Welcome to Shaping Systems

Welcome to Shaping Systems! My name’s Alice. I keep collecting eclectic interests, and feel a strange compulsion to write about them at length. Systems thinking, plants, programming, game design, making…

What you’ll find here

Systems thinking is the lens that has captured my imagination; the obsession and fascination that pulls together these threads. Feedback loops, critical transitions, scale invariance, emergence, chaos. Grandiose ideas without the grandstanding. I miss research dearly, and I warn you, dear reader: I am prepared to take that out on you.

Plants were my first love. There really is something fascinating about the patterns that emerge and echo, and something primally satisfying about reaching out to touch a leaf. I grow food in my garden, explore the beautiful nature of Vancouver Island, and find endless fascination in the way ecosystems grow and change.

Programming — I’m a full-time maintainer of the Bevy game engine. I have been inextricably pulled into the role of a technical project manager, but every now and then, I’m able to write some actual code. Expect the occasional post about Rust, ECS, the theory of documentation, and the social dynamics of open source.

Game design is, at its heart, the study of how system structure shapes behavior. You set up the board, step back and watch your little game pieces run off to play with game pieces of their very own. I delight in the artistry of hands-off design: you might see analysis, theory, and half-baked game ideas that I actively want you to steal.

Making in all its forms (woodworking, tinkering, cooking, photography) grounds me. I’m interested in craft as a way to shape the world around me, to make my life better in small tangible ways and to keep my sanity within the predefined tolerances. I can just do things, and you can too!

Why “Shaping Systems”?

The name comes from something important that I learned before I had a name for it: the most effective interventions aren’t about controlling systems — they’re about shaping them. You need to work with the grain of the wood, not against it.

The way that can be written is not the way. I must apologize: I will only be able to teach you it through story, by telling you what it is not.

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