2024-12-27 08:00:00
I’ve been summarizing my year privately for years, but I’ve never done it publicly. In previous years, my process for doing this looked like this:
And that was it. But this simple exercise helped me appreciate everything I had experienced so much more—which, fortunately, is a lot.
I always choose to live fully and intensely. Maybe it’s because I don’t know any other way, or maybe because life is so short that the thought of missing out on something terrifies me.
This year, for the first time in the past four years, I changed that system. I wanted to try something different, and at the beginning of the year, I stumbled upon an article by Steph Ango where he shared the 40 questions he asks himself every year. I loved them; they felt similar to the exercise I was already doing.
After answering those questions, I’ve come to some conclusions I’d like to share here:
”Those who seek calm are the ones who can’t find it. Those who want to improve their health are those who have lost it. People search for ways to sleep because, try as they might, they can’t manage to fall asleep and are all too familiar with the ceiling above their bed.”
That said, I like to wrap up this final newsletter of the year by sharing a few things I’ve really enjoyed:
“Real artists ship.” — Steve Jobs
“I make movies for me, and the audience is invited.” - Tarantino
“People try to do all sorts of clever and difficult things to improve life instead of doing the simplest, easiest thing— refusing to participate in activities that make life bad.” - Tolstoy
This year, I wrote 28 posts. Out of those 28, I focused a lot on sharing my reflections, but not as much on the day-to-day of trying to live off my own projects.
So, in 2025, you’ll see more of that. Additionally, based on the conclusions I’ve drawn this year, I’m going to try something new: starting a tea store. If you want to learn more, I plan to share the process in this newsletter—everything from the legal aspects to finding suppliers and all the challenges that come with it.
In addition to this, I’m working on my next software project, which will be launched next year. As I’ve mentioned many times in this newsletter, recommendations from real people are becoming increasingly important for maintaining sanity on the internet. I want to be part of this, which is why I’m creating a platform that allows you to easily share your own recommendations online, just like I did with Creare, for example.
There isn’t a specific solution for this, beyond using Wordpress, Webflow, or a few tools that require some technical knowledge, which not everyone has. I want to make it accessible to everyone, so let’s see if I can pull it off.
With all of this, I hope you’re having a wonderful Christmas. I’m very excited for the coming year, and I hope you are too. Thanks for reading me.
I’d love for you to write to me and share a bit about your plans for next year. I always enjoy reading those messages.
That’s all for now, happy 2025!
Talk soon.
Alberto
2024-12-20 08:00:00
When you want to create something, don’t plan based on data. Do it based on your interests, because nothing withstands challenges better than something you deeply want to learn. Nothing resists the voices telling you not to do it like a shield made of curiosity.
Is it a bad strategy? Maybe. Am I too naïve? Perhaps.
But I don’t know anyone who has truly succeeded in life (and I’m not talking in financial terms) by following data, chasing trends, or simply doing what works. Those things are fleeting and inevitably fade away. There’s nothing more enduring than the childlike curiosity to discover, to dive deeply, and to swim as far as your strength takes you.
Sure, the other paths might make you very wealthy, let you own luxury cars, or have a huge house, but I don’t think life is about that. Once you have financial security that frees you from worrying about making it to the end of the month, the real essence of life is living it.
It’s about experiencing as much as you can, hugging your loved ones as often as possible, and pursuing the things that call to you with irresistible force.
But life isn’t just about that. It’s also about finding a balance between being at peace with yourself and being good to others. That balance includes building discipline, taking care of your body and mind, and being ready to care for others when they need you. Ultimately, it’s about committing to things for the long haul.
And this is essentially my strategy for life. I’ve never chased something that didn’t interest me, and I never will. I don’t know if I’ll ever own one of those cars or massive houses, but I do know that most nights, I go to bed with a smile on my face—and it’s precisely because what I’m pursuing deeply matters to me.
And that’s something no one can take away from me.
See you soon,
Alberto
2024-11-15 08:00:00
Dear reader,
Last week, I was walking home in the morning—one of those mornings when there’s no one on the street, the kind I love. It was one of those mornings when you can hear even the smallest sounds, which sadly get lost amid the noise of cities.
