About the Author

Adam Ridge got his first computer at thirteen and learned it the way most people that age do — by taking it apart, breaking it, and figuring out how to put it back together. Curiosity ran ahead of judgment for a few years. By the time he'd sorted that out, he'd also worked out what he wanted to do with what he knew: help people who were on the wrong end of technology instead of ahead of it.

That turned into fifteen years in IT — removing viruses, repairing operating systems, swapping failed hardware, building PCs, and troubleshooting problems that don't appear in any manual. Most of that work involved a second, harder task: explaining what went wrong to someone who didn't care about the technical details and just wanted their machine to work. That's where the habit started.

Alongside it came ten years in marketing and sales, including email marketing across platforms like Klaviyo, Customer.io, and Mailchimp. Different subject, same pattern — complicated systems, and the constant job of translating them for people who needed the outcome, not the jargon.

PlainAtlas came out of both. Every guide is written the way he'd explain it at a help desk: clear language, real examples, and steps you can act on the same day you read them. No hype, no padding, and no pretending a topic is simpler than it is.

Every guide starts with the same question: what does someone actually need to know to use this, and what's just noise? Drafts get tested on people who don't know the topic. Anything that needs a second read gets rewritten.

Each guide shows the date it was last revised, so you know exactly how current the material is before you buy.