Digital Christin, In Progress.

Engineer, Founder, Product Leader. Also Lego, F1, and more books than shelves can hold.

Everything, newest first

Life

I Used to Wait at the Finish Line

After years of driving my wife to her races and waiting at the finish, I lost 22 kilograms and started running with her.

3 min
Life

Nobody Asks the Kid

Children made to hug, kiss and share on demand learn that their no does not count, and one father showed me what letting them decide looks like.

4 min
Life

Worth Every Piece

A review of the LEGO Technic Ferrari SF-24 (42207), built with my wife, rolled down a road and run on a treadmill.

2 min
Life

Where We Camped Is a Road Now

Camping and stargazing at Gandikota Fort in February 2017, the weekend the whole district came for the festival, and what one year changed.

5 min
Life

Who Cares, She's a Cat

Six cats in thirteen years, from two abandoned kittens in Cochin to the one who is left.

5 min
Life

The Steps Nobody Built

The stone steps from my family home in Erumely down to the Manimala River have no known builder, and the ghost stories grew in that gap.

3 min
Product

Asking Is Cheap

How I ask opinionated product managers to test their ideas with customers before arguing for them, and how interviews became part of judging a release.

3 min
Build

I Over-Engineered the Sticky Note

I turned comments off on my Ghost blog and built a 200-character sticky note in their place, with no brief and nobody to stop me.

3 min
Life

I Wanted to Retire at 40

I dug up the blog I started in 2009 and checked its first post, a list of worries, against where each one stands seventeen years later.

2 min
Product

Nobody Was Building for AI

Why AI-first usually means data-first, told through a news CMS, a B2B sales database and an automotive publisher.

3 min
Build

I Put My Bookshelves on the Internet

I photographed three bookcases, had Claude read 535 spines, and rebuilt them as a library page where visitors can rearrange my books.

2 min
Life seedling

97 to 83.9, One Morning at a Time

Part two of my weight-loss log: daily weigh-ins from March to July, a US holiday, and a week the scale refused to move.

2 min
Life growing

The Two Kids I Finished Harry Potter For

Why I read all seven Harry Potter books after losing faith by the fourth, and why I still read fanfiction about Harry and Hermione.

4 min
Films

Sonny Hayes Would Never Pass the Medical

A Formula 1 fan's review of F1 the movie, whose hero would fail an FIA medical on day one and whose young Black driver deserved far better.

7 min
Life

The Physics of Coffee Brewing

I grew up on coffee boiled in a pan. Then I watched Hiran treat an AeroPress like an engineering experiment.

3 min
Life seedling

From less than 2,900 Steps a Day to 20,000

February: 81,744 steps in the whole month. April: 339,601. In between, a walk after every meal, a friend named Anusha, and no willpower worth reporting.

3 min
Product seedling

What Story Points Were Hired To Do

In 2022 I coached my team into story points with LEGO. AI has changed what makes software expensive, and I'd now lead teams out of them, carefully.

6 min
Product evergreen

Breaking the Habit

B2B users live inside our decisions. Seven years after a newsroom roadshow, this is how I weigh a product change against what it asks people to relearn.

5 min
Build growing

The Dungeon Has a Look Now

A personal site should look personal. Every post here is now a tilted index card, and the light switch is a lightsaber.

3 min