Thoughts on technology, entrepreneurship, music, and the creative process.
Hace unas semanas subí a ChatGPT un PDF de un libro que escribí en 2009 y le hice una pregunta sencilla: ¿qué te parece? Releerlo dieciséis años después fue como abrir una cápsula del tiempo — y lo más interesante fue todo lo que no vi venir. — Read in English: https://alco.rocks/article/le-di-a-chatgpt-un-libro-que-escribi-en-2009/en
Some of your best ideas only appear under running water. The shower is one of the few environments left that accidentally creates the conditions for free-associative thinking. So I started designing a closed-loop machine that recreates the cognitive state without wasting the water. — Leer en español: https://alco.rocks/article/the-perpetual-shower-machine/es
Watching Apple's latest announcements made me remember Konfabulator — a desktop widget platform from the early 2000s that Yahoo acquired, rebranded, and eventually abandoned. Twenty years later, macOS Tahoe brought back almost the exact same concept. Not because the idea was bad. Because it was early. — Leer en español: https://alco.rocks/article/why-do-i-remember-this/es
Most platform advice teaches creators how to survive inside the feed — not how to use it to point somewhere else. Social media was supposed to send people to your website, your store, your actual body of work. Somewhere along the way, the feed became the destination. As AI floods the internet with disposable content, permanence may become one of the rarest things left. — Leer en español:…
Un GIF de un cartón moviéndose solo lleva a una reflexión sobre como la mente humana llena los vacíos de lo que no entiende. Desde los cargo cults del Pacífico Sur hasta las explicaciones cotidianas, una historia sobre como inventamos causas para efectos que no podemos explicar. — Read in English: https://alco.rocks/article/cajas-que-se-mueven-solas/en
We like to picture history as a neat line: ancient way back there, modern right up close. But time doesn't play nice. It folds in on itself. — Leer en español: https://alco.rocks/article/time-plays-tricks/es
A roboticist, a neuroscientist, and a magician walk into the same problem — and all three end up asking whether humans actually understand how they think. Drawing on split-brain experiments, predictive robotics, and three decades of magic theory, this essay explores the unsettling possibility that consciousness may be less like a CEO and more like a press secretary. — Leer en español:…
I wrote a guitar book in a week before moving to Mexico. That's technically true and completely false — the actual work was years of background pattern compression that finally became dense enough to fall out of my head. — Leer en español: https://alco.rocks/article/i-accidentally-hacked-the-guitar/es
Jason Becker was 19 when he recorded Perpetual Burn, and 20 when he was diagnosed with ALS and told he had three to five years to live. That was over three decades ago. The body stopped cooperating. The music didn't. — Leer en español: https://alco.rocks/article/jason-becker-and-the-music-that-refused-to-die/es
Durante cuarenta años he escuchado la misma historia en Puerto Rico: que no hay tiendas Target en la isla porque ya existe un Target local. Cuando intenté averiguar cuánto era verdad y cuánto era leyenda urbana, encontré un detalle que hizo todo todavía más absurdo — el fundador se llamaba Enrique Blanco Rojo. Algunas historias sobreviven no por ser verificables, sino por ser demasiado buenas para…
A 12th-century nun who composed music people still record, described the cosmos in visions that read like science fiction, wrote down the first known mention of hops in beer, and sent letters telling popes and emperors when they were out of line. Hildegard of Bingen lived one of the most prolific lives in history. Most people have never heard of her. — Leer en español:…
In high school all I wanted was to not be there. I dropped out of college, bartended, then picked Computer Science off an old form because it was the only thing I'd ever marked down. Thirty years later, the career I never planned has taken me further than the person who made that choice could have imagined. — Leer en español: https://alco.rocks/article/the-career-i-never-planned/es
Watching AI-generated videos of ancient Rome reminded me how vulnerable humans are to photorealistic fiction at planetary scale. We're still cave people inside a civilization of synthetic reality. After decades of programming, magic, and skepticism, this is the personal operating system I've built for navigating it. — Leer en español: https://alco.rocks/article/this-is-my-42/es
Seventeen years after publishing a book, someone downloaded a copy. That tiny moment made me think about how creative work doesn't always live on launch-day timelines — sometimes the real life of what we make starts years later. — Leer en español: https://alco.rocks/article/the-relationship-with-our-creations/es
When Pocket announced its shutdown, I realized I'd built a huge personal knowledge archive inside a service I didn't control. Switching to Zotero turned my bookmarks into something searchable, taggable, locally owned — and the best part is, I already had it installed. — Leer en español: https://alco.rocks/article/from-pocket-to-zotero/es
Ever since I started composing original music seriously, I'd been looking for a creative partner. This weekend, I built one — a system that behaves less like an AI music generator and more like someone sketching alongside me. — Leer en español: https://alco.rocks/article/i-built-a-composing-partner/es
Back in 2013, Manning Publications wanted me to write a book about Titanium. What followed was a saga of rewrites, iOS 7 chaos, rejection, and ultimately self-publishing. — Leer en español: https://alco.rocks/article/fighting-editors-ios7-latex/es
