Understanding More, Making Life Easier

This is Jacob McGowin's Blog, a brand new site by Jacob McGowin that's just getting started. Things will be up and running here shortly, but you can subscribe in the meantime if you'd like to stay up to date and receive emails when new content is published!

My interests cross several different fields. On any given week, I may be working on a Django application, experimenting with self-hosted software, improving a business process, designing an electronics project, taking photographs, or exploring something related to aviation.

The common thread is a desire to understand how things work—and then use that understanding to make life easier.

Sometimes that means automating a repetitive task. Sometimes it means improving a workflow, documenting a complicated system, repairing something that is not working, or learning a technology before I have an immediate need for it. I enjoy turning confusion into understanding and understanding into something practical.

This blog will serve several purposes:

• Documenting projects while the decisions and lessons are still fresh
• Sharing technical notes that may help someone facing a similar problem
• Exploring ideas before they become finished projects
• Recording mistakes, tradeoffs, and changes in direction
• Creating a long-term record of what I have learned and built

Some posts will be detailed technical guides. Others may be shorter observations, project updates, photography, business lessons, or ideas that I am still working through. I do not expect every post to appeal to every reader, but I hope each one will be useful to someone.

I also do not intend to pretend that every project is polished or every answer is final. Much of the value is in documenting the process: what worked, what failed, what changed, and what I would do differently next time.

The goal is simple: keep learning, build useful things, and leave behind better documentation than I started with.

Thanks for reading.