About

My name is Nick McHardy and this site is my personal blog, covering technology, games and whatever else I find interesting in the universe. I’m a full-time software engineer: most of my time in recent years has been spent designing and building large-scale digital solutions, though I’ve had experience in many other things and like most people who have been writing code since an early age, I can learn new tech anytime.

Currently I’m working as a Senior Digital Architect at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), where I’ve been since late 2014.

I’m always on the lookout for new projects, which is one of the reasons why I dabble with my side haunt Purple Toaster. Purple Toaster, which specialises in a serverless CMS (that also powers this website) called Koi CMS. Koi CMS has been actively developed since July 2017.

I’m most interested in leading the technical direction of teams, crafting sustainable architecture, detailed solution design, being the principal engineer, information modeller or basically anything involving a decent diagram.

Some things I’m into include:

  • Collecting vinyl records
  • Vintage video games
  • Growing rare plants
  • Bees
  • Fusion Jazz
  • All things MiniDisc
  • French hot hatches
  • Boardgames
  • Old things, especially keeping them repaired/maintained/preserved
  • … and lots of cool technology of course

I tend to write about anything that comes into mind, with topics ranging from reviewing serious cloud technology, to reflecting on my career and sometimes video games for fun.

I am a former presenter of a community radio programme called The Fusion Delusion from 2011 to 2018. One day I’ll get back behind the mic, I hope!