Time isn't money—money is just one of its byproducts. A reflection on treating your hours as the only currency that truly compounds. — Leer en español: https://alco.rocks/article/on-treating-time-as-a-finite-resource/es
Una reflexión sobre The Discoverie of Witchcraft de Reginald Scot, el primer libro crítico sobre magia y brujería publicado en 1584 — Read in English: https://alco.rocks/article/compre-un-detector-de-mentiras/en
I have a small OCD quirk: I make lists of things that no one asked me to list. And English homophones and homographs are the perfect playground for this habit. — Leer en español: https://alco.rocks/article/confessions-of-a-compulsive-list-maker/es
After 30+ years of coding professionally, I've watched our craft transform into something unrecognizable. In 2025, we're no longer coders—we're drivers of code-producing AI agents. — Leer en español: https://alco.rocks/article/vibe-coding-death-of-craft/es
On Valentine's Day 2013, while most people were exchanging flowers and chocolates, I was boarding a plane to Tokyo to speak at TITOKYO. — Leer en español: https://alco.rocks/article/that-time-i-was-big-in-japan/es
There's a castle in Hollywood where doors don't open unless you whisper the right words. For magicians, it's more than a clubhouse—it's hallowed ground. — Leer en español: https://alco.rocks/article/from-houdini-to-vernon-magic-castle/es
En la magia, el punto entero es borrar el trabajo. Si el público ve las escalas, el arte se derrumba. Mientras mejor sea el mago, más parece que no requirió nada. — Read in English: https://alco.rocks/article/las-escalas-invisibles-de-la-magia/en
Los únicos murales mayas con colores originales que han sobrevivido más de un milenio. Una cápsula de tiempo donde trazos, expresiones y gestos convierten la piedra en relato humano. — Read in English: https://alco.rocks/article/bonampak/en
Una hora en lancha por el río Usumacinta hasta una ciudad maya con traza en forma de omega. Entre la selva húmeda, dinteles esculpidos narran rituales y política dinástica de un nodo estratégico que unía territorio, comercio y guerra. — Read in English: https://alco.rocks/article/yaxchilan/en
Streaming platforms aren't a home. They're a festival with 10,000 stages playing at once — and the stage manager is an algorithm. — Leer en español: https://alco.rocks/article/streaming-platforms-dont-care/es
If humanity vanished tomorrow, what would survive? Paper dissolves. Electronics corrode. Only stone endures. Maybe it's time we carved something that matters. — Leer en español: https://alco.rocks/article/a-stone-for-tomorrow/es
The 1990s Internet was very different. I guess we never knew this cool 'computer thing' would become what it is today. Nobody really knew what it was for, and most experts and analysts said it would become 'the new mainframe.' — Leer en español: https://alco.rocks/article/cgi-programming-visual-basic/es
Mi breve paso por la televisión puertorriqueña hablando de tecnología libre en el 2010 — Read in English: https://alco.rocks/article/fui-figura-de-television/en
In 2024 I signed up for the Kiko Loureiro Mentorship Program. I expected guidance on songwriting and harmony. What I gained was inspiration, structure, and the courage to finally take my own music to the stage. — Leer en español: https://alco.rocks/article/kiko-loureiro-mentorship/es
En 2004 descubrí cómo rastrear emails con imágenes invisibles. Pensé que había inventado algo revolucionario... hasta que descubrí que ya existía desde los 90s. — Read in English: https://alco.rocks/article/pixel-de-facebook/en
La NOM-051 transformó los empaques de alimentos en México, eliminando mascotas y personajes. Una medida de salud pública que llegó tarde, pero necesaria. — Read in English: https://alco.rocks/article/cereal-mexico-caricaturas/en
La historia de cómo la frustración con la educación tecnológica en Puerto Rico me llevó a crear mi propio instituto de formación y eventualmente a Silicon Valley. — Read in English: https://alco.rocks/article/intelica-instituto-tecnologias-libres-caribe/en
Sigo a Kevin Rose desde los tiempos de The Screensavers en TechTV. — Read in English: https://alco.rocks/article/kevin-rose-digg-resurreccion-tecnologica/en
The last post on this blog is from 2021. But the truth is—I never really stopped writing. — Leer en español: https://alco.rocks/article/writing-again-publicly/es
Reflections on building long-term projects and the patience required for meaningful innovation. — Leer en español: https://alco.rocks/article/three-years-in-the-making/es
Practical techniques for maintaining momentum in creative and technical projects. — Leer en español: https://alco.rocks/article/hacking-your-motivation/es
How university education shaped my approach to problem-solving and entrepreneurship. — Read in English: https://alco.rocks/article/el-super-poder-que-me-dio-la-universidad/en
Time management strategies for balancing multiple projects and maintaining productivity. — Read in English: https://alco.rocks/article/como-organizo-mi-tiempo/en
The importance of building relationships for independent musicians and shifting mindset for measurable growth. — Leer en español: https://alco.rocks/article/growth-mindset-for-musicians/es
Physical health challenges of software engineers and practical exercises to combat pain from long hours at the computer. — Leer en español: https://alco.rocks/article/the-1-habit-every-software-engineer-needs-to-have/es
Introducing 'Entrepreneurship for Musicians' - applying tech community-building strategies to help independent artists. — Leer en español: https://alco.rocks/article/so-i-decided-to-write-a-new-book/es