About Me

Hey, I'm Carl.

I'm a software engineer living in Sydney, Australia. I grew up in Baguio City in the Philippines - the one city over there where you actually need a jacket - so when people warned me about Sydney winters before I moved, I just shrugged.

I've been building things for the web for over a decade. Web apps, e-commerce systems, a lot of PHP and JavaScript. This site is where I sell some of the tools I've built and write tutorials about the useful stuff I stumble into on real projects. If something took me an afternoon to figure out, there's a good chance it ends up here so it doesn't have to take you one too.

The other half of my life happens at the gym. Most mornings I'm under a barbell before I'm behind a keyboard, and after years of weightlifting and bodybuilding it stopped feeling like a hobby and started feeling like part of the job. I know the stereotype: developers glued to a chair, running on coffee and takeout. Fair - I've met that guy. I've been that guy. But lifting has taught me more about building software than most books have: show up on the days you don't feel like it, add a little weight at a time, and don't expect week one to look like week fifty. That works on a barbell. It works on a codebase too.

So that's the routine: sleep properly, train hard, build things, and try not to take the barbell or the codebase too seriously. It keeps me sane, and I'm convinced it makes me better at both.

If you want to talk about a project, a tutorial, or your squat form, get in touch. I answer everything.