Updated 2025-02-22
Vancouver is cold and wet, so I have been riding my bike less and using public transit more. Either method takes me on average less than 15 minutes to get to work, making my mandated Return To Office 5 days a week much more bearable than it would be otherwise, so overall things are alright.
Riding my bike hasn't been bad, actually. I did it on the day that had peak snow conditions and had a blast even though the bike paths had not been cleared completely yet. It was one of the most beautiful sights I've ever seen, riding along a fresh-powdered and deserted seawall. The biggest negative of cycling right now is my lack of preparation: I need mittens. The gloves I've been using are not wind-proof enough. I even use them for snowboarding, but cycling is surprisingly more demanding due to the wind.
Speaking of snowboarding... wow I just love it. I love winter now. I've gone 7 times so far this season which is much more than I imagined. The learning curve is steep, but every day on the mountain brings me a feeling beyond words. At the very same bus stop where I arrive from work, I can hop on a bus and for $2.60 be on the mountain in 45 minutes. A living dream.
Among other recent adventures with my partner Aline, we finally tried two things that had been on our Vancouver bucket list for a while: a bike ride to Iona Terminal and a seaplane flight to Victoria. Both were even better than I hoped and we learned a lot from each experiment. Sharing these moments makes them all the more colorful and memorable. It's my greatest luck.
Updated 2025-03-16
Recently read Invisible Cities (10/10) and Playing Possum (9/10). Currently reading Paved Paradise. Next I'll have Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas. Recently watched Who Are You? (6/10) and The Neighbors' Window (8/10). Now watching Severance Season 2 (8/10), North of North (Season 1) (8/10) and Disclaimer Season 1 (6/10). Up next we have No Other Land.
For music, Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish remain dominating the rotation after their awesome concerts, but entering the mix is The Weekend.
This is more of a wishlist of things I'd like to be doing right now than a real reflection of what I'm actually doing, but it all starts with an aspiration. Writing these down also helps me to reflect: if these are the important things to me, what's stopping me from working on them?
(for now, I need to coalesce my thoughts on what this means)
I'm still working at AWS, with manageable levels of stress and off-hours work. The biggest challenge has been the same in the past years: aligning work that is interesting and fun with work that brings impact and recognition. This got a bit harder since I've started viying for a promotion to a Senior position, but at the end of the day I still prioritize doing cool stuff and doing it well even if a lot of it will end up invisible and delaying my career advancement. It's an uncomfortable situation at times, but it's the best compromise I've found in which I can taste the privilege of enjoying my craft while still accepting the condition of having to do whatever the organization decides. At the end of the day, it's an acceptable middle ground of having some cake and eating it too. The one unresolved aspect is working for Amazon, but I trick myself into not thinking about it too much - at least it's not Meta or Xitter, and I'm not working on anything ethically dubious, it's mostly boring products with scalability challenges.
I'm increasingly letting go of centralized social media, but I still want to be in touch with loved ones and like-minded people, so I migrated my online presence from to their respective federated alternatives: (Xitter to Mastodon, Instagram to Pixelfed, Goodreads to NeoDB). Being realistic, though, I know that the vast majority of the people in my life will not follow me there, so I'm also looking broadcasting my activity in more ways than federation. I'm currently experimenting with RSS, which will be a stepping stone towards a newsletter.
I've owned my domain and this website since 2019, but it never really took off because social media has been a much easier path to interact with people. This transition cost has decreased recently, so I'm ready to renew these efforts. This website is going to be the basis for the RSS feed and possibly the newsletter, so I'm back to shaping it up. This page is a big part of that.
In January 2025 I was able to get my Mastodon, Pixelfed and NeoDB activity merged into a single RSS feed (used to generate the updates on my home page). This was much easier than I thought and renewed my belief in the power of these open platforms.
Next steps: 1) Consolidate my writing on this project's notes about the fediverse and RSS 2) Investigate how to deliver newsletters with a curated selection of my updates; 3) Automate a new type of activity: additions or changes to my written material - like this page;
To read more: my journey towards an independent web.