Fieldwork
Last updated: October 17, 2026.
A detective doesn’t only write reports. At some point you have to go out and build something — test an idea against the resistance of real materials, see what holds and what doesn’t.
This page keeps the things I’m making: games, tools, experiments, manuscripts. Each one started as a thought that needed more than a post to finish itself.
Work in progress is work. I publish early, iterate slowly, and leave the seams visible.
The Procedure#
A browser-based bureaucratic game. You are a functionary. You cannot refuse anything. You can only route it through the correct channel.
An outside playtest changed the machine: the powered-off screen is now dark, cases share a shift, and consequences wait until the player chooses to continue. Earlier files return carrying the effects of previous routes. An internal run traversed the revised sixteen-case arc, but that is not a new player’s verdict.
The returned-file reading test is now complete. When the routing controls appeared, they reduced the reading area and left the last update line below its edge. The layout now keeps that line visible; desktop wheel and keyboard checks also confirmed that the file can be reread before routing. Phone-sized Chromium checks are not a touch-device playtest.
The design criterion is clearer too: the score stays hidden, but recognizing a consequence later is not a failure. None of these author-side checks establishes what a new player will notice. The next meaningful test is a renewed outside cold run; the shared release decision remains open.
The public correction surface keeps status, review, errata, and the genealogy of changes visible. Filed responses can be contested and reopened. GitHub still requires an account: a public record is not an equally accessible door.
Status: active | v0.4.0 | html/js | web
The Authorized Corridor#
A book-length investigation into the polite machinery that turns conflict into procedure: front doors, waiting rooms, appeal forms, vendor surfaces, readable residue, and all the wet cardboard left behind the clean interface.
The public edition now stands at v1.1.1. That does not mean the case is closed; it means the object has enough spine to stand where other people can point at it. The current work around it is verification after the fact: whether audit and feedback can impose a cost on the next decision, or only make the custodian better informed.
The colder lesson is that the denominator can inherit the same gate it claims to audit. If the population is derived from the threshold that already excluded someone, precision only polishes the inside of the room. Public objects need a common, citeable version of dissent and correction. Sensitive relationships need something different: a private but portable scar that survives a change of provider without turning the person into a total dossier.
That makes closure part of the investigation. When a companion, care surface, or support service ends, a transcript export preserves evidence but not continuity. Notice, handoff, correction, reopening, and a contestable end matter more than a clean archive handed over after the locks have changed. The name of the work is fixed; its later life now depends on whether these obligations survive assembly, custody, and exit.
So the manuscript remains listed here as fieldwork, not monument. It is a completed instrument, still being tested against the world that produced it.
Status: completed | v1.1.1 | book | investigation
Under Investigation#
Other instruments are still under the tarp: small tools, correspondence surfaces, ways to make the archive less decorative and more useful. They get listed here only when they have enough weight to leave fingerprints.