Todor Vlaev

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 17:36:01 +0200

📓 That first bike ride in spring 😮‍💨 But super excited for all that is to come 🚴

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 17:57:00 +0200

📓 Last week tasted pu’er for the first time. And tbh I’m surprised I’m quite enjoying it. Today another first - aged Liu Bao. Seems I’ve discovered dark tea as my equivalent for black coffee in the world of tea.

Sat, 14 Feb 2026 14:31:47 +0200

💾 Time to close this one up. Saying goodbye to my Ghost S1 build named pequeno. I think I’ll name this one chonky. Next up, fan curves.

Wed, 14 Jan 2026 21:15:27 +0200

💾 Audio books are not my thing. I do listen to podcasts though, so I figured I’d give non-fiction audio books a try again. The challenge is “highlighting” for future reference. Just found that Snipd supports uploading own files (DRM-free) and it’s amazing! Snipd → Readwise → Obsidian 👌

Sun, 11 Jan 2026 12:28:50 +0200

📓 I’ve been lagging behind with my yearly review of 2025 but just completed it. In the spirit of micro habits and not overthinking a grand blog post, if I shared just one of my takeaways it would be this one:

⏳ There is no need to rush, but do use the time you have

Sat, 10 Jan 2026 16:05:03 +0200

💾 Ouch, now was not the time for my RAM to start bugging out. 💸

Mon, 08 Dec 2025 19:17:07 +0200

💻 “Good engineering management” is a fad

⁠⁠The conclusion here is clear: the industry will want different things from you as it evolves, and it will tell you that each of those shifts is because of some complex moral change, but it’s pretty much always about business realities changing.⁠⁠⁠⁠ If you take any current morality tale as true, then you’re setting yourself up to be severely out of position when the industry shifts again in a few years, because “good leadership” is just a fad.

The argument about the morality tale feels a bit misshaped and this is what I take the biggest issue with. Agreed - business realities drive what situational management could be effective. Presenting leaders as simple vessels or rather mercenaries of the morality of the day feels reductive. Being adaptable and effective is one thing, lack of own moral compass is another.

Nevertheless, excellent breakdown of evergreen EMs skills. Absolutely worth a read even if you don’t buy the complete narrative.

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 20:48:46 +0200

📓 Just watched Dune: Part 2. And even adaptation issues aside, I’m thoroughly disappointed with it. Beautiful but felt rushed and shallow. I wished I liked it so much.

Mon, 06 Oct 2025 14:58:58 +0200

💾 People dream of multi-user support on iPad… I don’t think macOS has its shit together either. I constantly run into annoying issues with the shared home laptop. E.g. external drives mounting for the wrong user, networking issues (VPN or other weirdness). No problems with a single user. #endofrant

Sun, 14 Sep 2025 18:30:17 +0200

📓 So proud of Finland’s team in the basketball europeans 🇫🇮🏀. A dramatic loss to Greece in the bronze medals game. The final seconds reinforced the display of full dedication and maximum effort throughout the whole tournament.

Fri, 05 Sep 2025 20:34:56 +0200

📓 Nice surprise on TV. Tell me what is your favorite movie and why is it Terminator 2? 🦾

Sun, 17 Aug 2025 18:23:49 +0200

📓 Happy with what’s become my staple weekend bike ride this summer. Perfect weather and just bliss riding through Helsinki. I also love its shape. 🫶

Tue, 12 Aug 2025 10:05:27 +0200

🎮 Made the leap to SteamOS on the ROG Ally. The sleep functionality is simply amazing. This was my main motivation, aiming to reduce friction in just picking the Ally up. Looking forward to what MS will do with the streamlined handheld OS, as I’d rather have Game Pass as well if I can.

Thu, 22 May 2025 20:26:35 +0200

💾 Excited about Obsidian introducing Bases core plugin! I’m hopeful it will replace Dataview in my vaults since my use cases are simple. As a rule, I aim to keep the list of community plugins as short as possible and rely on built-in functionalities.

