Just Some Code

Daily blogging gives you a time capsule. After 500 daily posts, I can start revisiting any date and see my thoughts: #1. One year ago, I wrote my notes from James Altucher’s Skip the Line. It debunks the idea of 10,000 hours for mastery. My favorite learning strategy is the 10,000 experiments rule. Instead of counting hours, run experiments: Quick and cheap actions that teach you something. With that idea in mind, I ran my February book experiment. #2. Two years ago, I wrote about my experience…

This writer made me say, “Wow! I want to do that too.” I don’t know how I landed on Craig Mod’s site. But I binge-read his site and his yearly membership roundups for 2 hours. Craig walks around Japan, shoots mini-documentaries, and writes fine-print books. He runs Special Projects, a membership program to support his projects. Documenting my life in books Craig has one horizon goal: Produce book projects until he dies. Without realizing it, I’ve set a similar goal. After burnout and a…

Last Sunday, I began Analog Sundays, my experiment in staying away from screens. To hold myself accountable, here’s what I did on screens: Read Bubbles Briefing Pay bills and do accounting Edit and publish yesterday’s post Watch a tutorial on shuffling cards I met the goal of keeping my online time under an hour. Here’s what I did offline: Laundry. Well, the washing machine did it. Breathwork after lunch. Your stomach likes it when you’re relaxed. Dishes without podcasts. What used to feel like…

It was his third visit to Colombia. But he will never forget this one: it was his best and wildest birthday. Mateo turned 33. He’s from the U.S. and, fortunate enough, married to a Latina. At the party, he was the only one wearing the yellow jersey of the national soccer team. Everybody else wore white sports clothes. As family members and friends arrived, they all greeted and congratulated Mateo. He doesn’t speak Spanish, except for a few words: “Hola,” “gracias,” and a few dish names. That’s…

I’ve been stalking Derek Sivers. OK, I’m not a psycho. Stalking writers is part of my reading strategy. I already read Anything You Want. Binge-watching Derek’s interviews taught me about his succint writing style and his trick for better sentences. This time, I finished Useful But Not True. Here’s what I learned: #1. Perspectives are like timezones. They feel absolutely true, but that’s only for you. #2. Rules are someone’s perspective. Like kids, you can play with the rules. The floor is…

After a rabbit hole of Derek Sivers’s interviews and books #1. How to choose which project to start next. Consider me/others/time. Is it something that interests you? Something others will find helpful? Is there a deadline? #2. For multipotentialites: “You can do anything, but you can’t do everything. You have to decide. If you don’t decide, you get nothing.” #3. Perspectives are like timezones. They feel 100% true for you. But most people have a different one. #4. The more you consume, the…

Hey there. Here are 4 links I thought were worth sharing this week: #1. Quick coding tip: Never push keys or passwords to public GitHub, especially if you’re a cybersecurity agency. #2. If trying to keep up with AI news is daunting, here’s a 5-minute recap of the last 6 months of AI landscape (5min). #3. Your network is your net worth, right? But networking doesn’t have to be complicated. Here’s the best way to network (3min). #4. Looking for a fun, quick weekend experiment? What about…

“If this works, it’s going to be huge.” I’ve heard at least a couple of versions of that line in the last two months. A friend with an app idea in the EdTech space. Another friend with an idea in healthcare insurance. None of them had a single client or line of code written. Sharing an idea before executing it releases the same chemical soup in your brain as accomplishing something. It feels like you’ve already done it. Except it’s all in your head. The real danger isn’t getting your idea…

Don’t let a dying battery kill your best ideas. The other day, I caught up with an ex-coworker. He shared a valuable story that deserved its own post. I grabbed my phone to jot down some ideas, but its battery was dying. I needed the phone to order a ride, so it wasn’t an option. I didn’t want to forget the conversation’s nuggets. Thank goodness I took a napkin from the cafe where we met. That’s where I outlined the post. Always have something to write: a notebook or even a napkin. Often pen…

The activities that truly energize me never involve a screen. Even when done mindfully, after using social media I don’t get up thinking: “Wow! I needed that. It felt so refreshing.” After a few minutes of scrolling, I feel the urge to rush. My brain speeds up—in the worst way, not like when I’m in the zone. A week away from social media taught me I’m another junkie. I thought I could control it, but nope! It requires a lot of drive to resist the buzzes and whistles of social media. To keep…

