Alberto Gallego

A chat about curiosity, imperfection, and knowing when enough is enough

Thu, 27 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A few days ago, İsmail sent me an email asking if he could send me some questions to answer for his Turkish-language blog. I really liked the questions and thought they would fit well here on my blog too, as they are all related to the topics I discuss here. You can find the original interview here.

Could you introduce yourself?

My name is Alberto, and I really enjoy making apps and writing. I’m naturally curious, so I suppose I have more interests than I’d sometimes like to admit. When I’m away from a screen, though, I mostly take photos, travel, write, read, and go for long walks.

Basically, I live the life of a retired gentleman.

How did you get into the software world?

It all started back in high school. A few friends and I had a football blog where we wrote about something we loved, and we spent a lot of time working on it. The blog was hosted on Blogger, and I was already interested in design at the time. I had also learned to use Photoshop a few years earlier.

So when we decided to give the blog template a new look, I was the one who took on the job. I started with the basics, copying and pasting lines of HTML and CSS without really understanding what I was doing. And that was the beginning of my journey into software.

I really liked your article titled “My life strategy is entirely based on curiosity.” People are now building personal brands and planning everything. Aren’t they doing things “just” out of curiosity anymore? Is curiosity decreasing? (I haven’t quite clarified my question :))

That curiosity you’re asking about is something I’ve thought about a lot. I think it comes from scarcity more than abundance. We live in a time of abundance in almost everything: food, information, relationships, entertainment, activities. And when everything is available all the time, it can become difficult to leave enough space to think, reflect, or simply let something catch our attention.

The fact that we can see what’s happening on the other side of the world with a single click, know exactly what a place will look like before we travel there, or watch 400 YouTube reviews before buying something also takes away some of the excitement. By the time we finally have the thing or arrive at the place, we already know so much about it that there’s less left to discover.

I think curiosity comes from things we haven’t seen before. From picking up a book without reading any reviews and being surprised by it. From choosing a movie at random and discovering that it’s completely different from what we expected. From getting lost in the streets of a random city. From listening to a genre of music we’ve never heard before. From signing up for a class we never imagined we would take.

Curiosity starts with scarcity, with boredom, and with that little spark that comes from being surprised by something or discovering that we like it.

That’s why I think we need to be more careful about what we consume and leave a little more room for the unknown. We should allow ourselves to be a bit more blind to what’s coming next and give ourselves the opportunity to explore it without already knowing what we’re going to find.

In your article titled “What happens when everything is perfect?”, you mention how artificial intelligence affects creativity. Why is imperfection important for humanity?

That same idea, of leaving room for the unknown, connects to why I think imperfection matters. It brings out the most human part of us. We are all deeply fallible, and it is precisely this shared vulnerability that allows us to empathize with one another. We are all made up of successes and failures, and it is often through these shared experiences that we connect with other people.

That is one of the beautiful things about being alive: knowing that you are going to make mistakes, that things will not always go according to plan, and that both nature and the world around us are inherently imperfect. Those imperfections are what give life its unexpected turns and make it interesting. If everything were perfect, the world would, sadly, be rather boring. It is all those rough edges we each carry that make us more interesting to others. They may be similar, but no two people have exactly the same ones.

There is a very clear example of this in the article, where I talk about the movie Her. The film takes place in a futuristic world where AI is incredibly powerful and can practically do everything for you. Yet Theodore, the protagonist, spends his time writing handwritten letters.

Why? If AI can write them better and more perfectly, why would he do it himself?

For the same reason you might treasure your daughter’s imperfect drawing or a handwritten letter from a friend more than something technically flawless. You appreciate the effort behind it. You can feel that someone took the time to think about it, to write it, and to make it with care. It may not be perfect, but it is completely theirs. And that imperfection is precisely what makes it meaningful.

I agree with your article titled “They ruined our experience of discovering new things.” We are in an era where everything looks the same. Do you have any advice on how to find or create truly valuable content?

Following on from that, I think there’s still a glimmer of hope in such a homogeneous world. We have access to all the information in the world, so that’s where I would start.

