JoeEnglish.

Start with pottery

A connection
to NC Pottery.

NC Pottery is a resource for North Carolina potters, covering traditional and contemporary pottery. The site identifies me, Joe English, in Durham, North Carolina.

A first-person experiment

Being findable.
Being myself.

I'm exploring how the things I choose to share become a recognizable public presence. My interest is practical: can someone find the right Joe English and understand a little more about me?

This page is the first step. It connects my name, my city, and NC Pottery in one place. The experiment is about publishing deliberately, seeing what becomes discoverable, and learning from what actually happens.

This introduction is a starting point. Read the working notes below for the projects behind the experiment.

Tools, archives, and evidence

What I'm working on.

Making AI tools useful together

I use several AI tools and compare what they can actually do: carry context between conversations, help organize documents, and work through practical computer problems. I care about the difference between a convincing response and a result I can check.

Keeping a digital archive usable

My current projects include copying historical email into a consolidated archive and preserving files from older collections. Collecting is one part of the job. Finding things again, retaining the originals, and checking that a copy really arrived are the parts that make the collection useful.

Testing how a public profile takes shape

I want to see whether publishing accurate material makes the right Joe English easier to recognize. Search results, advertising profiles, and actual human attention are different things. This experiment tracks the evidence rather than treating one as proof of another.

These notes connect three interests: experimenting with technology, organizing what I've collected, and making a public presence that feels like me.

Project notes assembled with AI assistance from my descriptions. Published October 27, 2026. No completed archive migration, search ranking, or audience size is claimed here.

Joe English / October 27, 2026

I collect too much.
I'm letting things go.

I am a collector. Pottery, files, apps, conversations: the habit travels. But keeping everything isn't the same as making it useful.

A personal essay about thinning the herd, preserving what matters, and testing what a public profile can actually say about a person.

An experiment that talks back

A page visit
isn't a biography.

I asked an AI to profile me, then asked it to show the actual records behind its claims. The difference between an observation and a story is where this gets interesting.

A consistent introduction

One name.
A few useful connections.

For readers who want a short introduction, a reference, or a way to follow the notes.

Plain-text biography · Typographic identity card · Subscribe by RSS

The identity card is graphic artwork, not a photograph. Machine-readable public profile.

A less tidy introduction

Sometimes it isn't
only a technical problem.

Frustration, playfulness, curiosity, and the person who refuses to fit into a tidy profile.

Deliberate public data

A snapshot.
Not a whole person.

A selected record of installed tools and the phone-cleanup project, available as JSON and CSV with its limits attached.

There is more to meet

A body. A belief.
An argument. A laugh.

Long COVID in the conversation. A stent in my own account. Room for magic and intuition. Creature and Dross: a person, an AI assistant, and a collaboration that needs to stop congratulating itself.

The body · The belief · The collaboration

Or let a spectacularly underqualified machine profile you.

An interest with a pulse

Who gets to speak.
Who gets heard.

Why I admire Maria Ressa, support Rappler, and care about the work of a free press.

Follow the actual person

One Joe.
Several doors.

My Substack writing, NC Pottery on Facebook, Bluesky, YouTube, and the other places I turn up. More useful than another paragraph announcing my existence.