When I got home, I posted this tweet:
I don’t know if it was subconscious, but when I wrote this, I realized it bore a striking resemblance to the four conditions Edgar Allan Poe sets out for happiness, which, to sum up, are:
the love of a woman, life outdoors, the absence of all ambition, and the creation of a new beauty
I think life is enjoyed more when you have no expectations of it. When you look at it with curious eyes and simply observe what happens to you from the outside. For many years, I was too foolish to think this way, stubbornly trying to control everything and plan even the unplannable.
Over the years, you learn not only that the love of a woman (or a man) is important, but that life is much more beautiful with company. It’s true that it sometimes brings problems, but more problems arise from living an unwanted solitude. Being able to have someone to call, someone to hug, and someone for whom you do things you might not do if you were alone in this world makes it worth surrounding yourself well and being endlessly grateful for it every day.
In an overstimulated society where we all have to be “successful” people, and social media makes us believe that this cardboard version of success is within reach, it places excessive pressure on us. This pressure pushes us to do things for that Instagram post or because it will bring us some advantage. When we let go of this false ambition and genuinely pursue a simpler life, that’s when we begin to discover the bright colors that small moments bring with them, and above all, we start to be more present.
And it’s in that new present that we begin to create, to express ourselves, and to do things simply because we want to, because they bring us moments of enjoyment. This is where you can tell something is genuine, that the person behind it isn’t doing it solely to get rich or to inflate their ego. They’re doing it for something more.
With all this, we must apply what Edgar Allan Poe and many others discovered long ago. Life isn’t in this newsletter, it’s not on your screen, and it’s not in your room or your house. It’s out there. And nothing eases life’s hardships more than watching rivers flow, leaves fall from trees, and the sun rise and set.
You only have this life, so all I can say is: live it. That’s a reminder for both you and me. Let’s not be trapped by the chains we sometimes place on ourselves. Live responsibly, with the responsibility to make the most of this fortunate moment you’ve had to be here in this world.
Regret things, make mistakes, and don’t chase fleeting pleasures. Learn to love if you don’t know how, and love deeply those around you—one day they won’t be by your side.
Never forget to make time for them and for yourself. Enjoy the little moments and don’t strive for more.
Don’t overcomplicate life; it should be simple.
See you soon,
Alberto
2024-11-08 08:00:00
I’ve always thought that the things we become obsessed with often stem from negative experiences. No one relentlessly seeks solutions to problems that don’t exist; that’s why no one becomes an expert in something they haven’t struggled with.
Those who seek calm are the ones who can’t find it. Those who want to improve their health are those who have lost it. People search for ways to sleep because, try as they might, they can’t manage to fall asleep and are all too familiar with the ceiling above their bed.
One reason I began writing was because I barely slept and thought too much. Writing became the perfect companion on those nights when sleep wouldn’t come. A way to capture the thoughts running through my head. And I believe it was through writing that I discovered it didn’t just help me—it made me fall in love with it.
Carlos Stro, a Spanish health educator, began to speak about how artificial light directly affects our health after losing a friend to cancer.
Viktor Frankl developed logotherapy after experiencing one of the most horrific realities—life in a Nazi concentration camp.
J.K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter when she was unemployed, a single mother, and dealing with a failed marriage. She used writing as an escape.
There are countless more stories like these.
That’s why the positive mantra of “find your passion” doesn’t resonate with me. We are shaped by our experiences, and because “no’s” often hurt more than “yes’s” bring joy, our negative experiences define us more than the positive ones.
No one became great without falling a thousand times. No one became strong without being knocked down over and over. No one came here with a promise of happiness; that’s an illusion of the fiercest capitalism.
Our only mission in life is simply to live it. To learn to survive the winters, the blows, and the falls. That’s what we became experts in, and that’s why we’re still here. We learned to come together and to work as a team. We discovered that companionship was better for our survival, and we created love. We found that our strengths, combined with those of others, made us invincible, and we held onto that truth.
Because happiness is too fragile to cling to. And perhaps too simple. Because experiencing the full range of emotions, no matter how difficult, is wonderful. Because it’s a miracle we’re alive. So let’s live—let’s enjoy those fleeting moments of happiness and face, with fear but without surrender, the experiences we encounter along the way, some bitter and some sweet.
Maybe in doing so, we’ll find ataraxia—and, with it, the answers to those questions that haunt us.