Read books that were written more than 100 years ago. Escape the bestseller section and look for books written by authors from countries you know little about. The same applies to other forms of content. Search YouTube, follow whatever topics genuinely interest you, and get lost in Wikipedia.

And this applies to the offline world too. Visit lesser-known cities. Explore neighborhoods that aren’t popular where you live. Go to local shops and look for old books, movies, or objects they happen to sell. Visit a street market and look for things from another era.

Take ideas from all these things that aren’t part of the mainstream and give them your own unique perspective. Your voice is unique, and it’s something nobody can take away from you.

The way all those different interests come together is what makes you unique. Add your own life experiences to the mix, and I’m sure something uncommon can emerge from it.

You have an article titled “On making things that matter.” As an independent developer, how do you decide whether a new idea is “worth building” or “meaningful”?

That same personal starting point applies to what I build, too. My approach has always been pretty simple: is it useful to me? If the answer is yes, I build it. If the answer is no, I don’t. That’s basically it.

Of course, if you want to make a living from building software, you eventually have to go beyond that. But I still think this first part is important. When you use something every day, you can improve it through your own experience. You feel the frustrations of using something that doesn’t work well, and you naturally start thinking about how it could be better.

It’s much harder to solve a problem from the outside when you’re not experiencing it yourself. It’s easier to fix a problem from within, although sometimes being on the outside can give you a clearer perspective.

How can we keep our curiosity alive in adulthood and when we get lost in daily routines? How does your learning process work when you become curious about a new subject (e.g., a new programming language or a philosophical movement)?

Coming back to curiosity, I’ve never really learned anything in a formal way. I was a mediocre student at school, and I’ve never been the best at anything. Letting go of the idea that if you learn something, you have to be good at it is incredibly liberating. It allows you to approach learning more like a game.

For example, I’m learning Chinese now because my wife is from Taiwan. But I’m in no rush, and I don’t have a specific goal I want to reach within a year or two. I’m simply trying to set aside some time each day to do something without a clear objective, where the goal is simply to see what happens.

You can spend that time reading about something completely unrelated to your work, watching a movie that looks interesting, going for a long walk and exploring parts of your city you don’t usually visit, sitting in a café and watching people, or simply lying down and doing nothing.

Curiosity tends to emerge when we have nothing to do. Children start asking questions when they get bored, and they start looking for things to entertain themselves when they get bored. That is where curiosity comes from: boredom.

What does success mean to you?

That freedom I just mentioned, to set my own pace, is really at the center of how I think about success. I think of success along three axes: freedom, time, and relationships.

In a capitalist world, pursuing freedom and time usually means you need money. But when you stop putting money first, you often find that you need less of it too.

People who put money first can end up losing both freedom and time in the process of pursuing it. If you know what “enough” means for you, I think it makes sense to build your life around that instead.

I’m nowhere near rich, and I probably have enough savings to live for a year or two. But having the freedom to start new projects, experiment, and see what happens, along with the time to actually do those things, is what a successful life looks like to me.

Having good relationships with the people you love is the other piece of it. In a way, this becomes much easier when you have freedom and time. You can actually spend time with them, and you have the mental energy to be present.

So I suppose that’s my definition of success: enough money to have freedom, enough freedom to have time, and enough time to share with the people I love.

If I asked you to make a list of recommendations, what would they be? (Movies, books, TV series, blogs, YouTube channels, etc.)

5 Movies

City of God
Cinema Paradiso
Grave of the Fireflies
Casino
The Great Beauty

5 Series

Wild Wild Country
Our Planet
Adolescence
Beef
One Day

5 Books

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Usefulness of the Useless by Nuccio Ordine
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

5 YouTube Channels / Blogs

Do you follow the news? If I asked you to give a list of people worth following, who would they be?

I never follow the news, or keep up with what’s happening in the world, unless it’s something so big that you simply can’t escape it.

If you do want to follow the news, I’d recommend finding a newsletter from an independent writer or publisher and supporting them directly. Otherwise, I think it’s very easy to end up with a distorted and overly negative view of the world, because the things that make the news are rarely the things that represent everyday life.

What advice would you give to those who want to enter this field? Everyone is entering through artificial intelligence or other means. What advice would you give to those who want to improve?

