SIDE QUESTS / CURIOSITY-DRIVEN WORK
Useful detours.
Unnecessary problems.
Not every investigation needs a business case. These are puzzles, human problems, family experiments and technical rabbit holes pursued because the question itself is worth following.
Kryptos K4
Cryptanalysis · puzzle solvingA disciplined attack on the final unsolved Kryptos passage: hypotheses, constraints, failures and an evolving browser workbench.
OPEN →A Voice Before Words
Accessible communication · NLPCan personalized pattern learning reduce communication friction while keeping authorship with the person communicating?
OPEN →Steady / 33
Behavior · rational thinkingTurn useful ideas into retrievable skills through deliberate repetitions, reflection and software designed for the difficult moment.
OPEN →DAD OS
Fatherhood · relationshipsA living operating manual for connection, communication, regulation, repair, traditions and memories—without turning family into KPIs.
OPEN →Sprout
Pre-reader learning · autonomyPicture-first, voice-first play for letters, number sense, patterns, listening and the habit of figuring things out—then taking it into the real world.
OPEN →Name Lab
Early learning · tracingProgressively remove tracing assistance until a personally meaningful word moves from guided motion toward recall.
OPEN →Bedtime Story Engine
Stories · branching worldsCollaborative bedtime adventures where choices form a persistent story graph and family mythology.
OPEN →Agentic Maths
Open mathematics · verified computationA verification-first experiment using coding agents, exact solvers and adversarial review against computationally searchable open problems.
OPEN →The rule is simple: follow the interesting question.
The same toolkit can move between cryptography, accessible communication, psychology, fatherhood, children's learning and storytelling. The objective function here is curiosity; the output can be an application, an experiment, a visual investigation, a written field note—or all of them at once.