Building Annie: A Set Builder's Guide to the Show
A behind-the-scenes look at building the sets for Annie, including lit marquee signs, a NYC street scene, the Oxydent radio studio, and the Warbucks mansion.
Articles by James Farrelly
We deserve modern voting technology
Why Chester County should adopt modern electronic poll books after the 2025 election printing failure.
AI.Engineer Conference NYC 11/19-11/21
Reflections and takeaways from the AI.Engineer Conference.
Building Fiddler: How We Made Fruma-Sarah Fly
How I built a custom wheeled seesaw rig to make the ghost of Fruma-Sarah glide across the stage, launch over the front row, and soar 15 feet in the air for Fiddler on the Roof.
Building a Self-Watering Raised Bed Garden for People Who Travel
How I built two raised beds with a wicking bed irrigation system, deer-proof trellis frames, and a planting rotation that produces all summer — even when I'm not home to water.
Building High School Musical: A Cafeteria Inside a Cafeteria
How I built reusable platforms, staircases, industrial pipe railings, and a permanent DJ booth for our 2026 production of High School Musical at Lionville Elementary School.
Building The Music Man: Train Cars, Marian's House, and a Real Piano
How I built five train cars that double as library bookcases, a reversible house flat with hand-painted Victorian wallpaper, and got a real upright piano onto a rolling platform for our 2025 production of The Music Man.
An Awesome Failure: My Dog, Parkour, and the Physics of AI
I prompted Google's Veo to create a video of my dog doing parkour. The result was a fascinating, physics-defying failure. Here's my breakdown of what's happening.
Data science isn't going away.
A colleague's son is heading to college to study data science and AI, and his father is worried AI will outpace him. The real story is that the work is shifting toward trust, judgment, and the human evaluation of agentic systems.
Building Cinderella: Engineering a Real Working Clock Tower
How I built a full-height clock tower with a real working mechanism — PVC pipes, cables, counterweights, and a stagehand with a scale — to count down to midnight in real time for our 2019 production of Cinderella.
Building My Own AI Agent: The Clawdbot Experiment
From Twitter curiosity to a fully integrated AI agent running on my home desktop. Here is how I built my own personal assistant using Clawdbot.
I Let Claude Run My Hockey Team. Here is the progress.
Five years of emails, twenty guys, and one AI agent. A practical experiment in what human-computer collaboration actually looks like.
Running My Hockey Team Using Claude: Part Two
What I actually built and what I learned about Claude as an insult comic.
Leading in the Final Stretch: How to deliver under pressure
The last weeks before a major release aren't when leadership ramps up. They're when leadership changes shape entirely.
Tips for the AI Executive: Don't Study, Play.
How to keep up with fast-moving tech as an executive through hands-on play rather than study.