Ashton's face

Designer, developer, and occasional menace to machinery.

Seattle, WA • rockets • racing • code • art

A bit about me

I chase edges. Flying human-rated rockets from mission control, racing cars wheel to wheel, building games from scratch, working on chords late into the night… I’ve been learning by doing for years, and I still find myself in awe of the things people can create. I want to understand how things work, and make them work better. I write about what I’m learning along the way.

Really just a guy riding trails, writing code on a sunny porch, or wishing he was doing absolutely nothing on a lake somewhere with good company.

Currently into

  • The Pragmatic Programmer

    David Thomas & Andrew Hunt

    I’ve got this on repeat

    Code
  • The Muscle Ladder

    Jeff Nippard

    Bodybuilding made simple

    Life

books worth your time

  • Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!

    Richard Feynman

  • Show Your Work

    Austin Kleon

    Don’t have to read it all to get the message

  • The Pragmatic Programmer

    David Thomas & Andrew Hunt

    Coding is the closest thing I’ve found to magic, ever

  • Clean Code

    Robert C. Martin

  • The Checklist Manifesto

    Atul Gawande

    Read it. Checklists save lives.

Art Books

These books tell you the fundamentals, and challenge you to go out there and just do it.

  • Visual Systems

    Gwendolyn D. Galsworth

    Visual systems are humanity’s hidden architects — powerful, primal, and too often overlooked.

  • Designing Brand Identity, 4th ed.

    Alina Wheeler

    Fundamentals of logos and cohesive branding. Love this book; simply explained.

  • How to See, How to Draw

    Claudia Nice

    You don’t need much more than this. And a lot of “just doing it.”

quotes to live by

  • A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.

    Common saying
  • Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. The goal is to understand the magic.

    paraphrased, Arthur C. Clarke
  • It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great.

    A League of Their Own
  • Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.

    Dwight D. Eisenhower

what I’m building

  • This website

    On version 15 of the stylesheet. It combines my love for design and programming.

    Design
  • Rebellion Card Game

    Single-player card game where you lead a band of rebels against waves of royals, capturing some along the way to a final castle showdown. Each run plays out differently.

    Game
  • 1974 Yamaha DT 360A

    Classic 2-stroke enduro.

    Fun

gear & tools

things i stopped thinking about because they just work

  • Editor

    VS Code

    simple, extensible, works with everything

  • Notes

    Apple Notes

    everything else gets in the way

  • Sketching

    printer paper

    bad idea? crumple it. good idea? grab another sheet

  • Desk

    Jarvis standing desk

    turns out I’m moving around constantly

  • Bottle

    Owala

    i drink twice as much water now b/c the lid is that good

  • Journal

    Paper journal

    writing makes me remember way more than typing