About Strange Parts

You know the thrill of walking down a back alley in hopes you might find something amazing?

I fucking live for that.

It’s that same thrill that comes from taking apart a gadget just to see what’s inside and how it works. What is it capable of?

I love the quest for the unknown and the undiscovered.

I’ve always been an adventurer, maker, and hacker. From riding a $120 bike through Laos and Cambodia, to building and racing land yachts, to planting coral underwater in Borneo, I’ve always sought out the weird, wonderful, and out-of-the-way thing to do.

I used to be a software engineer in Silicon Valley, at places like Google and a few other prominent startups. I even started my own. But now I travel the world full time, seeking out the novel and the obscure.

Shenzhen, China is my new obsession. I’ve been spending a ton of time here in the past year and a half. I feel like I’m just starting to scratch the surface. It’s been called the workshop and factory of the world. There is so much to discover tucked away in corners of industrial markets and down back alleys.

But I realized there’s amazing places like this all over the world. Places where smart people are bending technology to their needs and will, as well as those of the ever-hungry global economy. And entire cities, communities and cultures are changing dramatically.

I love telling stories about the adventures I’ve had and all the interesting things I’ve learned along the way. I wanted to get more serious about it. I wanted an excuse to dive deeper than I ever have before – to start answering some of the burning unanswered questions I’ve run across. So I started Strange Parts.

Strange Parts is:

• An exploration of every back alley, industrial market, and tiny workshop I can find.
• Stories that dive deep beneath the surface of technology and the world around us.
• An investigation into stuff that’s not quite correct. It’s a crack in the mirror of normalcy that allows us to peer into the inner workings of the world.
• Not your average technology documentary. No fluffy bullshit – just a real engineer and hacker telling real stories with as many real details as I can share. Shakey camera, bad audio, and all.
• Not your average “maker” site. We want the real details of how stuff actually works, and we want to know how to do it ourselves. Not a dumbed down, oversimplified, whitewashed toy version. Gimme the real shit or GTFO.

So let’s go find things we never knew existed. And make things we never believed were possible. There’s amazing things just waiting for us to discover, and amazing stories just waiting to be told.