srand.info is my personal knowledge base: a collection of projects, technical notes, lessons learned, experiments, and occasional detours. My career and interests have crossed software, infrastructure, photography, automotive work, and independent media.
The categories will evolve, but the purpose is simple: document what I build, preserve what I learn, and share anything that might be useful or interesting to someone else.
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Archive note, July 2026: This post replaces the earlier proposal-summary article. The full National Geographic proposal now lives on the Invisible Infrastructure project page as the base document for the Data Center category. Invisible Infrastructure should not be treated as a single grant application. The National Geographic proposal gives the project a useful first shape: … Read more
Archive note, June 2026: This post is based on the Markit project brief and early implementation notes. Markit started with a tempting automation idea: take item photos and turn them into marketplace listings. That sounds straightforward until the object is old, unlabeled, damaged, unusual, collectible, or valuable. Then the risk moves from formatting a listing … Read more
Archive note, June 2026: This post is based on Markit image-pipeline and user-manual notes. The glamorous part of Markit is the AI appraisal idea. Take photos of an object, identify what it might be, gather evidence, estimate value, and generate listing drafts for marketplaces. That is the part people notice. The less glamorous part is … Read more
Archive note, June 17, 2026: This post is based on SoCalNomad operational documentation through mid-2026. The longer SoCalNomad ran, the less the interesting work looked like feature development. It looked like operations. That is not a complaint. It is what happens when a project becomes real. Once people and crawlers can reach it, every change … Read more
Archive note, April 2026: This post is based on a mail-posture review for Aztexsystems. Sensitive operational details have been omitted. A suspicious email is not automatically evidence that your mail server was compromised. That sounds obvious, but it is easy to skip the boring investigation step when the message looks alarming. A spoofed display name, … Read more
Archive note, April 2026: This post is based on Model Hub measurement-boundary notes and BDC analytics documentation. Analytics dashboards are very good at encouraging overconfidence. A chart shows visits. A campaign shows clicks. A tracked link shows engagement. It is tempting to keep walking the conclusion forward until the dashboard appears to prove revenue, appointments, … Read more
Archive note, April 2026: This post is based on early digital asset management design notes from the DAM project and Model Hub. Most digital asset management systems want to become the center of the universe. They ingest the files, create database records, manage metadata, expose search, generate previews, and eventually become the only comfortable way … Read more
Archive note, April 2026: This post is based on Model Hub lane-boundary notes for AI-assisted project work. AI tools are easier to use than they are to manage. The first few wins can make the process feel magical. A model drafts code, explains an error, rewrites documentation, or finds a missing assumption. Then the same … Read more
Archive note, April 2026: This post is based on the early Model Hub writing-system notes for turning development sessions into publishable material. Most project work disappears because it was never captured in a useful shape. The decision was made in a chat window. The fix lived in a terminal scrollback. The reason for a tradeoff … Read more
Archive note, March 24, 2026: This post is based on SoCalNomad SEO, sitemap, Cloudflare, and Search Console notes. Google Search Console is not a debugger. It often feels like one because it reports failure. Pages are not indexed. Sitemaps are not read. URLs are discovered but ignored. Phantom 404s accumulate. Structured data is incomplete. Crawled … Read more