A Surprisingly Small Change
852 words, ~3 min read
In the very early days of megabus, with the database server under heavy load, and the primary bottleneck, I’d …
Hi, and welcome. I’ve been writing here since 2007 - a cross-section of my life and my interests. The most recent thread is kraya , a company I built and ran for 15 years.
There are also posts about triangle , a game I am building on zig .
You can also find poems and short stories if that’s what you’re into.
drone-ah is dead! long live hereticles!
511 words, ~2 min read
My search for identity has been long and arduous. I have been many things, and I have been nothing. I have been …
What's a Circuit Breaker?
652 words, ~2 min read
I’d not been interviewed very often. For my first job, sure, I sent around my CV to a bunch of places and did a …
Holding the Fort
585 words, ~2 min read
For many years, I loved my job. I was working on a production system that saw tens of thousands of orders across the …
I Chose to Keep Going
894 words, ~3 min read
In 2008, we all watched Pivotal crash and burn. They’d taken a year and nearly £900k to build a new ticketing …
Always On
585 words, ~2 min read
I knew as soon as my phone rang what it was about.
It was the same every time. I would drag myself up to answer the …
Did They Have a Problem That Year?
1,015 words, ~4 min read
2008 was a heck of a year for kraya, and for me. We were already operating megabus.com in the UK, USA, and Canada, along …
What we Carried
865 words, ~3 min read
I started my company in 2000. I was 18. I built megabus.com in 2003. I was 21.
It started off small, and little by …
Whatcha Thinking?
1,263 words, ~5 min read
I loved working on megabus. I was in love with it. My girlfriend at the time had a habit of asking what I was thinking …
Priced In
212 words, ~0 min read
Two ticketing systems. Same client. Same payment provider. We were moving fast — that was the explicit choice, theirs …