Who I Am

I'm Luke Griles, a full-stack developer, writer, psychologist, and modern Renaissance man. I find my calling mastering new skills, building new things, learning new languages, exploring new ideas, and experiencing new worlds. I love to do. I’ve traveled through six continents, taught high-school students everything from Latin and literature to maths and chemistry, helped businesses reach customers with digital marketing, opened a coffee shop, and built a house out of earth and straw. I’ve done a lot of things, and I look forward to many more.

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What I Do

I'm motivated to make a difference in every space I enter. Here are highlights of my most meaningful vocational projects.

To view my business and web project portfolio, click here.

  • Full-Stack
    Development

    Adobe XD (Design), HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Custom WordPress, PHP, Python.

  • Web Hosting

    Unix-based server administration, website and web app hosting, SQL database management.

  • Writing

    Check out my book on approaching life with an abundance mindset.

  • Education

    Teacher in algebra, Latin, literature, history; tutor in university maths and physics.

  • Coffee

    A coffee shop built as a gathering and co-working space for a rural community.

  • Psychology

    My research in psychology infuses data-driven decision-making with human insights.

  • Event Planning

    From parties and small outdoor festivals to symposiums, I enjoy bringing people together.

  • Agriculture

    An avocation of mine is growing most of the food we eat at home.

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My Favorite Resources

(None of these are affiliate links, just resources that have made a difference for me.)

When it comes to coding, Notepad++ is my favorite text editor, or Vim when I'm on a server. Visual Studio Code is a new favorite when I'm working in Python.

I enjoy using the different flavors of Linux (like Parrot or Kali when I'm exploring cybersecurity), but Ubuntu will always hold a special place in my heart.

Many great thinkers have gone before, and I enjoy being reminded of their wisdom. I keep this quote wall of my favourite and most influential quotes.

Reading is a big part of how I begin to engage different perspectives. Here are some of the most impactful books I've come across so far:

  • With the world changing more rapidly than ever Yuval Noah Harari's Homo Deus gives an insightful glance into a potential future for humanity.
  • When it comes to food, few books have so poignantly shaped my appreciation of how we decide what to eat as Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dillema. His journalistic prowess is further displayed in How to Change Your Mind.
  • There's no shortage of self-help and productivity books, but Tim Ferris's The Four Hour Work Week and Richard Swenson's Margin are two books that have positively changed the way I approach work.
  • Matthew Walker's Why We Sleep and Ed Yong's I Contain Multitudes have shaped the way I view the human body and it's place in our ecological environments.
  • Government and economics are based on complex, but fragile, systems. Nassim Taleb's Antifragile gives order and direction to how to thrive in a world of many stressors - and benefit from them.
  • When it comes to synthesizing insights, Derek Sivers has a keen ability to draw out the most value while ignoring the fluff. How to Live is an incredible synthesis of knowledge that I re-read multiple times each year.

When it comes to software, I gravitate towards FOSS, or at least open-source. Bitwarden is great authetication manager, and Firefox is my trusted browser (and while it can't compete with Google for more nuanced searches, Ecosia is my default search engine). I keep my phone apps as simple as possible: communication (excluding email), music, and books - nothing else.

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