WARRGHH
WARRGHH

Toby Sherwood · most people call me warghh

I make things. This is where they end up.

AI Strategy Lead at Xcession by day. The rest of the time I am making something or other, and this is where it gets to be seen instead of sitting in a folder.

  • AI Strategy Lead, Xcession
  • Engineer, the better part of a decade
  • Trinity College Dublin
  • London
  • Dad

I make things. I always have. For a long time I made them and then showed no one, because finishing a thing means publishing it, publishing it invites an opinion, and a thing you never quite finish can never be found wanting. So I built up a drawer of perfect, useless work. None of it ever cost me anything. None of it ever did anything either.

This is just somewhere to put it. Not a stage, not a pitch, not a plan to become An Online Person. A place where the things I make get to exist out loud rather than die in a folder nobody opens. That, it turns out, is most of the fight.

I used to think art had to be for something, and it never once occurred to me that code might count. But the things here feel closer to what an artist makes than what an engineer ships. I build them because I want them to exist, the way you would paint something because you wanted to look at it. Some are useful: a planner for grassroots football coaches, a way to understand fragrance instead of being sold it. Some are just an idea that got its hooks in me one weekend. I would rather make the flawed version and learn something than spend another year refining a thing nobody will ever open.

Most of it runs on AI, which is most of what I think about for a living. It can do almost anything now, and that is precisely the point. When the tools can make anything, the one scarce thing left is a particular person deciding what is worth making. So I intend to be that, out loud, and find out what it amounts to.

There is a scrap of Warhammer I have never quite shaken. The Orks have a battle-cry, Waaagh!, and they believe so completely that a red vehicle goes faster that, in their world, it actually does. Belief drags the thing into being, and it gets louder the more of them are shouting. The catch is they still have to paint the thing red. Belief without the brushstroke does nothing. warghh is the cry, and the rest of this is me painting things red. Why not.

If something here is useful, take it. If you are making something of your own, I would genuinely like to hear about it. And if you would rather have a look around and say nothing, that is allowed too.

Currently

  • CoachPaper, a planning tool for grassroots football coaches
  • Nose Codes, a way to understand fragrance instead of being sold it
  • warghh.com itself, which you are currently inside
  • A pile of smaller things that may or may not survive being finished
  • Off the clock: gaming, and writing about the ones that stuck

Easy to find