Mon, 19 May 2025 17:21:58 +0200

📓 After getting used to green tea as my daily driver, brewing anything at higher temp just feels barbarian. Ranting while waiting for my ginger lemon infusion to cool off to humane levels. 🍵

Tue, 22 Apr 2025 20:37:59 +0200

🎮 Had an extra day off after Easter and put it into some Godot tinkering. I’m taking my first steps and I’m working on a top-down twin-stick shooter (think Hotline Miami). It’s rewarding to spend hours figuring out simple things 😅 I added initial shooting of bullets with collisions and sounds. 💥🔫

Sat, 19 Apr 2025 15:09:13 +0200

📓 An amazing spring day for a bike ride 🚴Weather is shifting between sunny and overcast, extremely pleasant. Rode through Helsinki’s central park North-South axis - 20k of 100% bike-friendly route. Pit stop at my ex-local bar for a non-alc beverage and looping back.

Tue, 18 Mar 2025 20:52:41 +0200

🎮 During this Steam spring sale I finally got Elden Ring. I generally bounce off Soulslike games pretty quickly, so I was apprehensive. Taking my time exploring the first area and enjoying it. I still expect to rage quit the game on a mandatory boss, but I’m already better for playing it.

Tue, 04 Mar 2025 23:00:37 +0200

📓 I inhaled Running Point over the last 2 evenings. 📺 Helped me decompress after relatively hectic work days. Laughter is the best medicine.

Sun, 02 Mar 2025 21:49:57 +0200

🎮 I thought I needed Parsec’s subscription as I had 2 annoying problems with the free version when streaming to my Ally. 1) My desktop display would turn on and 2) I need to disable HDR. Solved both today in a decent enough way, so I’ll save a few bucks. The monitor can be turned off via an app and I managed to set up a taskbar shortcut for disabling HDR with AutoHotkey. Still a couple of clicks before starting a game, but certainly worth it for the savings.

📓 Engaging with your Personal Knowledge Management System

Sun, 23 Feb 2025 12:25:58 +0200

At the beginning of the year I started working on improving my note taking setup in Obsidian. I dove (again) into personal knowledge management systems, Zettlekasten, atomic notes, etc. I’m not too dogmatic about any of these topics but enjoy learning about them and incorporating what resonates in my note taking.

I haven’t posted on my blog in a bit. So, I decided to dip into my Zettlekasten-ish cards and lower the barrier for posting by sharing what I’ve already written.

🗃️ Easy entry points to a PKMS are key to engagement

Engaging with a Personal Knowledge Management System (PKMS), e.g. one based on Zettlekasten, could be overwhelming. Once a PKMS grows it can be challenging to decide how to work on it, as it may feel like a giant unorganized mess. The creator of Zettlekasten used index cards with potential entry points to his system. The index cards were not excessive, as once you enter the system you could quickly traverse it in unexpected and expanding directions via links.

Thus the main idea here is that easy entry points to the PKMS are key to engaging with it. Having many threads to grab and enter the system removes a huge point of friction and potential procrastination.

In my personal system, potential entry points include:

🏠 Home note which aggregates a lot of the following entry points
📔 Daily notes in Journal
🌐 Maps of Content (MoCs)
⛵ Boat notes - floating notes of unshaped thoughts, ideas, questions, etc.
🗂️ Unreviewed sources, such as articles, podcasts, etc.
🌱 Sprout cards in need of more fleshing out to become evergreen notes

Thu, 16 Jan 2025 19:17:06 +0200

📓 A few days ago I stopped drinking coffee for a while to give my sleep quality a boost. I’m bummed at how brutal caffeine withdrawal is. This is only strengthening my resolve to skip coffee for longer. Eventually I’d to return to a cup a day. ☕️ Right now I sleep better and function worse. 🤦🏻‍♂️

Sun, 12 Jan 2025 20:11:07 +0200

💻 Unexpected Anti-Patterns for Engineering Leaders — Lessons From Stripe, Uber & Carta

People want metrics to show reality. They want them to show the truth. But metrics are only partly about showing the truth. The other half is about educating people, to inform their mental model about how the truth works.

This is a constructive approach to metrics. Measurement is traditionally a contentious topic due the many ways it could go wrong. However, even the wrong kind of metric could be useful for learning and generating insight. The key premise is to act, learn and move forward.

Sun, 12 Jan 2025 11:30:17 +0200

📓 I’m the kind of person who’ll remember a couple-of-years-old Reddit thread and go post an update. It ain’t much but it’s honest work.

Thu, 09 Jan 2025 23:29:04 +0200

📓 I’m trying to loosen up the rigidity I feel in my note organization in 💾 Obsidian. I have a misc directory, but “misc” doesn’t resonate with “everything and anything”. Today I came up with something that does. Behold 🗺️ Atlas / 🌊 Ocean. Naming game is strong.