The industry is tough these days. But if you want to get into it, you have to find a way to differentiate yourself.

Maybe that means developing skills beyond programming that can make you more valuable, or building connections through social media by sharing the things you’re working on.

Experimenting, trying things, and talking to people are incredibly important skills in any industry. One thing is for sure: a company isn’t going to show up at your door and offer you a job. You have to put yourself out there.

And if you want to get better, copy things at the beginning and learn from them. Copying is a way of understanding how someone else solved a problem, so that eventually you can take what you learned and try to do it better yourself.

How do you spend your day?

My days are deliberately unstructured. I usually go for a walk in the morning and work in the afternoon, but everything else is open.

Some days I go hiking, some days I work from a café, and some days I meet someone. Some days I play games, like Football Manager or Pokémon. Other days, I might have a simple idea for a project and spend the entire day working on it. Sometimes I just feel like writing, so I write and write.

There are a few things I need to do every week to keep the business running and take care of myself as a human being. Beyond that, most of my time is driven by pure curiosity.

How did you start blogging?

I’ve always enjoyed sharing the things I experience. As Tarantino puts it, “I do film for myself and everyone is invited.”

I think that captures the essence of a blog. You write about what you experience, in your own way, and invite other people to get to know you through it.

I think the first blog I started was back in 2011, although honestly, I don’t remember exactly.

What I do know is that blogging is a fantastic way to find like-minded people. That’s probably the main reason I keep writing: to connect with others.

What is your perspective on making money online? How should a content creator make money?

If you can make money from something you genuinely enjoy putting your time and effort into, that’s amazing, right? It’s no different from any other kind of job. Most people would rather make a living doing something they enjoy than spend their days somewhere that makes them hate what they do.

As for how to do it, I honestly don’t know because I’m not a content creator. But I suppose the first step is to stop thinking of yourself as a “content creator.”

I see two possible paths: the easier one, although still difficult, and the harder one, which I find much more appealing.

You can follow the trends, make whatever kind of low-effort videos are getting attention, and put them online hoping that someone looking for a quick dopamine hit will watch them. Or you can create something you genuinely care about and put real effort into it. Of course, the second path takes much more time, and there’s no guarantee that it will work.

But if you eventually succeed, I think you’ll feel a sense of achievement that you could never get from simply chasing whatever happens to be popular at the moment.

The other thing I’ve learned is that things usually take much longer than we expect. It can easily take five or ten years of working on something without getting much back from it. So I would ask myself a simple question: what would I still be willing to work on for the next five or ten years even if I didn’t get much in return for everything I was putting into it?

I think that’s a much better way to decide what’s worth pursuing.

I agree with you about “5 Things That Used to Be Normal and Are Now a Luxury.” Do you think there’s a way to incorporate these things into the norm of life, to make them commonplace through repetition?

Being offline

The only way I’ve found that works for me is to deliberately make time when you don’t use the internet. Time for yourself.

Again, it comes back to the two axes I mentioned in a previous question: freedom and time. If you have the freedom to decide how you spend your time, and you’re not tied to an office job where you need to be constantly available or to a company that fills your calendar with meetings, you can actually do it. You can spend time doing whatever you want without checking a single device.

It’s difficult, but attainable.

Silence

This one is really difficult. In my case, I’m very sensitive to sound, and I’ve never really found a good way to experience true silence.

The only solution I’ve found is to escape to a rural place a few times a year and spend some time there. But even that takes a lot of effort. It can be expensive, and quite often you arrive somewhere expecting peace and quiet only to find people being loud anyway.

I suppose that’s the frustrating thing about silence: sometimes you have to go quite far to find it, and even then, you can’t really guarantee it will be there.

One-ingredient food

Supermarkets are full of shit. This one is actually very easy for me now. I simply buy basic ingredients, and we cook from scratch at home about 95% of the time.

The difficult part is that you have to be extremely conscious about what you’re buying. You need to check ingredients and labels like a maniac every time you go grocery shopping.

It’s sad that it has to be this way, but for me, it’s the only way to avoid buying things I don’t actually want to eat.

