About

I'm Michael — a CX/UX researcher by trade, living in the greater Seattle area (careful phrasing, so the west side doesn't come for me).

We're actively looking to move somewhere more rural. The goal is to get more self-sufficient and rely a little less on corporate America — for food, energy, all of it. Until that move happens, I'm running homestead-style experiments around the house, with the intent of scaling them up once we've actually got the land for it.

That homestead work is really one half of a bigger interest: ambient systems — the stuff quietly running in the background, whether it's biological or technological. Biological ambient systems is basically nature: what's living and happening around us. I dig into that through field recordings, part of an ongoing project I call thePuget Sound Atlas. Technological ambient systems is everything else here — garden monitoring and automation, solar and other DIY infrastructure, and whatever AI experiments I'm currently down a rabbit hole with.