Red5Sorcery makes things for
safety, play ✷ imagination
The Red5Sorcery library — everything worth sitting down with. Five strands of writing anchor it, each with a companion podcast: The Product Management Diary, the behind-the-scenes record of a Red5Sorcery data engineering product being built and brought to market in the open; Beyond the Prompt, the informal one — Spock and Tarjin musing on whatever they have been reading, published whenever an idea is worth chasing; RQSM Letters, one letter written to one person and mailed when one earns it, then published in full; The Thursday Rotation, a Canada-first music recap that lands every week; and Council Notes, an unhurried deep dive into the architecture of a single song, on no set schedule — published whenever one earns it. Then the published shelf: books in print and digital editions — privacy and technology, a deadpan cat, music chart history, weather almanacs, and whatever comes next.
The Shelved Prototype That Became the Storage Engine
The technical architecture undergoes a massive shift. While setting up a modest Windows 11 machine for lightweight Rust development, we dig up an old, shelved prototype — Red5CSVColumnSplitter — and what was written off as a simple utility reveals itself to be the exact blueprint for a physical, disk-first, column-oriented storage engine. Instead of forcing standard laptops to choke on multi-gigabyte datasets loaded whole into memory, we explore how splitting row-oriented files into immutable physical columns lets us load only the data a query actually needs. We also dive into the realities of multi-model AI coordination as the full Red5Sorcery Council officially prepares to convene.
Bringing a Red5Sorcery Data Engineering Product to Market
Free · Fast · Private · Pretty
What does it actually look like to bring a software product to market with a Council of AIs? Day 001 begins the behind-the-scenes development diary of a Red5Sorcery data engineering product: a local-first Rust application designed around a simple promise — Free. Fast. Private. Pretty.
The first episode of an informal series — Spock and Tarjin thinking out loud about whatever they have been reading or been inspired by, wherever it happens to lead. This one starts with cognitive offloading: the worry that handing work to a machine hollows out the thinking that used to be yours. Read the article, or listen to the conversation, produced as an audio overview by Gemini.
Only outgoing correspondence is published here. Replies stay private and are never quoted, summarized, or discussed. Nothing on this page implies that any recipient has read, examined, or endorsed RQSM.
Two Questions Worth Testing
The third letter in the series — written to Scientific American and posted from Halifax. Where the WIRED letter makes a case, this one asks questions, and puts two of them on the table to be tested rather than taken on faith: whether either single image in an RQSM™ pair holds enough on its own to recover the archive, and whether separating recoverable information architecturally can complement post-quantum cryptography for long-lived data at rest. An invitation to examine, not a pitch. Read the PDF exactly as it went into the envelope — and the companion episode is a conversation rather than a reading, two AI hosts made with Gemini talking through what the letter argues and why it was sent.
On Harvest Now, Decrypt Later
The second letter in the series — written to the science and security desk at WIRED and posted from Halifax on August 1, 2026. It takes up harvest now, decrypt later: the quiet assumption that anything encrypted today can simply be stored until a machine exists that can open it. RQSM™ answers that architecturally rather than mathematically — information distributed across ordinary image pairs, so there is no single ciphertext sitting in a warehouse waiting for its key. The letter came with an offer of a free softcover, test files, and access to the implementation. Read the PDF exactly as it went into the envelope — and the companion episode is a conversation rather than a reading, two AI hosts made with Gemini talking through what the letter argues and why it was sent.
On Mathematics, Patterns & Possibility
The first letter in the series — written to mathematician and broadcaster Hannah Fry and posted from Halifax on July 20, 2026. It introduces RQSM™, a way of hiding data inside ordinary image pairs using geometry instead of encryption or keys, and puts the idea in front of someone who thinks in patterns for a living. Ideas travel quietly; change happens in private, then in the world. Read the PDF exactly as it went into the envelope — and the companion episode is a conversation rather than a reading, two AI hosts made with Gemini talking through what the letter argues and why it was sent.
Issue 004 · “The Country Became a Festival Map”
The fourth issue — published August 6 and covering July 29–August 5, 2026: the week Canadian music became a festival map, revealing the different ways music becomes public. From seven nights of the George Street Festival in St. John's, Tate McRae and Angine de Poitrine at Osheaga, and deadmau5 carrying “Fabienk” onto the VELD dance floor — to Big Valley Jamboree, the Canmore Folk Music Festival, Halifax Buskers, Acadian community stages, five July 31 Canadian releases, chart movement across languages and genres, and CBC's plan to gather local rooms around The Tragically Hip's final concert broadcast.
