“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. [...] A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while a poor man
Let me tell you a story about hype. In 1922, Thomas Edison declared motion pictures would make textbooks extinct. Fast forward to 2025—we’ve got AI tutors in every pocket, yet students still struggle with fractions. Surprised? You shouldn’t be. For over a century, we’ve played this
As I go through some personal wrestles this year, I made a conscious decision to rekindle my habit of reading a little bit each day. There are two books I have been moved by to put these ideas on paper: Augustin's Confessions and Nietzsche’s Eccentric Homo. At
Considerations: This Might Not Be for Everyone As we're getting more serious about becoming a product design company with Albastru Creative, a massive office reorganisation was in order. To effectively prototype and iterate through designs, I need a variety of components, which I’ve been slowly accumulating—mechanical
I use a label maker to organise the space around me at the office. We often work with digital assets, but physical assets management is just as essential to enable human ingenuity to thrive. Since my business crossed into tangible product design, this is a product I interact with often.
My buying philosophy has changed over time in no small part because of disappointments with products. These are my current thoughts on the matter, with a small use case. Hope you find this useful in your own buying decisions. What stayed the same? The frugality of pragmatism behind purchase decisions.
Context: * I love small, useful tools - in this category, the HOTO precisions screwdriver is a delight EXCEPT... Problem: * The body of the screwdriver GRINDS against the cap, making the experience annoying enough to want me to pick up a different tool. Solution: * Add a spacer in (somewhere), so that
In business and economics, you'll often hear about organisations which are "too big to fail". If you've been around the 2007 financial crisis, you'll know what this refers to - something integral and vital to a healthy economy, so much so that
Context: * I work with professionals of the highest caliber, very busy and very involved * We need ways to communicate effectively, especially as we make plans (which is tedious, by default) Problem: * The templates I've worked with don't really allow for easy visualisation of the uninterrupted flow
Everyone’s favourite topic is the same. Once mastered how to tap into this, your conversations naturally transition from the boring (when you find yourself talking about the weather) and the awkward (when you struggle to keep the conversation alive). You'll also move away from overthinking, stressing about
Context: * MacBook (rightly) goes to sleep often * This means some of my remote sessions get terminated, causing errors * There are times when I'd like the screen to turn off and the MacBook to lock, but not go to sleep * For this I use a free app/ utility called
I've been a friend of problems my whole life, especially those small annoyances that we are most likely to put up with for longer than necessary. I smile in the face of those, they add a certain degree of excitement and playful meaning. If I can credit a