A bit about me
I’m Louis Goldsbrough, a software engineer and engineering leader based in Barnsley. My career started with a software development apprenticeship at HSBC in 2015, took me into local government, and eventually brought me to my current role as a Lead Engineer at the Home Office.
Professionally, I care about helping people grow, making technical decisions understandable and getting useful software into service. Outside work, that same curiosity takes a more creative shape: I build software, experiment with AI, make games, design things in 3D and try to turn ideas into objects and experiences people can actually use.
This blog is a place to bring those interests together. My personal and client projects are separate from my employment; anything I share about engineering at work will stay at the level of my own approach and experience, without internal or sensitive details.
What’s on my desk
There isn’t just one project. Some are tools I want for myself, some are for other people, and some start with a question I can’t quite leave alone. They’re at different stages, and I’ll make that clear as I write about them.
Mosaic ↗
My private personal workspace: a place to connect projects, notes, tasks, home controls and assistants through shared context. I’m exploring what an operating system for me could feel like, while keeping ownership and permissions visible.
Paracosm Studio ↗
A worldbuilding workspace for imaginary planets, geography, civilisations and stories. It brings together my interest in logical systems with maps and imagination. It’s a live alpha, with more development ahead.
Contour Studio ↗
Turning real places into 3D-printable map art, bringing terrain and mapped features into something you can hold. It connects software, geography and physical making, with a free and open-source public preview.
Desktop Displays ↗
A collaboration on a small physical display and the software behind it. My work includes the enclosure, CAD and print iteration, identity and product visualisation. It’s still in development, with plenty to learn where the digital design meets a real desk.
Motion Studio ↗
Two local animation tools developed with Claude and GPT, starting from the same brief. I’ve been using them to make films and explore character performance. The first build story compares the routes they took and shows the actual results.
Games and interactive worlds ↗
The Tavern revisits a Python adventure I originally made for teaching. My detective game explores storytelling through a fictional workstation called POLARIS, with cases still in development. Both let me explore how an interface can become part of a world.
Websites with a real job to do ↗
Projects such as Vault Barbershop and Power X Tanning keep the work grounded in actual businesses. They bring design together with practical journeys, from finding the right information to booking an appointment, and the ongoing care a live product needs.
Why write about it?
A portfolio shows selected results. I want this blog to show more of the thinking between the first idea and the thing you see at the end: the decisions, experiments, awkward problems and changes of direction.
A screenshot can look convincing long before the whole experience works. A model can look right in CAD and still need another print. A tool can produce an impressive first result and then struggle with the next task. Those gaps are often where the most useful learning happens, and they deserve space here too.
What this blog will represent
Expect build notes from software and physical projects, experiments with AI-assisted development, animation and game-making, and reflections on engineering, design and learning. Sometimes that will be a longer project story. Sometimes it will be a small improvement, an unexpected problem or a useful lesson from trying something.
I’ll show the work wherever I can: real interfaces, films, prototypes and the steps that led to them. I’ll distinguish an idea from a working build, a preview from a finished product, and something I’ve tested from something I still need to prove.
AI is a significant part of how I explore and build these personal projects. I’ll be open about where I use it, what it helps with and where it still needs direction, testing and judgement. Comparisons will be about the work I actually tried, with enough context to understand the result.
The common thread is curiosity followed through into making. I’m interested in how software, design and storytelling meet, and what happens when an ambitious idea has to become useful in somebody’s hands.
A starting point
I’m starting with the Motion Studio story: one brief, two development routes, and the animations that came out of them. From here, I’ll share more of what I’m working on as it develops.
If you’re interested in making things with technology, learning through experiments or seeing how a project takes shape behind the finished screen, I hope you’ll find something useful here. Welcome to the blog.