Being served by a person

I suppose the only way we’ll see more of this is by supporting these kinds of businesses. Try to buy locally, from grocery stores where you know the people behind the counter. Support online businesses run by small teams that genuinely care about their customers and take customer service seriously.

At the end of the day, we have the freedom to choose where we spend our money. We can use that freedom to help these businesses grow instead of allowing them to be pushed aside by large corporations.

Clothes made of natural fibers

This is a bit like food. You need to do the research and be a maniac when you’re shopping. There are options, but the quality can be surprisingly poor.

So my advice is simple: have less, but buy better quality. And whenever possible, look for natural fibers. Your body will thank you.

You have also visited Türkiye. As a Turk, I am curious about your views on Türkiye. How did you find the city and its people? Was there a moment that particularly impressed you?

I’ll tell you two stories about taxis that I think illustrate this really well.

The first one happened in Spain, where I’m from. My partner at the time and I were taking a taxi to the airport when the driver fell asleep at the wheel on the highway. We almost had a very serious accident. I contacted the taxi company afterwards, expecting them to take the situation seriously, but they did absolutely nothing. Nothing at all. That driver simply continued driving irresponsibly, and I can only hope that nobody was ever hurt because of it.

The second one happened in Istanbul. My mother and I were heading to our apartment from the airport, and I had booked the taxi through BiTaksi. When we arrived, I accidentally left everything in the taxi: my passport, wallet, AirPods, and several other things. It was a complete mess.

I called BiTaksi thinking, “They’re probably not going to do anything about this.” But it was exactly the opposite. They helped me throughout the whole process, in very good English, contacted the driver, and eventually he brought everything back to me. I only had to pay for the return trip to the apartment, which I thought was completely fair.

I’ll always remember that gesture because it allowed me to enjoy the rest of the trip with my mother instead of spending the whole time worrying about what I had lost. And I think that experience completely changed how I saw the country.

Turkey, and other countries like it, sometimes have a reputation for being unsafe. But in this case, I can only say good things about Turkey. I love the way you treat tourists. There’s always a smile, someone offering you tea, someone stopping to talk and ask questions. That curiosity I’ve been talking about throughout this interview.

What impressed me most is how much the countries around the Mediterranean share in terms of values and our general approach to life, despite our obvious cultural differences. We like to live life, enjoy time with friends, have a drink together, and talk for hours. We are brothers and sisters of the same sea.

We also have a very different relationship with work and life compared with more Protestant-influenced cultures such as the Nordic countries, Germany, or Switzerland. For us, life is not something that happens around work. Work is part of life, but life itself is at the center. I think that makes it easier for us to connect with each other.

I’ve been to Turkey twice, and I hope to come back many more times.

Is there anything else you would like to add?

I’ll leave you with a phrase I really like: “Los tiempos se igualan”, which roughly translates to “times even out.”

It basically means that both good and bad times will come. Both are part of life. If you’re going through a difficult period, you can take comfort in knowing that better times will eventually come. And if you’re going through a good period, enjoy it, because it will eventually pass too.

Life is very fleeting, and sometimes we give far too much importance to things that ultimately don’t matter that much. So if you’re reading this and there’s something you want to try, do it. Don’t overthink it. Go for it.

In the end, we didn’t come into this world with a predetermined purpose. We give life meaning through the things we choose to do.

There’s a line from Emerson’s Orchard by the Spanish writer Luis Landero that I really like:

To live is to be on a journey toward nowhere, and only the journey gives meaning to existence.

People More Interesting Than Me: Herman Martinus

Mon, 24 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I have been following Herman’s blog for quite a while. I like how he writes, the clarity of it, and how easy he makes it look. I read every post, and I like his way of looking at life. We have exchanged a few emails and we have plenty in common, like the idea that cities need more trees, or that social media should be for meeting people and building relationships, not for playing at who has the most likes.

Without further ado, here is Herman.

First things first: can you introduce yourself?

I’m Herman Martinus, the person behind the Bear blogging platform and a few other projects. I love building things, both physical and digital, and live in Cape Town, which I’m quite fond of.