Another victory for the IndieWeb and my blog: My first “post interview.” Wait! Did I just invent a word? Last week, Ismael from Turkey found my blog and reached out. After some emails, I accepted his invitation to answer his questions. Here are Ismael’s questions—I’m answering in a single-take with no editing, apart from fixing typos and adding a few links: 1) Can you introduce yourself? Hi, I’m Cesar from Colombia (not Columbia). A lifelong learner, I’ve been coding for over 10 years now. I’ve…

Blogging isn’t dead. OK, it is dead if blogging means stuffing posts with keywords to chase Google rankings and ad profits. But personal blogs have always been there, away from the buzz, whistles, and follower counts of social media. Recently, Minifeed, Bubbles, and other aggregators have made blog discovery easier. And lately, David from Forking Mad has encouraged the IndieWeb to start conversations. In the last week, I’ve received more emails than usual: Brine sharing his new feed aggregator.…

Hey there. Here are 4 links I thought were worth sharing this week: #1. Like construction workers and athletes with short-lived careers, we may be the first generation of software engineers without lifetime careers (5min) #2. Apart from stealing the fun part, here’s a good list of reasons not to use AI (14min). #3. If you want to learn a new subject on your own, here’s a field guide to learning (8min). When there’s too much noise and AI slop, simply searching on Google or YouTube isn’t enough.…

“Godfaaather,” he called out from his balcony. I’m my best friend’s oldest son’s godfather. Tradition says if anything happens to my best friend, God forbid, I become his son’s paternal figure. I hope I don’t have to play that role ever. The notebooks… I’m visiting before the school year starts. I’m bringing my godson some hero-themed notebooks—he adores superheroes. The first two pages of every notebook are full of superhero stickers. As soon as he opened them, he set aside a couple of…

Last February, I started a book experiment. I turned my most popular self-help post into a mini book. If you’re curious, here’s the final result: 10 Surprisingly Simple Ideas That Changed My Life And Could Change Yours Too. The success metric was 1 organic sale. By that definition, the experiment was a success. I announced it on Friday Links and it made 1 direct sale on Gumroad. Then I gave away some copies and it got its first Amazon review. To keep the experiment going, I tried two promotion…

To learn to write, dissect the best fiction writers. That’s a lesson from James Altucher, one of my favorite writers. I’ve been doing it with opening lines. This time, I read Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons through writer’s eyes. Here’s how he writes flashbacks: #1. A situation, character, or object triggers a memory that takes you to the past. “Langdon wanted to say something to her, offer his sympathy. He too had once felt the abrupt hollowness of unexpectedly losing a parent. He remembered the…

After updating Visual Studio last week, I woke up with this error message: The local resource “C:/Some/Path/Somefile.Deps” doesn’t not exist. None of the projects inside my solution compiled. I cleaned it, recompiled it, and even restarted Visual Studio. None of that worked. The problem was a broken NuGet source left behind after running my digital decluttering plan. To honor the 20-min rule, buried in this StackOverflow answer was the solution: List all the Nuget sources with dotnet nuget list…

The right time to do something is when you don’t feel like doing it. If you don’t feel like going to the gym, that’s when you should go. Don’t feel like getting out of bed? That’s when you should count up to 3 and get up. Don’t feel like writing? That’s when you should do it. Today I didn’t feel like writing my daily post. To spice things up, I challenged myself to write this draft without looking at the text. I opened LibreOffice Writer, set the font to white, and wrote blindly. A small,…

Here’s May photo prompt from 100 word story and my story. Nullarbor Warning Sign. Photo by Chris Fithall on flickr.com When some friends came over and you had some beers… Every five minutes I asked, “Dad, when are we going to see kangaroos?” I was 5 or 6. I had read every kangaroo book in the library. My dad had rented a car. I didn’t care about Sydney and the Opera House. I only wanted to see kangaroos. I don’t remember where we were, but we heard, puff!…and the car stopped. OMG! Smoke…

Hey there. Here are 4 links I thought were worth sharing this week: #1. Coding sucks (9min) It’s not like building a house, but like jumping into a ship, nobody knows where it goes…And no, AI didn’t take our jobs. It was something else. #2. Isaac Asimov created three laws for robots to interact with humans. If you’ve watched I Robot, you already know them. And here are three inverse laws for humans to interact with AI (9min). #3. Did you know that Chrome installs a 4GB AI model (30min) without…

