living Survey
A persistent, interactive Lovecraft-inspired world combining storytelling, simulation, data and web technology.
The project explores how a fictional world can continue to evolve without requiring a traditional game master.
Features
- Persistent investigators
- Real-time world progression
- Dynamic investigations
- Disturbances and environmental events
- Investigator diaries
- Character states and relationships
- Live event feeds
- Historical story archives
- Automated reporting
- Interactive mapping
- Discord integration
- AI-assisted content development
The project has become an exploration of persistent systems, procedural storytelling, user experience and live data.
ATechStudio
My personal technical environment for experimenting with self-hosted services, automation, websites, APIs and infrastructure.
The environment allows me to explore technologies that would otherwise require separate commercial platforms.
Areas
- Raspberry Pi infrastructure
- Linux
- Web applications
- Reverse proxies and secure access
- APIs
- Automation
- Databases
- Monitoring
- Remote administration
- Self-hosted services
AI & Content Automation
I have developed automated content workflows exploring how AI can assist with research, writing, image generation, video production and publishing.
Rather than treating AI as a simple chatbot, these projects explore AI as one component within a larger workflow.
- Input
- Processing
- AI Generation
- Validation
- Asset Creation
- Publishing
- Reporting
This provides practical experience in designing AI workflows, handling failures and creating repeatable production pipelines.
Roll The Dice — Automation
A real-world social media automation project supporting a community board-game café.
The system connects event information, assets and publishing workflows to reduce repetitive administration and improve consistency.
Features
- Event data management
- Automated poster handling
- Google Drive integration
- Social media content preparation
- Event-specific logic
- Date validation
- Exception handling
- Automated workflows
This provides a practical example of applying systems thinking to a small organisation with limited administrative resources.
Self-Hosted Infrastructure
I deliberately maintain an interest in running services myself rather than relying exclusively on managed platforms.
This provides practical experience with what sits underneath the services we normally take for granted.
Areas
- Hardware
- Linux
- Networking
- Storage
- Web services
- Authentication
- Backups
- Monitoring
- Remote access
- Service recovery
The objective is not simply to self-host everything. It is to understand what sits underneath the services we normally take for granted.
Also written up: In-house media services · This site
What these projects develop
Capability built by building.
Technical
- Python
- APIs
- Web technologies
- Databases
- Linux
- Automation
- AI tooling
- Infrastructure
Systems
- Architecture
- Data flow
- Failure handling
- Integration
- Monitoring
- Scalability
- User experience
Creative
- Interactive storytelling
- Visual design
- Content production
- Audio/video
- Game systems
Continuous development
Learning by building something real.
I use personal projects as a practical form of continuous professional development.
Rather than learning technology in isolation, I prefer to learn by building something that has a real purpose.
Projects therefore become experiments:
- Idea
- Prototype
- Failure
- Redesign
- Working System
- Refinement
That process continually expands what I can bring back into my professional work.
Recent timeline
Collected and sorted a large set of community workflow templates to learn patterns from before building my own.
First fully rendered video: a BRCGS audit walkthrough scripted, voiced and rendered by a pipeline, with approval by email.
Moved from n8n Cloud and Google Cloud Run to one self-hosted box. Audited every credential along the way.
The café's event diary becomes a posting, calendar and metrics engine. TikTok posting added through Buffer's GraphQL API.
The story-channel architecture cloned and reskinned, with shared distribution and a rotating schedule.
Persistent town simulation, public archive, Discord integration, podcast, monthly AI content.
Resource-aware production: heavy-job lock, schedulers, health monitor, resource diary.
Self-hosted, with its own analytics backend and n8n reporting.
Connection
Two Sides of the Same Approach
My professional and personal work are different, but they reinforce each other.
My professional experience gives me an understanding of requirements, controls, data quality, compliance and operational reality.
My personal projects allow me to explore automation, AI, software, infrastructure and new technology without the constraints of a production business environment.
Together, they have created a professional profile that sits between operations, compliance, data and technology.
- Compliance
- Data
- Systems
- Automation
- Improvement
- Experimentation
- Technology
- Building
- Testing
- Learning