Clever Laziness

Archive

2023

6 posts

Data Hoarding and the Death of Collecting

It's easy to lose sight of the physical relationships we once had with the media we consume in the digital age. The ease with which we can collect and store data has altered our relationship with media and how we organize it. We can reclaim this relationship by developing better systems for organizing and prioritizing information.

Tools of the Trade

A Pen Addict episode discussed the importance of having the right tools for optimal productivity and simple elegance to them. Here's a list of the most important tools I use every day as a web developer.

Surfing The Old Web

I was given open access to the internet at a young age back in 1999-2002. It was the early web. A digital garden where anyone could express their creativity with a hand-crafted digital persona, often completely disconnected from their true selves. And I miss the sense of discovery more than anything. But in today's hyper-connected web, there are still a few places where you can still experience this feeling.

Back to Blogging

Blogging has been something I've struggled to do consistently for longer than a few months at a time. But as I've gotten older and my relationship with the internet has matured, I've developed a healthier relationship with the online communities I frequent. And I think I'd love to share more of my thoughts.

2022

5 posts

Better Coffee, Better Life. Papa Juan.

I come from a long line of coffee lovers. My ancestral land in Central America has been growing delicious coffee for centuries. I, on the other hand, am stuck looking for sub-par coffee from some overpriced online vendor that claims to have _the best coffee known to mankind_ for the low price of $39.99/bag.

Rediscovering A Love for Gaming

I recently resurfaced a nostalgia for my childhood gaming days. And thought maybe I should do something about it and hunt down the stuff I used to play with when I was a kid.

Spreadsheets Revolutions

I was dissatisfied with the current bookmarking solutions out there, so I decided to make a custom one instead. This started with a myriad of Airtable bases and then —for some stupid reason— I decided to roll my own hosted database.

Owning Your Data

When your data is the source of revenue, whoever has it will do anything to protect it and reassure you that it is best placed in their hands. But when it isn't at risk of being lost, it's being utilized to violate your privacy.

2021

2 posts

2021: I forgot what happened...

After a rough year, 2021 was shaping up to be a rough one as well. And, for all intents and purposes, it was. But somehow I cannot recall much about it. Every day was more or less the same.

The WET Codebase

Early in our careers, we're exposed to several principles which are thought of as hard rules one must abide by. And while constraints can yield innovation, they shouldn't be at the cost of having a maintainable codebase.

2020

4 posts

March Notes

Most of us are spending a lot more time at home than usual. I'm used to spending weeks indoors without seeing the light of day. Although being told I can't go out makes things far more stressful for some reason.

February Notes

So much happened in such a short amount of time. I've occupied myself with work to the point that I hardly did anything else but code this month. But, I still managed to squeeze in some interesting stuff.

January Notes

This was a solid start to the Year of Focus. I've been working hard on two things this month: optimizations to the site and cleaning up my feeds (podcast and RSS).

Year of Focus

Last year's theme was a success. This year, I want to take advantage of the extra time I carved for myself and focus on the things that matter.

2019

3 posts

Spreadsheets Reloaded

In this second installment of Spreadsheets, I want to detail my attempt at making a database for all my lists. I don't recommend this approach; there are plenty of more user-friendly solutions to this problem. But that's no fun.

Spreadsheets

I like lists. I make them all the time to help me keep track of just about anything I need to know. After some time, these became spreadsheets. And now, it's a sizable amount of Airtables.

Year of Quality

Every year, the guys over at the Cortex podcast come up with a theme that sets an overarching idea guiding their decisions. That got me thinking of some recent media consumption changes I've made recently.

2017

1 post

On Procrastinating

For a lot of us, procrastinating is the norm and getting some work done is the accomplishment of the day. I have no idea how to solve that problem. And that's not what this post is about. But let's talk about it anyways.