Philosopher · Psychotherapist · Software Author · Game Designer
I was born in Ottawa, Canada, and have lived there most of my life. Most of what I have done, whether in philosophy, psychotherapy, game design, or software, comes down to the same habit: take a system that works but has grown dense and inaccessible, find the parts that actually matter, and rebuild it so that someone without specialist training can use it. That is what I did with Heidegger's Being and Time, with meditation, with old-school role-playing rules, and more recently with the tools I rely on in my own clinical practice.
I have an M.A. in German Linguistics (Carleton University, 1996); a Ph.D. in Philosophy, Contemporary German Literature, and Mediaeval Studies from the University of Freiburg (2002); and an M.Ed. with a specialization in Counselling (University of Ottawa, 2011). I am a Registered Psychotherapist (CRPO), a Canadian Certified Counsellor (CCPA), and an Analyst-in-Training of the Canadian Institute of Psychoanalysis (QE-English).
This site reflects my personal, academic, and creative work. For counselling or psychoanalytic services, please visit lightinextension.ca.
A secular, rational, and pragmatic guide to meditation. Unlike other books on the subject, it presents meditation within a modern conceptual framework, borrowing concepts from psychoanalysis, philosophy, and computer science to explain what meditation is and why it works.
Learn more → Buy on Amazon →
Routledge, 2017
An attempt to replace the traditional drive–defence model of Freudian tradition with an information processing model of the mind. I argue that the most basic human need is the need for clear thinking, and that physical drives ultimately only have significance for the mind insofar as they tend towards self-knowledge.
Available at Amazon →
University of Ottawa Press, 2008
My first major academic publication. In this book I showed that there is indeed method to the madness that is Heidegger's Being and Time, and succeeded in paraphrasing its main lines of argument to make them intelligible to the general reader.
Revised edition at Lulu →
The essence of the original Space Dungeon, rebuilt on the beloved "BX" rules framework. Detail and crunch have been stripped away in favour of a "roll and go" approach: an SF role-playing game of unparalleled speed, smoothness, and ease of play.
PDF at DriveThruRPG →
A compact, old-school, one-rulebook, d6-based Fantasy RPG designed to be fast, fun, and flexible. An entire standalone Fantasy RPG in one slim 64-page booklet with no filler and no wasted space, featuring the original "lineup combat" system.
PDF at DriveThruRPG →
My first ever self-authored role playing game. "What would have happened had the authors of the Original Role-Playing Game been avid fans of Golden Age science fiction instead of fantasy?" Several frenzied months followed during which I worked out a speculative answer.
More information →
Free & open source · AGPL-3.0
Practice management software for independent therapists. I built it because the available options all wanted monthly fees, stored client data on remote servers, and made assumptions about how practices work that didn't match mine. EdgeCase keeps everything local and encrypted, with no subscriptions and no cloud.
The entire application was built using Claude (Anthropic) as an AI development partner. I provided the domain expertise and quality control; the AI wrote the implementation. Over 130,000 lines of Python, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
Website → Source code →
In development · AGPL-3.0
Encrypted email archiving for solo practitioners. Therapists, lawyers, accountants, and journalists handle sensitive correspondence every day, most of it stored on servers where administrators can read it in plaintext. MailRepo lets you archive that correspondence locally, encrypted with a password only you know.
Source code →
Released · GPL-3.0
A lightweight battery monitor for Linux laptops. Because you shouldn't need to install a compiler toolchain to see a battery graph. Voltaire shows live drain rate, charge history, health trends, and the processes eating your power, all in a native GTK4/Libadwaita interface with no scientific-stack dependencies.
Its guiding principle is honesty over confidence: uncertain data is drawn as uncertain, inferred data is marked as inferred, and the limitations are documented rather than hidden. In daily use on my own ThinkPad since April 2026.
Source code & downloads →For inquiries about my academic work, publications, software, or games:
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For counselling services, please visit lightinextension.ca