Decidedly Optimistic

My Search for Good Ideas

Three altitudes: long essays about where we could go, the projects I’ve built chasing them, and quick thoughts as they pass through.

The long view.

A green, light-filled future city built over water

An Exciting Future

What a better future might look like — and a tentative plan to get there.

Read
An astronaut facing a black hole

My North Star

My goals in life, written down where everyone can hold me to them.

Read

Fun projects I’ve worked on over the years.

Honestly mixed — some are alive and in your hands, some are just sketches — but every one of them taught me something.

Amend iD

One living profile you control. Your people, in circles you choose — family, friends, co-workers — always up to date, because when your life changes you update it once and everyone you trust stays current. Contacts, reimagined around the human being.

Amend iD contacts app running on a phone

Build by Amend

A version-control diagram builder — turn branches, merges, and history into clean, shareable visuals. Build your own, or browse what everyone else is making.

Build by Amend version-control diagram builder on a laptop

Mana’olana

A future city built around hope (mana’olana means exactly that). The most ambitious thing on this list — and the one still ahead.

Visit

Value Maps

A free and open source 3D globe of what the world wants — with real open data.

Visit

Note

A small, fast place to write things down before they escape.

Visit

Good Habits

Light up a star for every day you keep a habit. Free, private (saved in your browser), and open source.

Visit

Ez Pack

A fast packing-estimator for a pack-and-ship counter.

Visit

Amend Advice

A place to ask for — and give — genuinely good advice.

Amend Life

Tools for living a life on purpose, not by accident.

Amend Projects

A home for projects and the people who build them.

Life Calendar

Your whole life on a single page — the weeks you’ve lived and the weeks still ahead. Clarifying. A little terrifying. Mostly motivating.

Write

A focused space for getting the words out.

FireworkZ

Software for fireworks sellers — let customers build their own fireworks show and preview it, online or in-store, before they buy.

Karts Evolved

Mario Kart in real life: electric go-karts rigged with laser-tag guns, plus track pickups — speed boosts, mud traps, targets to hit. I built a demo but never shipped it; someone’s doing a version now — see BattleKart.

Guest Watch

A cheap wearable for Hawaii’s tourism & hospitality industry — your room key, ID, and wallet on your wrist. Order a drink, make a purchase, or rent a jet ski or surfboard without bringing your ID/passport or wallet to the beach.

JARVIS

Voice control for your computer and smart home — a real JARVIS, built on Windows Voice Control at first, before going onto Raspberry Pis. Started by Mike C., and later the team and I grew it past 300k users before I left in 2011.

Living Cemeteries

How we remember people — turning memory into something alive instead of a stone.

Amend Groups

Groups that actually help people coordinate and care for each other.

Old game & software preservation

Keeping the software we grew up with alive, legal, and playable for the next generation.

Passing through.

Jun 2026

Looking for beta testers for Amend iD. If you want to help shape it from the very start — say hi.

Jun 2026

Each project is my attempt to build myself into the type of person who can solve something that actually matters.

Jun 2026

Life is rather hard… but I think we can make it awesome. ;)