It’s been a busy two weeks, filled with work at Beezwax and solid progress on personal projects.

Reading

In the past two weeks, I wrapped up La Hija del Delta (Delta's Daughter) by Alejandra Bruno and La sombra de un jinete desesperado (The Shadow of a Desperate Rider) by Juan Mattio.

Oh, and my copy of Incerto arrived 💪

La Hija del Delta by Alejandra Bruno

It’s a good read, although I struggled a bit with the beginning, I eventually got into it. The post-apocalyptic imagery doesn’t add much new, but the vivid scenes of the Delta are engaging, and there’s a sense of light that suggests an alternative to the wild post-capitalist world. The only downside is that the story doesn’t linger long enough to create the coziness I crave. It’s a bit disappointing, as I think that quality could have given the novel a unique touch, but it doesn’t fully develop this as a central theme.

La sombra de un jinete desesperado by Juan Mattio

This collection of essays blends literature, social critique, mental health, and more. I devoured it. The casual but thoughtful style kept me hooked and introduced me to authors, works, and ideas that resonated with me.

As a committed Newportonian, I’m going to dig into why these ideas resonated, but I’ll save that for a more thorough review.

I haven’t had the time to fully reflect on these books, so I haven’t written a review for them on the blog yet.

Writing

Felix Bruzzone’s Short Story Workshop started. The first meeting was an introduction, with discussions on the stories he shared and an overview of our first assignment.

The first exercise involved a brainstorming technique to spark story ideas. I won’t spoil the details out of respect for Felix’s workshop.

Through this exercise, I found a concept I enjoyed exploring. It was intriguing to see how a “mundane” idea could become personally meaningful. I used to have a cynical attitude towards exercises like this, but I’ve been unlearning that, and it paid off this time.

Felix’s feedback was very helpful. I’m still deciding whether to share the drafts with his comments here or wait until the end to post the whole process. I’ll make a decision soon.

SaaS

For simplicity, I’ll call this section "SaaS" going forward.

I completed The SaaS Launchpad course by Rob Walling. It was a great guide for structuring a SaaS launch, clarifying what to focus on and in what order.

Mastermind

In our recent Mastermind call, Richard shared his project, 29 Loaves, which got me thinking about trying something small and grounded when we move to Mar del Plata.

I committed to making a decision about Cuentitos Studio by our next meeting, so I set aside time to reflect on it.

Cuentitos Studio Clarity Session

When I’m stuck and feel like rational thinking or brutal honesty might help, I sit down with my Bullet Journal, distraction-free.

I did this for Cuentitos Studio, and here’s what I concluded:

• I’ve lost confidence in my original vision for Cuentitos Studio, and I don’t feel a strong market pull or personal drive to create it.
• It’s a big project for middleware that I’m not sure could sustain a business.

Nico Saraintaris suggested repositioning it as a tool for publishers or writers to add interactive fiction to their marketing. Not a bad idea and a potential future direction.

I outlined the work needed to pivot the project and create a minimal viable product (MVP):

• Add variable configuration options.
• Add publishing capabilities.
• Include color and font customization.

This setup would allow an author or publisher to share interactive fiction with their audience.

But…

Will I Continue with Cuentitos Studio?

I decided to follow my intuition and try something simpler before investing more into Cuentitos Studio.

I had another idea on standby: Soloist.

Soloist

Soloist is a publishing platform integrating an optimized landing page, blog, mailing list, and social media syndication.

It’s designed for solo independent consultants.

The concept is to enable them to build a knowledge base, share it with potential clients, and establish authority in their field.

The goal is to focus on essential features, avoiding unnecessary complexity. Simplify everything into a single, optimized experience, eliminating endless setup decisions for a blog + email list, etc.

I made a landing page as a first step, and now I’m working on content about the project and strategies for validation.

Music

Knotfest

We went to see Slipknot and Babymetal. It was a bit hot, but we didn’t suffer as much as at Lollapalooza. Knotfest had one stage, so there were no competing performances.

We arrived as Corbata’s new band was playing in the background, though I was too stressed about getting in to pay attention.

Babymetal started with rough sound quality, but it improved. They played the hits, and the show was fun, reminding me of our Tokyo trip, where we first discovered them.

Next was Meshuggah—a death metal band that, to me, was a bit monotonous. They sounded great, but their songs didn’t captivate me, so we took a food break.

Amon Amarth, the Viking death metal band, followed. Their charismatic lead, strong sound, and catchy songs (yes, death metal can be catchy) made it a great performance.

Slipknot closed the night, celebrating the 25th anniversary of their first album—which, honestly, is the only one I’ve played on repeat. Hearing the whole album made the show fantastic.

Bands I’ve Seen

I updated my list of live bands to add all the Knotfest acts, so I thought I’d upload it to the blog.

I only started this list five years ago, so it’s likely missing some smaller bands I saw in the 2000s, but that’s okay.

Visiting Fede Cabral

Lastly, I visited Fede Cabral at his new home and future studio, buying his new vinyl, Irrompible. We had a great chat, and it’s always nice to catch up.

If you don’t know Fede, he was the lead singer of the Argentine band Sancamaleon and now has a solo project you can check out on his Instagram.

If you’re in Buenos Aires, Fede is performing on Wednesday, November 27, at Lucille. Tickets here.

Garden

If the photo quality seems 600% better, it’s because Aldi took these photos for me since I didn’t have the time. Given the results, I’m considering making this a regular thing.

The chamomile, dandelions, and basil from the seedbed aren’t thriving. The marigolds are doing reasonably well.

I’m considering replanting the chamomile directly in a pot using a chamomile tea bag instead of seeds to see if it helps.

Infrastructure Changes

Despite having spent so many hours coding for work, I managed to finish migrating all my sites from DigitalOcean to the new server.

I’ve always been a hands-on person, but I’m reaching a point where I don’t want to spend as much time on server setup and maintenance. Dokku has made this much easier, and I’m thrilled with the outcome.

It even sparked ideas for automation in a project I’m considering for Soloist.

NAS

The NAS at home started showing errors, so I turned it off. It’s a bummer since we use it as a media hub for Plex and for backups. I’m waiting for the budget to settle before purchasing two new 20TB drives for a RAID1 setup.

With these and Dropbox’s auto-sync, I might be able to phase out S3 for backups, which is quite pricey.