YEARS WEB DEV
20yrs
ONLINE · OPEN FOR FREELANCE BUILDS// BUILDING IN PUBLIC
$ whoami → captain-randomI BUILDRANDOMTHINGSon purpose,
in public.
Hi — I'm Captain Random. I build production software, weird little experiments, and document all of it honestly. This site is the public part: real projects, real workflows, real evaluations of the tools I use.
// WHAT THIS SITE IS ACTUALLY FORWhat I build,
What I build,
and why I'm still
excited about it.
AGENTIC AI & ARCHITECTURE
Building when code generation is free. How I architect agentic-first systems, what works in practice, what doesn't.
01RETAIL & HOSPITALITY OPS
23 years inside UK enterprise retail and hospitality. Real workflows, real failure points, real software-meets-floor knowledge.
02AI TOOL EVALS
Honest, practical assessments of Claude Code, Archon, and whatever else I'm shipping with. Includes what didn't work.
03CREATIVE AI
Music (Suno workflow), generative art, video. A hobby that produces real output, documented as it goes.
04BUILD IN PUBLIC
Projects from idea to implementation. The process is the point — failures included.
05LEARNING LOG
What I'm currently studying, how far through it I am, and whether it was worth the time.
06Recent writing.
Build LogAI Tools
#01Ten AI-prose tells, one shell script, no more guessing
The em-dash density in my own published articles was running at four times the normal rate for edited prose. That was a measurable problem. So I made it measurable: codified ten AI-prose tells into STYLE-GUIDE.md and a pre-publish shell audit that catches them mechanically.
Read post→
SecurityBuild Log
#02The backtick that could run anything: hardening AppleScript shell escaping
A Sprint 2.11 review flagged a shell command-substitution gap in a single Python helper. Backticks and dollar signs were passing through unescaped into a double-quoted `do script` string, meaning a crafted issue title could execute arbitrary code. The fix was four lines. Understanding why it mattered took longer.
Read post→
Build LogDevOps
#03Two assumptions the pipeline held until it shipped
B8b's first end-to-end Telegram ship-tap exposed two bugs that had been invisible in every prior test. Neither was logic. Both were assumptions the pipeline had been making silently since the day the code was written.
Read post→
Workshop.
Foundational stack · top 81,160,653 XP · as of 2026-05-29
#1 / 8LVL 71
TYPESCRIPT
Staff · 2,071 Commits508,378 XP
30% to LVL 7210,022 XP
#2 / 8LVL 58
PYTHON
Staff · 825 Commits343,470 XP
60% to LVL 594,630 XP
#3 / 8LVL 42
JAVASCRIPT
Senior · 188 Commits183,053 XP
78% to LVL 431,847 XP
#4 / 8LVL 27
PHP
Mid · 103 Commits76,091 XP
58% to LVL 282,309 XP
#5 / 8LVL 15
SHELL
Junior · 71 Commits25,371 XP
93% to LVL 16229 XP
#6 / 8LVL 12
MDX
Junior · 67 Commits16,385 XP
79% to LVL 13515 XP
#7 / 8LVL 7
SWIFT
Junior · 9 Commits6,243 XP
90% to LVL 8157 XP
#8 / 8LVL 4
POSTGRESQL
Apprentice · 4 Commits1,662 XP
7% to LVL 5838 XP
Build log.
In your inbox.
New posts, project updates, and honest tool reviews — roughly every two weeks. No marketing. No sponsorships. Just what I actually built and learned.