I've spent more than thirty years designing relational databases, starting on an AS/400 in a warehouse with the plan upside down. These days I make SQL Server do things it was never built for: running Doom, Elite and a ZX Spectrum, playing music, carving 3D shapes and training a small language model, all in T-SQL.
I write about data, the machines I grew up with, and the occasional story from life. Every article here was first published on Medium.
- Stories
- 21
- Words
- 82k
- Writing since
- 2026
Projects on GitHub
Topics
All stories
SQL Server 2025, an RTX 5090, and the slow death of “Will the hon. Gentleman give way?”
Two Graphics Cards and 1.7 Million Speeches to Prove a Negative
I’m 53, She is 33 And Wants A Baby, So, Meet Brian The Sausage Dog. (SQL Animation is a bonus)
This has it all, including the ransom note. SQL is fun, Have fun or the dog gets it..
Twenty Years Later, I Built the Headache Machine Again
The Deep Brain Stimulator that fixed my Cluster Headaches and is being used for Parkinsons’ and Tourettes
Can a Database Rave? Making SQL Server Play Music
I’ve made SQL Server draw, play games and pretend to be other computers. This time I wanted to hear it.
Forget Graham, the Car Crash Man, Meet Nigel, the Data Man
A speculative anatomy of life with the world’s knowledge under the skin
ZX Spectrum in SQL & Daley Thompson’s Decathlon
The Database is the Machine. Memory is a Table. The CPU is a Stored Procedure. The Display is a Join.
Thirty Million Pounds of Wrong
How a warehouse with the plan upside down taught me everything I know about data and why I’m rebuilding an AS/400 inside SQL Server thirty years later
My Potato Mountain & The 46th Greatest Comedy Film Of All Time
Rebuilding the Wagon Queen Family Truckster jump, one engine at a time.
Boing, Boing, Boing
The Day My Database Learned Physics and I recreated the famous Amiga Boing Ball inside SQL Server.
Patient Number 1 in DARPA’s Super Soldier Programme
or rather because of National Health Service (NHS) in the UK, I could be called “The Cost of a Few Prescriptions Man” but it’s not quite as pithy.
Running Elite in SQL Server
“An infinite void wrapped around a core of data entry.”
Sum Over Every Path
A spelling corrector in pure T-SQL, and what Feynman’s postulate had to do with it
The Cloud Has No Mercy
Why we traded 56k dial-up frustration for automated digital hostage situations.
Feynman’s Postulates and Relational Text Analytics in T-SQL
Within the last few days Richard Feynman’s 80 year old quantum postulate has now been validated. It has been directly measured in an experiment for the first time.
Relational Space Carving in SQL Server using My Head
When you have spent 30 years designing relational databases and enforcing strict transactional integrity, there is something deeply satisfying about completely abusing the SQL engine to do exactly what it was never designed for.
Vellum Lasts 500 Years. My 8,000 DVDs Didn’t.
I built a 3D Navigator in SQL Server to allow a virtual walk around your data.
Running Doom Inside SQL Server
Not a raycaster. Not a tribute. Actual Doom — real WAD, real BSP, real E1M1 — rendered by a relational database.
I Built a Language Model Entirely Inside SQL Server
No Python, no CLR, no web services — just tables, joins and a training loop in Transact-SQL, trained on the SQL you find on the internet.
