Writing on software, aviation, and life.

My mind is always ahead of the moment. I notice things before I can explain them — patterns, connections, details that don't sit right. Writing is how I bring order to that. Not to share conclusions, but to make the thought sit still long enough to examine it.

The four domains I move through — code, flight, distance, whisky — all demand decisions with incomplete information and refinement without a clear endpoint. They suit the way my mind works. The cost of noticing everything is that you cannot stop. It is useful. It is also, sometimes, exhausting. But it is the only way I know how to be.

The moment I arrive at the airfield, something shifts. The rush drops away. What remains is the preflight — thorough, clockwise, unhurried. Not as formality, but as foundation. On the ground you still have a choice not to go. In the air, you work with what you prepared.

The SportCruiser came my way when a flight school standardised its fleet. The alternatives didn't fit — literally. Together with a few flying friends I bought it. Not a single regret. Flying is the privilege of being above everything that was pulling at you an hour ago, provided you took the time for everything that came before.

I had run marathons before. Many of them. Edinburgh, Hamburg, Valencia, Porto, Budapest — cities I wanted to see on foot. At some point a marathon on a Saturday became a training run. And then, inevitably, further. Ringkøbing became my first real ultra: one hundred kilometres around the Ringkøbing Fjord in Denmark, clockwise.

I knew I would break. At seventy kilometres I thought I was dying. At eighty I have almost no memory. At ninety I stopped thinking entirely. My daughter ran the last ten kilometres beside me. I finished. For days afterwards I walked like an old man — and made plans for the next one.

Whisky is not something you drink. It's something you understand — or try to. For years I've been doing exactly that, handling bottles, reading labels, tasting time. Strongly enough to get married at a distillery in a kilt while it snowed in the Scottish mountains.

Meanwhile I was building software. At some point those two worlds collided. Just after Brexit, with a gap in the market and a codebase I'd already written once, we launched European Whisky Auctions. It has been growing ever since. Two constants, one platform.

My thoughts never stop. I think by writing — composing with words, pulling and pushing until the text has the right rhythm and the thought finally holds. This blog is the extension of that. Not a stage, not a lesson. Just: what I notice when I pay close enough attention.

The four pillars — building software, flying, running ultramarathons, tasting whisky — are all built on the same foundation: deciding under uncertainty, refining without an endpoint. Working and being right are two different things. That gap is what keeps me going.