About

My name is Darren Ma. Outside work, I enjoy computer games, especially Hollow Knight, card games such as Magic: The Gathering when I get the chance, running, and cooking.

Professionally, I am currently the software architect for XuniPlay, an Italian digital-signage platform that was recently acquired and brought into the Orvian group. Earlier in my career, I led the team that built the Virtual Trading Game for the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, where people can learn about investing by trading with simulated money.

I am also a father. More recently, I piloted a personal project called Storyverse to explore whether AI could help children stay creative rather than simply giving them finished answers. That project will probably become an article of its own.

I also make short videos about English expressions on Instagram. They are deliberately bite-sized, although I may occasionally use this site to explore an expression with a history or story worth spending more time on.

Overall, I am just a regular John who enjoys automating what I can and removing friction between myself and whatever I actually want to do. I also spend a fair amount of time trying to understand why I enjoy the things I do.

I started this site because I had built up a large stack of private notes. I wanted to turn some of them into something more presentable and, perhaps, useful to other people.

Most of my writing will probably focus on software design, automating systems at home, homelabbing, and AI. I will also write about running, cooking, and anything else I happen to be interested in.

Think of this site as a public notebook offering a glimpse into my Obsidian vault. Instead of leaving all my scrappy notes in the dark, I can share what I tried, what went wrong, what worked, and the common gotchas along the way.

I am very much a hands-on person. Sometimes being given a solution is only half the answer. I also want to understand how someone reached it, why they made certain choices, and what compromises came with them. If I had found writing like this during some of my own projects, I think I would have been grateful.