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LLMs are lineage black holes
Data lineage is important to most organisations, even if they don’t make use of it. Systematically capturing the upstream provenance and downstream consumers of any piece of data is critical to trusting the utility of that data and understanding its impacts, at any scale beyond a handful of excel spreadsheets. The nature of lineage When…
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LLMs as text simulators
I’ve often written here about developing systems that leverage simulation. Simulation combining physical processes, information systems, and crowd behaviours. Simulations that support organisational decision making, customer experiences, and learning. And in late 2025 we were having a moment where more people were starting to describe Large Language Models (LLMs) as simulators of text. Simulation of…
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trippler at Melbourne Python meetup
I recently presented a version of my PyConAU trippler talk at the February 2026 Melbourne Python meetup. I made a few minor updates, such as incorporating the new contingency and multi-destination functionality, and this may have caused me to run a little over time… Running a little over time must have angered whatever deities watch…
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Ignore all previous instructions – Snow Crash cosplay
With an end-of-year party themed Enter the Simulation, I had to cosplay Snow Crash, the book that coined the term “metaverse”. Spolier alert: Neal Stephenson fans and tech nerds may have already put the pieces together from the title. Read on for the explanation or skip ahead to the build notes. The eponymous Snow Crash…
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trippler multi-destination
It’s time for my EV trip planning app trippler to cater to multiple destinations, beyond the beaten track of simple A-to-B trips. This is another feature I decided I needed when planning and driving The Cross to The Cape. Multiple changes I’ve wanted multiple destinations for some time, but recent refactoring of the UI and…
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trippler contingencies
Planning a dawn-to-dusk adventure from snow to surf in an electric vehicle meant not just planning for resilience, to allow for changes to the plan, but also planning for contingencies, to know in advance exactly how to respond to changes. Carnival of carving We lay our scene on the descent from Mount Hotham to Cape…
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Orienteering map training turns 20
A little over 20 years ago, I was introducing my wife and some friends to orienteering in Jindabyne. With my family involved in the Scottish 6 Days since its 1977 inception, I had been orienteering since before I could walk, and reading orienteering maps was second nature to me. Not second nature to the rest…
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trippler at PyConAU
I was thrilled to be back for my second PyCon AU – with a wonderfully diverse and inclusive group of technologists – presenting on trippler in a talk titled An EV Trip Planner for Australia. I got a great feedback, including a suggestion to incorporate the many very Australian BIG things we might encounter on…
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Basketball shot clock human state machine
I’ve only come to basketball as a parent, and in that capacity I often find myself on shot clock duties, as one of the few people who seems to enjoy – or at least tolerate – the shot clock. Perhaps I tolerate – or even enjoy – the shot clock because I imagine myself a…
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trippler for Aotearoa New Zealand
Planning to present my PyCon AU talk to an internal audience at MYOB, I realised the title An EV trip planner for Australia, while entirely appropriate for an Australian conference on Python, wasn’t as inclusive as it could be for the members of a technology organisation encompassing Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. So trippler now…