10 Books That Changed My Life
I’m going to tell you about 10 books that changed my life, which is tricky for me, right now. Most of the books that changed my life are not currently in my possession. My library is in storage in the United States, the last 1000 books I could not bear to part with when we moved to New Zealand, so the interesting part of this exercise is — I have to see what really sticks. In selecting my top 10, I want to scan my eyes lovingly over my bookshelves, [...]
Natural Healing Remedies
As it turns out, working 60 hours a week for 9 months is not good for the body. I developed some startling symptoms recently, right about the same time I resigned from my day job, and decided to go back to running my business full time. To cure my symptoms, I used the natural healing remedies that have worked best for me: Qi GongNutritionBaths and SweatPositive ThinkingLaughter TherapyGratitude PracticesThe Naturopathic Principles The Healing Art of Qi Gong Qi Gong is an ancient Chinese moving meditation, and it has been used [...]
One year in New Zealand
I've been extraordinarily busy over the past year. Today is the one-year anniversary of putting in our 30-day notice on the house we were renting in Portland. Within the past year, the Huntress Clan has: Packed all of our worldly possessions into a storage unit Moved temporarily into my father-in-law's house Planted the Fairy Godmother, a dogwood tree that has the placentas of all three of my children in its roots Separated for 2 months while I came to New Zealand to search for a job Attained a full-time job [...]
10 Daily Tools For Positive Thinking
By nature, I am not a positive thinker. I have to work at it. Positive thinking will not do anything by itself, but as Zig Ziglar said, “Positive thinking will let you do everything better than negative thinking will.” The success or failure of many things you do in life depends on how well you do those things - and if a few simple tricks can put you in a positive frame of mind, it can increase your effectiveness, as well as amplify your enjoyment of life. “We do not [...]
My favourite quote of all time is a misattribution.
When I was a young scholar, my life changed when I read this quote: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” I thought that Aristotle said this. For years, I ended my newsletters with this marvellous line, attributing it to the Ancient Greek philosopher and scientist. For a time, I even titled my newsletter ‘Habits of Excellence.’ I’ve been championing this quote because I admire both the content, and the poetic cadence, of the words. It was this very cadence should have [...]
My First Trip to New Zealand
It all started with LookSee Wellington. This program offered all-expense-paid trips for 100 people working in the Tech industry to come and visit Wellington, the capital of New Zealand. 48,000 people applied. Only 0.2% of those who applied were invited, and I was not one of them. Still, applying for a trip to New Zealand got us thinking about that place. And right now, the country I am in is a mess. We had some family members interested in leaving the US, and since the Huntress Clan has expatriated before, we [...]
Ten Things I Really Miss About Living In Costa Rica
It’s been more than a year since I left tropical paradise, and wrote about the Ten Things I Will Not Miss About Living In Costa Rica. As absence makes the heart grow fonder, now I’m homesick for that wonderful place. Here are the ten things that I miss the most. 1. Wearing Tank Tops All The Time It’s sunny and bright in Costa Rica before 2pm nearly every day of the year. If it happens to be the rainy season, you might get a downpour for a couple of hours [...]
The Breath of the Neutral Mask
Who are we before we become the character? That is the question that the Neutral Mask seeks to answer. "There are three masks: the one we think we are, the one we really are, and the one we have in common." - Jacques Lecoq It has been years since I have studied the deep and subtle foundations of the theatrical art, and returning to its arcane depths has given me a creative revitalization that I desperately needed. Last week I went to a Neutral Mask workshop, taught by Sarah Liane [...]
10 Lessons From 10 Years of Marriage
My wife and I formalized our fairy tale romance and married each other ten years ago, on a Tuesday morning. There was no one else present; we rented a penthouse suite in downtown Portland, dressed in our sacred garb, and at the appointed hour, friends and family around the globe lit the candles we had sent to them, and wished us well as we said our vows to each other in solitude. From that day to this, over the past ten years, I have enjoyed a deep and meaningful connection with [...]
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The 6 Roles of an AI Working Group
An AI Working Group ships projects. Tools are changing faster than humans can keep up. Most teams and organisations are throwing Copilot or Claude licenses to their crew, with a quick 'good luck!' and maybe an inscrutable warning about token counts. Making mistakes can be costly, when you rely on a paycheck. There isn't a structure for risk-taking or innovation with AI in corporate teams, just a lot of dire warnings and vague platitudes. Creating space for this journey [...]
The SAGE Framework turns a repeated task into an AI Agent
The fastest way to build a disappointing AI agent is to begin with a vague, grand ambition. “Handle my marketing for me.” “Run all our customer service.” “Become my chief of staff.” Those are only aspirations, not workflows. An agent cannot reliably operate within a fog bank. A useful agent starts with clear goals: Turn this meeting transcript into decisions, owners, deadlines, and unresolved questions Review incoming enquiries, classify them, draft a response, and escalate the risky ones to [...]
Context Engineering: The Key to Agentic Design
In July 2025, Gartner told AI leaders that “context engineering is in, and prompt engineering is out.” The past year, people on the bleeding edge of AI have been paying attention to framing. 💡 Context engineering prepares everything prior to the prompt. Even the best prompts will fail without the right context. Giving AI backstory and reference material will create a landscape that is suitable to your scenario. But you can’t just give an AI agent infinite data; [...]
Now enrolling for the AI Agent Accelerator
Generative AI makes things for you. Agentic AI does things for you. This distinction, between making and doing, is the next step on the exponential curve of capability. An AI Agent can initiate and execute tasks independently, finding the best way to transition from an initial state to a goal state by using any tools it has available, as often as it is capable of doing. In his excellent primer on AI Agents, Agentic Design Patterns, Antonio Gullí defines [...]
Capture Institutional Knowledge in a Company Brain
The meat computers inside our skulls have a network, when working together on a team. The information stored on this network can be called institutional knowledge. The way the work gets done. When we all come together to do a project, we learn things about the work. That institutional knowledge is what makes our future collaborations smoother, faster, and higher quality. If you fire your human staff, and replace them with agents, you may find that the only people [...]
AEO – Get Recommended by AI with Answer Engine Optimisation
SEO gets your website listed in the directory, but AEO gets your website recommended by the concierge. In the previous decade, when you wanted your website to get found by your target market, you used Search Engine Optimisation to show on the first page of search results. I n the coming decade, people aren't going to Google to ask their questions. They are using LLMs, and AEO - Answer Engine Optimisation - is how people are getting recommended in AI responses. You've probably [...]