What’s in my eclipse bag? (2026)
Following tradition, we ve prepared some devices for scientific joy and discovery. We ll bring these with us along with food and water. Stay hydrated and sunshadowed, it s hot (until it s not).
oandre.gal
Latest posts
If it’s reversible, decide fast
The first time I consciously used the rule, we lived in Lugo. I vividly recall the two of us standing in the MediaMarkt sound aisle, agonizing over which of two portable speakers we should buy. With the form factor and price decided, the sound quality was the missing piece. And what a piece. Unlike with [ ]
Hai traballo para todos
Non lle poñades chatas á obra mentres non se remata. O que pense que vai mal que traballe nela; hai sitio para todos. — Alfonso R. Castelao, Álbum Nós (1931).
Find me similar problems
One of things I do with LLMs is to ask them for problems similar to the one I m solving. This is something I ve picked from reading Claude Shannon s Creative Thinking: reasoning by analogy. This is how and why it works in its own words: A very similar device is seeking similar known problems. I think [ ]
Kasparov’s law
A weak human player combined with a machine and a better process is superior, not only against a very powerful machine, but, most notably, against a strong human combined with a machine and an inferior process. — Garry Kasparov, Don t fear intelligent machines. Work with them.
Get motivation from LLMs
One of the common conversations with friends lately is: how do you use LLMs? In the latest round, I mentioned that I use LLMs to motivate myself — and people were surprised. In turn, I was surprised they were surprised, because when comparing notes with other peers at work, many shared LLMs were useful for getting [ ]
Sheets that spread
During my 1st Automattic Grand Meetup I gave a flashtalk (under 4 minutes) about spreadsheets.
Air at Cúpula Atlántica
I attended a private concert by Air inside the Cúpula Atlántica, a ~200-person dome at Monte de San Pedro. The park is one of my favorite places in A Coruña. Even though I ve been there multiple times, I had never been inside the dome. As far as I remember, it was abandoned and not in [ ]
Remembering is healing, and forgetting valuable
In Eulogy, the final episode of Black Mirror s seventh season, a man receives a device that allows him to virtually enter a photograph and explore its location. He is asked to use it to recall stories about a woman who has passed away — someone who had been his girlfriend decades earlier. After their breakup, [ ]
You can’t hide on bad days
Here s a lesson I learned from my mom: you ll have bad days, and kids need you anyway. It s one of those things that parenting teaches, and I believe it s transferable to product development. A product isn’t built on one big idea, it s built from thousands. It takes daily steering. If you hide on bad days, [ ]