I write essays and books. I build software and games. I keep bees and skate ramps. These things are more connected than they look. The essays make a case for taking the harder path — in craft, in work, in the things worth not handing off. The current arc is taste, judgment, and craft in the AI era, but the subject is older than AI and will outlast it. The catalog holds forty-seven technical books across two decades plus a bunch of translations. The vault is where the older material lives, including the origin document for everything I’m working on now. For more on the software and games I build, check out Stalefish Labs.

Latest

You're a Bass Player Now

September 9, 2026 · by Michael Morrison

The new mark on this site is traced from a wooden bass bridge Les Paul carved in his home workshop. It reached me through two gifts and one refusal. Nobody charged anybody for any of it.

The Blade and the Rock

September 2, 2026 · by Michael Morrison

I've built mountain bike trails with hand tools and ridden the kind a machine cuts in a day. The difference was never care. It's a four-foot blade that can't ask above-or-below-this-rock.

Note

Nobody at the ramp is keeping score

A GPA works like a golf score: every failure baked into the cumulative, forever. A teacher's essay on cheating and AI sent me back to the skate session, which reads skill a better way.

August 30, 2026

All essays → All notes → The vault →

Becoming Gnarly

Essays on AI, work, and choosing the harder path when it's worth it. New ones by email as they're published.

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From the Vault

ComputerPREP Online Courses

1998

Self-paced JavaBeans and Java courses written for ComputerPREP between 1998 and 2000, built around Learning Guides and hands-on 'Skill Builder' …

From the Builds

Skateboard Mini Ramp

Complete (rebuilt) · 2023

A backyard skateboard mini ramp finished with Ramp Armor, tile, and pool coping — and the year-later teardown and rebuild.