Coffee I roast myself. Beer and wine I brew in the garage. Food from scratch. Web apps and AI models I build to figure out how they actually work.

After the service years, I got deliberate about making things with my hands and my head. A roast you can repeat. A batch that finishes clean. A tool that helps a real person do a hard thing a little more easily. The through-line is the same: understand something by building it, not just reading about it.

Underneath the crafts is a quiet conviction picked up the hard way, that no one should go through the hard stuff alone. Most of what I build points back at that.

01

The Craft Log

Everything here is something I'm still getting better at.
  • Roasting

    Coffee, from green to cup

    Chasing the sweet spot between first and second crack. Logging every batch, charge temp, development time, taste notes, until the curve is repeatable.

    level
    City
    drop
    9:52
    date
    Apr 22
  • Brewing

    Beer & wine in the garage

    Grain to glass, and fruit to bottle. Hazy IPAs, the odd cold-weather stout, and a blueberry wine from berries I picked myself. Patience is the main ingredient.

    og
    1.084
    now
    1.080
    target
    0.997
  • Kitchen

    DIY food & ferments

    Bread, hot sauce, pickles, the occasional cure. If it can be made from scratch instead of bought, I'd rather learn how, and probably overthink it the first three times.

    starter
    day 40+
    hydration
    75%
    ferment
    wild
  • Software

    Web apps, shipped

    Full-stack side projects, the kind you build because you want the thing to exist. Tools for real people, learned by getting them live instead of just reading docs.

    stack
    TS / node
    deploys
    self-host
    status
    live
  • AI / LLM

    Models, up close

    Running, fine-tuning, and orchestrating language models on my own hardware, to understand them from the inside: not a black box, but something you can take apart.

    runs on
    local GPU
    method
    hands-on
    goal
    understand
02

The Shot Log

Real pulls off my modified GaggiMate espresso machine — pressure, flow & weight, shot by shot.
03

Projects

Things I've built because I wanted them to exist.

  • YANA Ride →

    Live

    Volunteer ride-coordination for the Comox Valley: an interactive stop map and sign-up flow, built so non-technical organizers can run it themselves.

    • React
    • Express
    • Leaflet
    • Self-hosted

  • Rosterkeeper

    Private beta

    Membership, attendance, documents, and communications for small clubs and community organizations, in one place, without a spreadsheet graveyard.

    • TypeScript
    • Next.js
    • Postgres

  • Ally

    In use

    Emergency-management exercise design: scenario decks, master events lists, and simulated participants for tabletop and functional exercises.

    • Next.js
    • Python
    • Local LLMs

  • Self-hosted AI

    Homelab

    An LLM orchestration stack on home GPUs: routing, fine-tuning, and agent workflows, to understand models by running them rather than renting them.

    • llama.cpp
    • Ollama
    • Python

  • Cone

    Self-hosted

    A self-hosted UI-reference library with CLIP semantic search and an MCP bridge, so design inspiration lives in one searchable place instead of scattered screenshots.

    • Next.js
    • Payload
    • pgvector
04

Writing

Notes I'm keeping as I go.
  • Roasting

    A roast curve you can hit twice

    Turning taste into a chart you can repeat: charge temp, first crack, development ratio.

    In progress
  • AI

    Self-hosting LLMs on consumer GPUs

    What it actually takes to run and fine-tune useful models on hardware you own.

    In progress
  • Building

    Tools volunteers can actually run

    Designing software for people who never want to see a terminal, and never should.

    In progress
All writing →
05

You Are Not Alone

The reason behind a lot of it.

Somewhere between the roasts and the code, I got serious about men's mental health, and about building things that help people feel a little less alone.

The crafts on this page aren't just hobbies. Making something with your hands, showing up for a batch, having a reason to talk to another person over a cup or a pint, that's quiet, ordinary medicine. It kept me steady, and I think it can do that for others too.

So I point the building at it: YANA, You Are Not Alone, the software, the volunteering, the small tools that help people reach out before things get heavy.

Say hello

Let's make something.

EmailYANA RideThe Craft Log