About Life in Production

Life in Production is my corner of the internet — a place for technology, projects, family life, football, photography and whatever else happens to make it into production.

I'm Eric MacFarlane. I work in IT, and I've spent enough years around networks, servers and technology to know that the interesting part isn't always the technology itself. It's what happens when technology meets real people, real problems and real life.

Why “Life in Production”?

In IT, production is where things get real.

You can plan, test and prepare as much as you like, but eventually something has to leave the safety of the lab and survive in the real world.

Life feels much the same.

Plans change. Things break. You fix them. Sometimes the fix creates another problem. Occasionally everything works first time and you become immediately suspicious.

This site is about that human layer.

What you'll find here

Technology will probably feature heavily. I enjoy building things, experimenting with systems, solving problems and occasionally disappearing down technical rabbit holes that started with the words, “I wonder if I could…”

Some of those projects work brilliantly. Others involve considerably more troubleshooting than originally advertised. Both make good stories.

But I'm more than my job or my homelab.

You'll also find posts about family life, football, photography, days out, things I've enjoyed, things I've learned and whatever else seems worth writing about.

There doesn't need to be a niche for everything.

Built with a little help from AI

AI has become part of how I work on projects and organise ideas, so it would be strange to pretend it isn't involved here too.

I use ChatGPT as a collaborator — helping me research, challenge ideas, work through technical problems and turn the collection of thoughts in my head into something worth reading.

The experiences, opinions and stories are mine. AI helps me get them from my head onto the page.

No newsletter. No membership. Just the site.

There isn't a mailing list to join, a members-only area or another account to create.

If you want to read something, read it.

If you find something useful, interesting or entertaining along the way, then Life in Production is doing its job.

Stories from the human layer.