I’ve been wanting to shift the direction of Cantimplora Studio, my small services website, for a while now. Over the years as a freelancer, some people have asked me how to get clients. I wish I had an answer, but I don’t. The only thing that’s worked for me is word of mouth.
What I can tell you is something that, for someone like me, hasn’t worked: having a website. That’s why I’ve gone back to the roots of what this place was always meant to be:
Cantimplora Studio is a small, one-person studio focused on building thoughtful software and curating captivating content from the Weird Wide Web.
I really enjoy working alone, but at some point in my life, I’d like to have a team of people who are better than me, with whom I can create much more ambitious things.
That’s why this move makes sense. I want to make Cantimplora the epicenter of that—like the town square of my small city.
This change was inspired by Good Enough. If you don’t know them yet, you should definitely check them out.
With thousands of websites curated by bots, pages flooded with ads that require you to be quick with your mouse just to read, and apps that constantly vie for your attention, I believe we need more websites like this.
Websites made by people who create software because they genuinely enjoy what they’re doing. And by people who curate content because they love what they’re curating. From humans, for humans.
As I wrote before, technology should be a facilitator of our lives. And our life is out there. Our life is our family, our friends, and the experiences we perceive.
That’s a bit of what I want with this—to ensure that everything I create serves as a facilitator, not a distraction.
That’s all for now. I’ll share more news soon in this newsletter.
2024-11-01 08:00:00
Today, I’m excited to introduce a new section to my little newsletter: People More Interesting Than Me.
About a year ago, I discovered mood.camera on Reddit while I was in Greece. A camera app that emulates film camera filters sounded interesting, so I decided to give it a try. I really liked it—the results were impressive, and the app felt almost like using the phone’s native camera.
Some time after that, I received a message from Alex on WhatsApp, asking if he could use some of the photos I’d taken for his website, and that’s how we started talking. I’d been wanting to do written interviews with people I found interesting for a while, so I asked him.
And here we are, a few months later. My first guest, Alex Fox.
Hi! My name’s Alex Fox, I’m a developer from London and the creator of mood.camera.
I’ve been a keen photographer since I was a teenager, but my passion really came alive when I bought my first decent smartphone, a Samsung Galaxy S3. The fact that I could have such a capable camera and photo editing device in my pocket was super exciting. There was also a lot of innovation in the space at that time. Every year, phone cameras were getting better and better. Apps were getting more advanced. I would happily spend hours capturing and tweaking photos, trying to squeeze the most I could out of the phone I had at the time. Even thought I had a decent DSLR, I always came back to my phone camera. You can’t deny the cliche of the “best camera is the one you have with you” but somehow the photos felt more special, like you were defying the norm.
But more recently, despite advances in resolution and low light performance, I’ve felt less inspired to take photos with my iPhone. In the quest for ever sharper and “perfectly exposed” images, it feels like photos have lost their character. I also felt fatigued from my editing flow. Capturing photos in ProRAW was great in theory, but I felt overwhelmed with 100s of photos to edit. The once “fun” point-and-shoot phone camera is edging ever closer to the DSLR experience.
I tried a bunch of different apps to try and bring that character back into the iPhone camera but none of them quite hit the mark. That’s when I began to envision my ideal camera app and around this time last year, I started building a simple prototype, which would become mood.camera.
I’ve been developing apps for a decade so the core design and technology came fairly naturally. The two biggest technical challenges were building the image pipeline and balancing the user experience.
My main goal was to create an app that captured photos with character, moving away from the over-sharpened, hyper-real look that iPhone photos often have. I looked to film for inspiration and spent a lot of time researching the subtitles of grain, colour and other photographic artefacts. I wasn’t looking to replicate film exactly, but I could see how these visual properties gave the photos physicality and feeling. Before touching the code I experimented with different techniques to create these filmic looks within Photoshop. Then, when I was happy with the look, I would recreate that image pipeline in the app. It was quite a long process, as after each iteration I would go out and take some photos to test the look. In the end, though, I am really happy with the results. Sure, it’s not a 100% replication of “real film”, but that was never the intention.
My second objective was to create a simple user experience that challenged the typical photographer’s mindset which leans heavily on editing and control. The ability to capture and edit photos, with greater and greater control, is on one hand incredible, but it’s overwhelming. It’s easy to get caught up in micro-decisions, tweaking every detail until the photo no longer feels spontaneous. I wanted to challenge that.
