Engineering · Automation · AI

Rules in. Reliable systems out.

Benjamin M. Holden: Environmental Engineer, systems builder and AI workflow designer.

I take problems wrapped in dense rules and messy data, and turn them into systems that run themselves — and check their own work.

Years of engineering practice
14+
Engineering degrees
2
Disciplines on show
4
Silent failures tolerated
0

01 / Profile

About Me

Portrait of Benjamin M. Holden

Benjamin M. Holden

Environmental Engineer

M.S. Engineering · B.S. Biological Engineering · University of Arkansas

I am an environmental engineer with more than fourteen years of practice in a field where the details decide everything: reading long, exacting rules closely, turning them into calculations and models, and producing work that has to hold up under review.

That work built a habit I now use everywhere. Break a problem into rules. Find where the data disagrees with itself. Build a repeatable process instead of solving the same thing twice. Outside the day job I point that habit at software — Python automation, REST API integrations, data pipelines and self-hosted systems — increasingly with AI models doing the heavy lifting under tight, testable instructions.

The question I care about is not whether a tool is new. It is whether its output can be trusted, and how you would know when it cannot.

  • Analytical problem-solving
  • Python
  • REST APIs & OAuth
  • Data & metadata pipelines
  • Linux & Docker
  • Networking
  • AI workflows
  • Prompt engineering

02 / Method

How I Work

Four habits carried over from engineering practice into everything I build.

  1. 01

    Read the rule closely

    Most failures start as a misread requirement. I pin down what a rule actually says before writing a line of anything.

  2. 02

    Let the data argue

    When two sources disagree, that is the most useful signal in the room. I cross-check instead of picking the convenient number.

  3. 03

    Make it repeatable

    If I have solved it twice, it becomes a process — written down, scripted, and verifiable by someone who is not me.

  4. 04

    Fail loudly

    A job that fails silently is worse than no job at all. Everything I build reports its own failures.

03 / Work

Technical Projects

Personal work, built and run on my own equipment and my own time.

Infrastructure

Local Systems & Networking

A small self-hosted platform that runs the house: a virtualised Linux server, containerised services, private encrypted remote access, nightly verified backups, and resource limits that keep one runaway job from starving the rest.

  • Proxmox
  • Docker
  • WireGuard
  • systemd

Data Integrity

Data & Metadata Management

Scripts that parse JSON sidecar files and write dates, places and descriptions back into the photos themselves, so a large archive keeps its history through a move between platforms — with file counts checked before and after every step.

  • Python
  • JSON
  • EXIF / XMP
  • exiftool

Automation

API & Python Automation

Scheduled Python jobs that authenticate against REST APIs with OAuth, keep their secrets in a dedicated secrets store — never in files — and report their own failures rather than going quiet.

  • Python
  • OAuth 2.0
  • REST
  • MQTT

Generative AI

AI Prompt Engineering

Precise, repeatable image generation — like one consistent 2D cel-shaded animation style held across a whole series — and language-model workflows written as tight specifications, with checks on what comes back.

  • Claude
  • Image models
  • Style control
  • Output checks

04 / Connect

Let’s talk systems.

The best way to reach me is LinkedIn. The code lives on GitHub.