More about my love of wood

From an early age, I have loved the way miniatures can depict another world. Later in life, I discovered the remarkable nature of wood.

Constrained by a small amount of indoor space (and the English weather), my workspace is often no larger than a sheet of paper.

The objects I create vary–from toys, to sculptures, to musical instruments–but each type of woodworking informs the others. They also all have in common my enduring interest in making something that has both a practical origin, and an aesthetic delight.

I started playing D&D with my father at the age of ten. He was an imaginative storyteller, inventing fantastic tales to entertain us on long car journeys. He always took requests.

Dad taught me a lot about being spontaneous, and this is one of the aspects of role-playing games I enjoy the most.

I live-stream D&D adventures with friends, publish books, and make YouTube videos at The Spontaneous Dungeon Master.

Visit my D&D website

More about my ukuleles

I picked up my four-year-old nephew’s ukulele one Christmas, and couldn’t put it down. It is an instrument that makes it easy to start making music, but hard to take too seriously. I love its playability, versatility, and sweet sound.

One thing led to another, and I started not only playing ukulele in a variety of styles, but making ukuleles as well.

From an early age, I have been interested in how computers can help us make art. As a teenager, I wrote music with the help of computers, and one of my first programming projects at university was a haiku generator.

More recently, I have been interested in how computer analysis can help us understand everything from what makes a poem interesting to what makes a D&D monster hard to fight.

I also started some initiatives to support greater interest in the arts, including the Transatlantic Poetry reading series and the Poet Tips crowd-sourced recommendations website.

I started making electronic games in the ’80s using HyperCard. These days, I am interested in the unique challenges and opportunities presented by designing games for mobile devices.

My aim is to create games that are fun, pure and simple.