Notes
Working notes on construction, engines, and the credo they share: measurement beats opinion.
About these notes
These are working notes, not content. I write about the two trades I practice — construction project controls and automotive tuning analysis — and the one habit that runs through both of them: write down what you expected, measure what actually happened, and believe the difference. Expect schedules, datalogs, a supercharged 416, and the occasional grievance about a missing consonant.
The posts are short by design. On a jobsite you learn that if the point doesn't survive being stated plainly, it probably wasn't a point. Same rule here: no series, no throat-clearing, one argument per note, stated once.
If you're new here, start with the credo essay, Measurement Beats Opinion. Everything else on this page is a footnote to it.
Two N's
In 1994 an action film credited me as "Ryan Lippman," and I have been chasing the second n ever since. A short history of being misspelled, why names are the smallest unit of accuracy, and the one passion project I expect to run for life.
The 416 Philosophy
Why I designed and built a 416-cubic-inch supercharged V8 for my own GMC Sierra instead of buying an easier answer. The garage as a laboratory: log the baseline, change one thing, log again — and let the data grade the work.
Grading a Tune Like a Jobsite
An engine datalog and a construction schedule update are the same document: a plan colliding with reality. How the reading discipline transfers, and how TuneView's P1–P4 priorities mirror jobsite triage.
What Project Controls Really Do
A plain-English explainer for owners: schedule health, cost discipline, and risk you can defend. The discipline matters more than the software — by a wide margin — and here is what it looks like when it's actually working.
Measurement Beats Opinion
The credo essay. Twenty-plus years of large commercial construction taught me that confident opinions lose to honest numbers, and I've been applying that lesson to everything since — schedules, budgets, engines, and the occasional meeting.
Elsewhere on this site
PLATFORM TUNEVIEW — grading engine calibrations against real datalogs
GARAGE PROJECTS — the 416, open tools, and whatever's on the bench
START HOME — the short version of all of it