Hello and welcome to my personal site: quieter life. A small corner of the internet that I maintain mostly for my own interest.

Checkout the blog for my thoughts on software engineering, raising kids, and living a quieter or simpler life. I hope you'll find something valuable or interesting or maybe inspiring.

About me

My name is Lloyd Markle. I’m a quiet person living a somewhat quiet life in the Southern Gulf Islands of British Columbia, Canada. I’m currently taking a few years off work to be a stay at home dad. I like building software and I like to tinker and learn and play while I do it. When I’m not hanging out with my kids or on the computer, I will likely be out for a walk in the forest or along the beach, paddling in the nicer weather, reading a book, strumming a song on guitar, or just watching the wind in the trees.

About the site

A quieter life is taking what you can offer and sharing it to make your local community, even the lives of 2-3 people around you, better. I’m using a blog as a tool to pass along stories, lessons, information, and opinions that I hope are interesting to you and maybe it will make your life a little better.

Still curious about the name? Allow me to illustrate the idea with a little story:

My wife grew up in a rural setting. When she was little, well before we met, a kind older lady (a “grandma”) in the community taught her how to make flour tortillas. It isn’t a very complicated processes really but there are tricks and it takes a little practice and it helps to have someone walk you through it. Years go by and eventually we meet and get married and one day I’m cooking and she teaches me how to make tortillas. More years go by and I’ve had lots of practice making family dinners and we decide to enter my tortillas into the flatbread/cracker category of our town fall fair. Surprise! I won a first place blue ribbon that is now hanging on the fridge. Not because it’s a big accomplishment, it’s a small accomplishment - mine was one of two entries in the category - but the skill that I used was passed from person to person and around the world and that is special.

That is the quieter life. It’s not about being flashy or changing the world or doing something amazing or having a big impact. Being flashy and changing the world can be good but that’s not what this is about. Here, I’m just about passing along little bits of information and hoping to help a few people along the way.

…and if you ever want to meet up and make tortillas, let me know! I’d love to pass the skill along.

Disclaimer

The opinions expressed on this site are my own. Certainly my views are shaped by past experiences and people (employers, volunteer groups, educators, and friends) and I share stories from those people and places and experiences but I make an effort to represent only my own opinions.

I’m also a little “old fashioned” so I do not use LLMs to assist when writing these articles. I guess you could say I like to do things the “hard way” but I prefer to think I’m giving this site a personal and unique voice.