From the terrain

Notes from the field.

Raw notes from more than a decade in the digital landscape. What works, what does not, and what I am testing next. No fluff, no recycled advice.

Editorial illustration of a wireframe pinned beside a finished layout with a discarded sheet on the floor while a man studies both

AI slop is a judgement problem, not a tool problem

August 11, 2026

The tool did not make it look cheap. Skipping the taste gate did. My actual process from wireframe to finished site, prompts included, plus one output I rejected.

Editorial illustration of a segmented week bar with task blocks lifting away toward an amber point while a man works at a laptop

What an AI agent actually took off my week

August 4, 2026

AI did not take a job off my week. It took the waiting off. An honest ledger of what moved, what did not, and how I decide what to hand over.

Editorial illustration of a man looking at a steeply falling grey line and a flat amber line on a dark wall

Half my impressions vanished. My clicks did not move.

July 28, 2026

One property I own lost half its Google impressions in a year and the clicks did not move. The real numbers, the queries that vanished, and what I changed because of it.

Illustration of a person at a laptop orchestrating connected AI tool panels with an amber node

From ChatGPT to Claude Code: how my AI stack evolved

July 13, 2026

My honest AI tool history from ChatGPT to Claude Code, why nothing got deprecated, and the guard rails that keep judgement human.

Illustration of a film crew filming a Musang King durian as subscriber numbers rise

The Musang King bet: real stories in a market of pranks

July 11, 2026

How the Musang King Channel grew past 300,000 subscribers with no ad spend: a bet on quality over pranks, real storytelling, and the discipline behind it.

Illustration of two desks pushed together in a small startup office at dawn

Building OpenMinds: a chocolate factory and two tables

July 9, 2026

How OpenMinds grew from two tables in a shared SS15 office and an RM1,500 chocolate client into a Malaysian digital group, and what the journey taught me.

Illustration of a mentor with glasses guiding a small seated team at a whiteboard

What running a team for more than a decade taught me about leading people

July 7, 2026

More than a decade leading creative, digital and technology teams: why alignment beats the org chart, how mentoring grows from the work, and holding the standard.

Illustration of a Malaysian market stall vendor talking with three customers with speech bubbles

AI ad personas that convert

July 4, 2026

Forget “Marketing Mary”. A four-step, evidence-first persona process, with AI doing the research and your judgement doing the selling.

Illustration of a small marketing team at a round table in front of a kanban wall and clock

The AI playbook I would hand a small marketing team

July 2, 2026

A five-step playbook for teams of one to five: which tasks to hand to AI, which to protect, and how to measure whether it’s working.

Illustration of a man with glasses at a desk while papers transform into tidy digital cards

How I use AI in my consultancy

June 30, 2026

No AI-guru hype. A plain account of where AI earns its keep in a real consulting week, and where it stays out.