Hi, I’m Daniel. I live about 30 minutes outside of Atlanta in Woodstock, Georgia. No, not that Woodstock. It’s okay if you’ve never heard of it.
I’ve spent the better part of the last decade or so in tech leadership, working at startups and consultancies, leading teams both small and large. The work has given me a front-row seat to how technology gets built, adopted, argued over, and occasionally shipped on time. It probably explains why I have opinions about software. The opinions here are mine alone, not my employer’s, not my colleagues’, etc etc.
This site, Assorted Nerdery, is where those opinions live. And a lot of other things too: links I find interesting, takes I can’t keep to myself, and at least one longer post a month when I can manage it. I’ve been doing some version of this for almost twenty years, which either says something admirable about consistency or something troubling about my relationship with the internet. Possibly both.
Why keep at it? Honestly, I love shouting into the void. Writing here helps me think. It forces me to actually finish a thought rather than let it rattle around half-formed. Not every post is good. I’ve made peace with that. But showing up matters more than waiting for something worth saying.
What I care about
Computers and consumer tech, obviously. Software development. Politics. The open web: RSS, personal sites, the whole unfashionable lot of it.
Music is a big one. I’m an album listener in a playlist world. There’s something about the arc of a full record that a shuffle queue just can’t replicate, and I still believe that.
When I’m not working, I like to be outside. There’s an idea I keep coming back to: work with your mind, rest with your hands. It doesn’t describe me exactly, but I try. Screens and meetings and software problems have a way of filling every available space, and getting out into the world is the best antidote I’ve found.
Comments, mostly welcome
You can follow this site on Mastodon at @blog@danielandrews.com. Following me there is also how you can reply to posts on this site, at least for now. There’s always RSS too, if you’d rather keep the algorithms out of it entirely.