Software / Aircraft / Ultramarathons / Accountability
Welcome! You've stumbled onto my corner of the internet where I document what I'm building, what I'm breaking, and what I'm learning from both. I'm Doug—software engineer by profession, aircraft builder by ambition, ultrarunner by choice (questionable as that may be), and chronic documenter of absolutely everything. This site exists because if I don't write it down with a timestamp, future-me will absolutely misremember how it actually went.
Here's the deal with this site: it regenerates completely from scratch every time I update it. New design, different colors, entirely fresh layout—whatever the AI decides looks good that particular day. Right now you're looking at the "Bright Meadow" iteration with soft greens, warm creams, and energetic oranges. Last build was all sunset vibes and coral. Next build? Your guess is as good as mine. Nothing stays static because documentation should reflect that work is always evolving.
NEW IN THIS BUILD: The RV-7 Build Log has proper daily entries now—every rivet, every mistake, every "wait, that's not supposed to bend like that" moment is documented with photos and timestamps. The Tech section has expanded with About This Site explaining the entire AI-powered regeneration system, plus To Do List showing what's actually getting built versus what's aspirational. Email notifications now work (after some debugging)—subscribe below and you'll get notified when new builds deploy.
Building a Van's RV-7 kit aircraft from scratch. Currently working through the empennage—vertical stabilizer and rudder assembly complete, horizontal stabilizer in progress. Every rivet gets photographed, every mistake gets documented with painful honesty, every decision about tools and techniques gets explained. This is the unfiltered reality of amateur aircraft construction: the victories, the setbacks, and the steep learning curve.
Ultramarathon training, strength work, nutrition experiments, and the honest accounting of what actually produces results when you're balancing athletic goals with real life. Race reports from UTA100 and other ultras, training plans that work (and some that spectacularly don't), and the philosophy behind sustainable endurance performance. No inspirational fluff—just data, experience, and lessons learned.
Software engineering, infrastructure automation, system design, and how this website works. Complete transparency about the AI-powered static site generation, Azure hosting, deployment pipelines, and the architectural decisions behind radical regeneration. Implementation details included—no hand-waving about "the magic happens here." If you want to understand how modern static generation with AI assistance actually works, start here.
Long-form writing about problems worth documenting thoroughly. Race reports with real analysis of what went right and wrong. Technical deep-dives into design decisions. Philosophical tangents when the topic demands it. Structured thinking about complex problems, written with clarity and without pretense. UTA 100 experiences, trail philosophy, and whatever else deserves more than a quick blog post.
The catch-all for projects that defy categorization. One-off builds, experimental tools, random prototypes, side quests that seemed perfectly reasonable at 2 AM. Family planners, quick hacks, abandoned experiments that might get resurrected someday. This is where the weird stuff lives—the projects that don't fit neatly into any bucket but were worth building anyway.
Professionally, I'm the Canberra Partner for Vivanti. Our local focus is providing data solutions for Australian Federal Government—great fun! I've got one of the best groups of people working with me, and we're always looking for new talent. If what we do appeals to you, reach out and let's grab a coffee.