~/about
who's behind all this
One person, two trades.
Hewlett Tech and Text Products isn't a company so much as a workbench — mine — with tools for code on one side and tools for writing on the other. My name is Edward Hewlett, and this is the short version of why those two things sit together.
the story
Geek from my youth, writer for about as long.
I've been a geek since before it was a compliment — taking things apart to see how they worked, then putting them back together slightly differently. Somewhere along the way I also became someone who couldn't leave a sentence alone until it sounded right. For a long time I treated those as two separate lives. They aren't.
A website is the proof. It's a machine and a message at once: code underneath, words on top, and the whole thing only succeeds when the two agree. The same instinct that makes me strip a page down until it loads instantly is the instinct that makes me cut a paragraph until it actually says something. Build plainly. Write plainly. Mean it.
So I stopped pretending tech and text were rivals for my attention and put them on the same letterhead. That's this shop. On the one side I build and host websites and make small software; on the other I write — essays as Fr. Justin over at Geek Orthodox, poems under my own name, and stories given away for the joy of it.
what I actually believe
A handful of convictions, lightly held but firmly applied.
→ Simple outlasts clever
The clever thing impresses on launch day. The simple thing is still working, unbothered, years later. I build for the second one.
→ Money shouldn't gate good
Hosting is donation-ware and a lot of the writing is free for a reason. Worthwhile things shouldn't depend on a marketing budget to exist.
→ A human should answer
Small means I know your site, remember your name, and reply myself. That's not a limitation I'm apologising for — it's the whole offer.
about the name
Hewlett Hill, and a little punctuation.
The domain is hewletthill.ca — part family name, part the view above, that hillside caught gold by a low winter sun while the pines stand in snow. It's the sort of plain, lasting thing I try to build toward.
And the logo? Look again: it's the letters http set over the punctuation :// — the small spell that begins every web address, the threshold a machine crosses to reach a reader. Tech on top, text underneath, neither one whole without the other. The entire business, really, in eight characters.
If any of that sounds like your kind of person to work with —
— I'd genuinely like to hear what you're making, building, or trying to say. The first conversation is always free and usually the most useful part.