I made two controversial decisions. One, no live preview of your filter. Two, no editing - all the filmic effects and colour profiles are baked into the photo. You might think, yeh just like real film cameras, but it wasn’t just for the sake of nostalgia. I was more interested in the impact that it has on the psychology of taking a photo. For example, when I was testing other apps, I found that having a live preview meant I was more likely to either spend a minute flipping through filters, or at worst not even take the photo because it didn’t look quite right. I wanted to create an experience where you didn’t think too much, just compose the photo and snap. I also found that, for me, editing had the tendency to make it feel like my photos were never “finished”. With apps like VSCO offering 100s of filters, how am I meant to decide which one looks best?
I know it won’t be for everyone, and I’m not saying that editing photos is a bad thing at all, but there’s something liberating about accepting a photo, imperfections and all. Some of my favourite images have come from unexpected “happy accidents.” By limiting control, I’ve rediscovered the fun in iPhone photography, and that’s the experience I wanted to share with others.
I’m actually adding another small, feature in the next few weeks to curb a bad habit me and many other photographers have. I’m not sure if you’ll have heard the term, but it’s called “chimping”. Essentially it’s the compulsion to check what the photo looks like immediately after you take it. The new, optional, setting will disable the gallery button for 60 seconds after taking the photo. I’m looking forward to turning it on for myself, to break that habit.
Yeh, I feel really lucky to have such an engaged community, they really help to give meaning to my work. One challenge is that people are very suspicious of anyone trying to market something in these communities, which I completely understand. For example, I originally posted on Reddit looking for beta testers, and it got such a big response that people were commenting things like, “The developers obviously paid people to post positive comments to this post”. With that in mind, I think it’s important to be as transparent as possible, and tell your story. If you want people to spend the time trying your product you need to give them a good reason to.
It’s also important to talk to your users. Spend the time replying to their questions and engaging with the content they post. If you’ve built a product that truly resonates with yourself, it should come naturally. I like nerding out on photography and technology so talking to like minded people about it is part of the fun!
On the Netflix, I’ve been re-watching “Midnight Mass”, a fantastic horror series. Honestly, anything by Mike Flanagan is worth watching. And if you’re into cars, I highly recommend checking out “Revelations” by Hagerty on YouTube. It’s a brilliant series that takes you through the history of some iconic cars.
To switch off before bed, I’ve been reading some cyberpunk / Sci-Fi books, with “Snow Crash” by Neal Stephenson being one of my recent favourites. Highly recommend.
A few pictures I took with mood:
2024-10-25 08:00:00
I want people in my life who challenge me, who make me uncomfortable.
I want people who are free, who think independently and make me question what is right and wrong.
I want people who are spontaneous, who love sincerely, with the courage to speak the truth to my face.
I want people who are ambitious, driven to build a life that reflects their idea of perfect happiness. People who choose the right path, even when it’s the hardest one.
I want people who feel fear but don’t let it hold them back. I want them to inspire me to face my own fears and be brave.
I want people who don’t seek external validation, who think for themselves, and see the world in their own way.
People who live without fear, with a passion to embrace the fullness of this incredible experience called life.
Fall is my favorite time of year. After a brutally hot summer, the crispness in the morning air has brought me back to life. There’s something special about autumn sunrises and sunsets—they seem more beautiful than usual.
Lately, I’ve been a bit obsessed with clouds. Capturing photos of them. Appreciating their beauty. Here are some of my favorite shots:
After my recent obsession with clouds, let me share another of my particular quirks. With so many projects, I have multiple email accounts spread across different platforms, and I’ve always wanted to unify them somehow.
After extensive research, I settled on Fastmail as my solution. Overall, I like it—everything is centralized now—but I still miss the Gmail interface. To me, Gmail and Calendar are the best interfaces Google has, and probably the only ones Google these days.
Just yesterday, I stumbled upon something interesting. By using Cloudflare with Gmail, you can configure infinite subdomains in Gmail, all while managing them from your [email protected] account.
I’m going to give it a try and will let you know how it goes, but it feels like I’m one step closer to returning to my beloved Gmail interface.