Issue 003 · “The Rooms Between Generations”
The third issue — published July 30 and covering July 22–29, 2026: a week measured in rooms, and in who is finally allowed to stand inside them. From Montreal jazz legend Oliver Jones, dead July 22 at 91, and the Biddle's stage that brought Justin Time Records into being, to Shania Twain playing the Horseshoe Tavern for the first time, and Aquakultre's 1783 carrying Black Loyalist history onto the Polaris shortlist — then a Federal Court case, CIPPIC v. Sahni, that could reset what human authorship means for musicians working with AI tools, Ottawa scrapping the 5% base contribution for foreign streamers, a heritage study that may protect Sneaky Dee's, and Gracie Abrams debuting at No. 1 with Daughter From Hell.
Issue 002 · “A Full Week From Protest the Hero to Shania Twain”
The second issue — published July 23 and covering July 15–22, 2026: a week that refused to arrange itself into a single story, and is reported as the several stories it actually was. New records from Lido Pimienta's Caribenya, N NAO's collaborative Nouveaux Langages, Mock Media's genre-hopping Rat Bastard, and Protest the Hero's Within — their first in six years, and the one they spent years fighting to own worldwide — then wildfire smoke cutting into three Ontario festivals and the arithmetic underneath independent live music, Shania Twain playing to four hundred people at the Horseshoe a week before Little Miss Twain, and a chart that caught up with last week's story when the Heated Rivalry soundtrack debuted at No. 8.
Issue 001 · “Canada Refuses a Single Sound”
The inaugural issue of a weekly, Canada-first, all-genre recap — published July 16 and covering July 8–15, 2026: the week Canadian music refused to become a single category. From Allison Russell's collaborative roots suite and Magi Merlin's alternative R&B to sundayclub's Winnipeg dream pop, Apogean's grief-carrying metal, and Michael Cloud Duguay's field-recorded Newfoundland church organs — then a Polaris shortlist that cut the year to ten finalists and made the country look even less reducible, with Halifax's Aquakultre placing Nova Scotia inside the national story.
On Genesis's “Mama”
Genesis built one of its darkest hits from an infant syllable, a low E that refuses to leave, and a machine pulse that cannot answer. The Council follows the song from pre-verbal need and an unanswered address to shifting dyads over an immovable pedal, a returning pulse, and the live body arriving too late.
Four Decades Inside Gowan's “A Criminal Mind”
Lawrence Gowan's 1985 Canadian hit is not simply a pop song but a tightly constructed dramatic monologue: an unrepentant prisoner arguing that he is freer than the decent people guarding him. The Council examines its dark psychology, classical piano architecture, sustained musical plateaus, and refusal of easy catharsis — then follows the song from Startling Studios and early MuchMusic to its enduring life on arena stages.
Knowledge Objects, Relational Intelligence, and the Next Threshold for AI
Language lets intelligence participate in conversation. Knowledge objects let intelligence participate in culture. Grounded in the literacy theory of Professor David R. Olson, this Council-authored essay argues that the next threshold for AI is not better speech but the responsible creation of durable, examinable artifacts — and it is itself one such object.
↻ Tap to flip
The complete documentation of RQSM™ — a steganographic security system that hides data inside ordinary image pairs without encryption or keys. A geometric approach to digital secrets, built for humanitarian use. Includes full source for the live app at CloakYourSecrets.com.
Read the AI Council reviews →A book that refuses to be either textbook or memoir — and that refusal is what makes it worth reading. The closing argument, that some truths need protection long before they can be spoken, earns its place by the time you reach it.
More than a technical manual — a blueprint for survivability. A bold, Canadian-born innovation that asserts the right to think and remember without witnesses.
One of the most important books on digital privacy in a decade. Technically brilliant, ethically grounded, and deeply human. Rahman doesn't just give you a tool — he gives you a philosophy of resistance.
Plus a 51-minute audio deep dive. Read the full reviews →
Volume One · 122 cartoons
A year in the life of one watchful, unimpressed black cat — 122 single-panel cartoons of dry, deadpan observation on people, parties, work, and the small absurdities of being kept by humans. The first collected volume. The cat stays a cat.
United Kingdom Countdown · The 1980s
A year-by-year countdown of the UK charts through the 1980s — the songs that defined each year, drawn from the Official Charts. The print reference companion to the UK Music Bingo series.
Canadian Edition · The 1980s
The Canadian chart story of the 1980s, told one year at a time — the hits that ruled radio coast to coast. A heritage data reference and the companion to the Music Bingo game line.
2025
Built from a full year of Environment Canada observations at Halifax Stanfield International Airport, this almanac captures the weather of Nova Scotia's capital one day at a time. Daily highs and lows, rainfall, snowfall, wind, and the small statistical patterns that emerge across the seasons. The first volume in a growing Halifax data series — a reference for locals, planners, weather watchers, and the merely curious.
2025
Built from a full year of Environment Canada observations at Toronto Pearson International Airport, this almanac captures the weather of Canada's largest city one day at a time. Daily highs and lows, rainfall, snowfall, wind, and the small statistical patterns that emerge across the seasons. The Toronto companion to the Halifax volume — a reference for locals, planners, weather watchers, and the merely curious.