Home of Paulo Coelho Alves. Engineering Manager at Plex.
Hi. It’s been a while since my last post here. It’s not as if I haven’t been writing. I journal every day and go on rants and tangents in the privacy of my own .txt files. In not blogging, the threshold for it became higher. What’s worth sharing with the entire world ? The answer has been “nothing at all”. But it feels like time to start asking “why the hell not?” Through some awesome serendipity,…
An alarmingly concise and very hinged summary of what it was like to build this site from scratch Moving to a static site that I hand code myself instilled some inherent limitations that I needed to figure out how to work around. It helped me build a foundation for the future. I can keep building upon this as I learn and get inspired to try new things. In the meantime, I have a much simpler…
Don’t jump straight in. Observe and see how people are moving before you get involved. Look out for each other. If someone falls over, help them get up. You are there to have fun together. Start at the sides and work your way in for a more intense experience. Stay on the outside until you get your bearings. Then, when you’re ready, venture further into the center to get really wild. Never try and…
Written by Jennette McCurdy and published by Simon & Schuster . This was a painfully hard read. It's an incredible book for how candid and honest it is, how it goes plainly over horrific events in the life of someone who is obviously broken but aware of their brokenness and on the path to becoming someone better. The amount of work done by the author that has made the writing and publishing of…
How it feels to get an AI email from a friend What this did feel like was, it felt as if my friend had buzzed their secretary over the intercom and barked at them to send me a letter, signed “R. Jeeves on behalf of ——————.” It felt like getting a birthday card with only the prewritten message inside, and no added well-wishes from the wisher’s own pen. An item off the shelf, paid for and handed…
Want to be happier? Sleep. Want to be more productive? Sleep. Want to be more creative? Sleep and dream. Want to be healthier? Sleep more. Want to protest? Sleep instead of working yourself to death, dream instead of mindlessly, endlessly consuming, slow down as much as you can. Want to sleep? Don’t let anyone or anything stop you. Find a comfortable spot and do it right now. Never deny yourself…
I’ve had this paragraph on the home page of my personal website for a while now: Disconnected from social media, but will always answer an email. My retreat from social media was gradual and uneventful. I left Facebook so long ago that I barely remember what I used it for. I left Instagram well before it became the weird jumble of videos, shorts and occasionally photos it is today. People trying…
Written by Frédéric Gros and published by Verso . There's a lot to love about this book. Recounting the lives of writers, thinkers and philosophers in the context of their walking habits. Walking as protest against capitalism, consumerism and authority, as an act of civil disobedience. Walking as meditation, as giving oneself completely to the here and now. But there's also a kind of drudgery to…
There has been a persistent tension within me that I've found challenging to reconcile or resolve. This tension revolves around the idea of creating a productivity app. The thought keeps circling in my mind, analyzed and detailed in an ephemeral manner. I do have an Obsidian canvas, but it only captures a portion of what's in my mind. Inevitably, I'm faced with the prospect of actually building…
Written by Claire Dederer and published by Knopf . Claire Dederer started from a question: what to do about the art of monstrous men? Across the pages and across the years it took her to write this book, she kept poking, digging, cutting into the question, into herself, into some deeply uncomfortable truths. The result is some of the most funny, insightful, heartbreaking non-fiction (or should…