Hello, my name is Joe Wood. I've been working developing software, designing and leading software teams at investment banks and financial institutions for over 25 years. This site started off as an experimental playground, but over time has become a place to store and publish notes. The topics are varied - from distributed systems and machine learning through to 3D data visualization, and planning and finance.
This site is a repository of implementation notes, design ideas, and industry news summaries. The content ranges from fully developed articles to rough, half-formed thoughts—evolving over time rather than following the structure of a traditional blog or journal. The content is used to drive a knowledge graph and LLM, so it makes sense to keep it as up to date and correct as possible.
You can browse all the content category tags, but these represent the main topic areas:
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Data - a data architecture strategy is now essential in any industry, but it's always been central in my career in investment banking and trading.
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Software Architecture and Design - from distributed systems to domain analysis, some notes on architecture design and patterns.
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Cloud - some specific notes on cloud platforms and services
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Visualizations - this site started as an experimental playground for visualizing real-time data streaming. You can find notes around incorporating those visualizations under this category.
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Budgeting, Planning and Productivity - general broad category for TCO (Total Cost of Ownership), FinOps, metrics and planning.
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Machine Learning and LLMs - category covering AI topics, such as LLMs and GPT
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Finance - some notes on finance terms and financial products
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Languages - side by side comparison of different language concepts for easy reference
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Technical Site - this website has evolved over time, through different software stacks. The implementation notes are covered under this category.
Outside of this site, there's also a Backstage playground that shares some of the components from this site, including LLM Chat and some of the visualizations.