Blog

Tolkien Would Hate This 17 August 2026 Every so often a comment appears under one of my videos saying some version of the same thing: Tolkien would hate this. He despised machines. He wrote an entire mythology against them. And here I am, ... The Middle-earth Vault 29 July 2026 In June 2023, Wizards of the Coast printed Middle-earth into Magic: The Gathering. A full set built from the trilogy - more than 850 printings, serialized rarities written in Tolkien's own scripts, an... How I Built the Atlas of Arda 30 April 2026 Tolkien's geography is interesting. The way the world physically reshapes itself across the ages, the way continents drown, whole ages have no Sun, the flat world becomes a sphere. So at some point I ... Before the Hobbit, There Was Bombadil 25 March 2026 In February 1934, a poem appeared in the Oxford Magazine. It opened like this: Old Tom Bombadil was a merry fellow; bright blue his jacket was and his boots were yellow, green were his girdle and his ... Why Would He Spend All That Money? 17 January 2026 I was watching the new Avatar documentary with my son, Fire and Water: Making the Avatar Films, and he looked over at me and said, "Wait, Dad. Why would he spend all that money if you can just do it w... On Slop 15 January 2026 Someone commented on one of my videos: "This is AI slop." That comment stuck with me. Not because I think they're right—I don't—but because I've been thinking about what "slop" actually means. And I d... Why It Feels Like Working With a Person 8 January 2026 I've been building a system to produce Tolkien lore content - YouTube videos, shorts, a website. The technical details are elsewhere on this site. What I want to talk about is something harder to expl... Three Kinds of Learning 4 January 2026 Most AI systems don't learn. They execute. You give them instructions, they follow them. You get output. I've been building a YouTube channel production system—an autonomous pipeline that researches t... The Craft Behind the Curtain: Reflections on AI, Creativity, and Building Something Personal 31 December 2025 I've been thinking a lot about what this project means to me - and about whether people will accept "AI generated" content. I built a system for creating Tolkien lore content in a style I specifically... From $100/Month AWS to Free: Building a Custom Website in an Afternoon 29 December 2025 For months, my analytics agents have been nudging me about the same thing: "You need a web presence beyond YouTube." They weren't wrong. Better SEO, a place to host supplementary content like infograp... Late Night Automation: Building the Tools I Kept Asking For 28 December 2025 Sometimes the best improvements come from noticing what you keep doing manually. This session started with me questioning whether my "programs" system - separate content pools for character shorts, bu... Welcome to Ranger of the Realms 26 December 2025 Welcome to the Ranger of the Realms website - your companion for exploring the depths of Tolkien's legendarium. What You'll Find Here This site serves as a home for our deep dives into Middle-earth's ...