#1. Buy a domain and choose a professional handle. And no, a hacker-like handle isn’t cool. #2. Start that blog. Seriously! Write anywhere. You’re going to like it. #3. Open a brokerage account and start investing. Go with a broad market index fund and don’t worry about ups and downs. #4. Take care of your body. Go to bed early. Exercise. Eat the right food, in the right amount. #5. Don’t try to fit in. If you feel alone, there’s nothing wrong with you. Build a place where you fit in. #6. Don’t…

Search for “Zettelkasten” and you’ll drown in endless breakdowns of note types and apps. But the Zettelkasten method isn’t complicated. How to Make Notes and Write by Dan Allosso shows a simple way to adopt it. Here are five lessons I’ve learned from reading it: #1. Avoid the mere-exposure effect. Seeing a concept frequently doesn’t mean you understand it. You truly understand something when you write about it. Writing makes you think. #2. Read with a project in mind. Don’t extract everything…

Telling readers you don’t want to waste their time is already wasting it. Last week in a grocery line, I picked up a self-help book from the nearby shelves. In the introduction, the author said he liked getting straight to the point without wasting time. Then today I started a note-taking book. After listing two well-known note takers, the author gave the same disclaimer. Arrggg! What if, instead of opening your book or post with a disclaimer, you went directly to the point? That’s how you…

When facing a decision or hard choice: If it doesn’t make say “Hell yes,” say no. Credits to Derek Sivers. In past weeks, a journalist found my rules for AI coding. He invited for an interview to write a story about it. A story featuring me in a tech news site? “Hell yes.” After the interview, I had to send a photo of my ID, a professional headshot, and about a dozen of casual photos…plus some follow up via email. Photo of my ID? Casual photos? Were they training an AI or something? It wasn’t a…

To warm up my idea muscles and celebrate May 4th, here’s why Star Wars is the best saga: #1. A proven story. A constant fight between good and evil, light and darkness, bright side and dark side. We see that in almost all religions. #2. Full of action, alien species, locations, futuristic weapons. You’d never imagine how diverse life is in a galaxy far, far away. 3. A story for all family members. It’s a war saga, but no matter the battles, treason, and plots, there’s no blood or sex on screen.…

Recently, I’ve started to list interesting ideas I found over the week—to practice my 10-idea list habit. Here are 7 from the last week. #1. The Matthew effect. Inspired by a verse from the gospel of Matthew, recognition goes to already-recognized people. Visit social media and you’ll see it. #2. The one sentencing to death wields the sword. Or something like that. This comes from Game of Thrones. Decision makers should stay close to their decisions. #3. Don’t treat reading as background noise.…

Hey there. Here are 4 links I thought were worth sharing this week: #1. GitHub made it to the headlines with outages and Copilot pricing. Mitchell Hashimoto, creator of Vagrant and Ghostty, is already leaving GitHub (4min). He’s not the only one. But believe it or not, there was still open source before GitHub (13min). #2. I never used it, but a guy is trying to revive Friendster (3min), the first social media network. #3. The defense industry already faced cheaper alternatives, efficiencies…

80% of the time, coding is a performance. The other 20% is doing real coding. Performance means Scrum ceremonies, meetings, and JIRA: A meeting to present tickets for the next two weeks A meeting to answer questions from the previous meeting A meeting to watch someone enter a number in a text box. Read: poker planning and story points Meetings to watch someone move a ticket between JIRA lanes. Read: daily meetings A meeting about all the other meetings. Read: retrospective And when things go…

This is my submission for the IndieWeb Carnival May 2026. Dear coding, Our story didn’t start with love at first sight. You weren’t my first option. Sorry! But when we started to hang out, everything clicked. There was chemistry! First, it was a textbook on C/C++ in college. Then, it was a recipe catalog in PHP late at night. Then, it was Java. Then, our first adventure in the real world with C#. Then, building, fixing, growing—what others would call “passion.” I enjoyed the time we spent…

Constraints make you more creative. What better constraint than “solving the problem with what’s in your room”? That’s a line from Edwin H. Land, founder of Polaroid. I knew about it from this bookofjoe’s post. Before he had his own lab, Edwin snuck into his university lab after hours. Maybe that’s why he adopted that line. What about solving a problem with what’s in your head, library, and notes? It forces recall and sparks connections. It make us read and learn broadly. It help us build…