Here are some things I am working on at the end of 2024.

Professional

  • AgendaScope — a SaaS platform for helping teams to clarify their thinking and priorities and find and fix the misalignments that get in their way. This is kind of a “life’s work” deal as it encompasses a lot of years of building software and helping leadership teams think more clearly. AgendaScope is written in the Elixir programming language and uses the Phoenix LiveView framework. Most of my time is spent with AgendaScope. Most recently building some OpenAI integration to help people write good headlines.

  • Ergo — a parser combinator library, written in Elixir. I really like parser combinators and this was an opportunity to learn more about how they work. It powers Rez and it also powers the demo generator I built for AgendaScope. Once you have a parser combinator library every problem looks like an opportunity to parse things!

  • “Something something strategy” — a book project I’ve been working on, on and off, for about 8 years. I’ve probably written about 30,000 words but I change my mind often about who & what the book is for, and my work develops in different directions changing what I think is important and why. I guess eventually it will appear. Needs a solid years effort to have “a book”. [3/10]

Personal

  • Rez — a language, tool, and runtime for building complex HTML-based Interactive Fiction Games. A bit of a labour of love but I needed an Elixir side-project and this became it. Rez is a declarative language and a playground for ideas I have around building games. One of which I will eventually release. Depend on that. Rez is pretty usable at this point although there are still some rough edges. I’m actually working on them. [8/10]

  • Fleet Commander — an IF game I am building in Rez. You play as an admiral commanding a fleet of starships in a distant sector of space. The core gameplay is about appointing, transferring, and promoting the officers crewing ships and assigning them to missions and seeing how they perform. Still requires a lot of work. [4/10]

  • Rise of the Necromancer — an IF game I am building in Rez. You play as a necromancer assigned by a secret cult to corrupt a city. This was partly inspired by the NeverWinter Nights OC, I wondered if it might be fun to be on the side trying to corrupt and destroy the city of NeverWinter. Still requires a lot of work. [2/10]

  • Kingping — an IF game I am building in Rez. You play as a crime boss where you have to balance your activities across a range of vices: gambling, drugs, protection, extortion, prostitution to make money and take over more of the city. Hire thugs, promote lieutenants, bribe officials, and stay alive. Still requires a lot of work [3/10]

  • Mortem Respublica — a board game about the fall of the Roman Republic. The idea is the players play the factions of the Triumvirate and attempt to gain power over Rome, but their efforts also destabilise Rome. So kind of collective brinksmanship. Very much inspired by my love of the show ‘I Claudius’, I started work on this one about 6-7 years ago and got blocked at some point. Not playable yet. [5/10]

  • Scum & Villainy — a board game about smugglers and bounty hunters in the classic Star Wars era. This was my response to Outer Rim which I think I enjoy more as a premise than the actual gameplay. I got my Dad to laser cut me a board for this one and there are some neat game mechanics. If it ever goes anywhere I will have to ‘rehost’ it off the Star Wars IP to avoid Disney lawyers and drat it if Evil Hat didn’t get there first with the name. Not playable yet. [7/10]

  • Flashing Steel — a board game set in a fantasy Edo Japan where the players are different characters vying to be legendary swordsmen (or swordswomen). Not playable yet. [6/10]

  • Mentat — a macOS app for personal knowledge management. It was almost serviceable before getting derailed by Roam Research. Roam and Mentat are nothing alike but Roam scratched enough of my itch to take the heat out of development. Mentat is written in Objective-C and I am just rusty enough to make picking this one up (and remembering how AutoLayout works) to keep me from finishing it. That said I am very proud of what I managed to achieve so would like it to see the light of day one day. There’s probably about 9 months solid effort between what I had an a working product. This one is essentially moth-balled though, I barely touched it in 2024. [7/10]

I will come back and update this list. Maybe having the list will encourage me to move some of those numbers!