Staying connected with people without social media is easy. We’ve been doing it since, well, forever. I meet up with friends and family multiple times per week, whether it be for a dinner, or a run, or to hang out at our little community studio. I’m also, I feel, more interested in socialising now that I don’t use social media, since I’m not on the drip feed of pseudo-socialising.

As for staying current, I generally hear about anything I need to know from the people around me, or on Hacker News. I explicitly try to avoid US-based politics, as difficult as that may be.

I’ve been off social media for so long that I sometimes forget that this meta-digital/social layer even exists at all. I have more time in the day, am less anxious about the world ending, and I feel like I get to explore nuance in a way that is just not available on traditional social media.

You have an article about “Building software to last forever.” I think this is a very Japanese way of thinking. In Japan they have the shinise, businesses that have been operating for more than 100 years, often passed down through generations. In a world of startups that appear and disappear with the next trend, what makes something last? And what happens when we are not here anymore: who takes the business?

I’ve actually written a whole post about this titled Grow slowly; stay small, which expands on my philosophy around building software even further. It also uses traditional Japanese shinise as an example, which stands in stark contrast to the growth at all cost mindset of the West.

If I were to tragically disappear, Bear would be taken over by a trusted custodian who is to run it according to the existing ethos. I have made these arrangements, which while quite morbid, are important for what I’m trying to achieve with Bear.

Following on from that: how do you approach your own business? How do people find your work and how do you build it, keeping in mind that you want to stay small and that you are thinking in such a long time frame?

I see business less as a standalone thing, and more as a reflection of my personal philosophies. I’m happy to forgo revenue in order to do whatever I believe is correct or interesting. I am also hyper aware of how privileged of a position I am in where I have multiple small projects funding my lifestyle, and so don’t have the external pressures that usually come with building software. I’m also lucky that my projects spread through word of mouth, since I’m somewhat averse to marketing as I believe it has ruined the internet.

You have an article I like about “active rest.” For people like us, who spend most of the day sitting in front of a screen, it’s really nice to move while resting. What kind of things do you do in your active rest time?

Here are a few things I do in a usual week: read (this I do every day), exercise (this could be a run on the promenade, followed by a sauna with a friend, or going to the gym, or a yoga class), spend time at the community studio with people building things, spend quality time with Emma (my fiancé), go on a hike with friends, and drink good coffee. I also enjoy cooking and have recently been exploring Japanese cuisine after our most recent trip.

I like routines a lot. Considering everything we have talked about, what does a normal day look like for you? How do you approach the day, and are there any small habits or tricks that help you make better decisions as it goes on?

I like having a fairly standard, yet relaxed morning routine. Pretty much every weekday morning goes like this: I wake up at 6am and make some coffee. I then wake Emma up and we sit on the couch and drink coffee and watch the sun rise over the Paarl mountains. We chat and check in with one another, then head to the gym or yoga at around 7. After exercise we make breakfast and shower, and then I turn on my computer and write in my journal for about 3-5 minutes. I work without distractions until about 12, and thereafter the day can get as chaotic as it pleases. I’ve done all the important bits. Emails, admin, evening plans, it doesn’t really matter.

The first half of my day is for me, the second half is for everything else.

After everything you have built and decided, what are you still figuring out?

My role has transitioned over the past few years from builder to groundskeeper. While I still do active development, a lot of my attention is now making sure that Bear is a cozy space on the internet, keeping scraper and malicious bots at bay, and polishing the edges of things. I’m uncertain of what the future of the internet looks like, but I’m trying my best to be ready for it.

I like books, so books will be my recommendation. If you’re looking to build something (or have already started), I recommend reading The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick. It’s all about idea validation and ensuring you’re building the right thing. If you just want a good read, I recommend City of Thieves by David Benioff, or anything by Terry Pratchett. I could probably only read Terry Pratchett’s books for the rest of my life and be quite satisfied.

Emma reckons I should throw in a recommendation for the film Perfect Days as well.

5 Things That Used to Be Normal and Are Now a Luxury

Tue, 18 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A few days ago I was sitting in a café in Sofia, thinking about things that were normal when I was a kid, or even when my parents were, and that now take real effort to get.

It’s not that they’re out of reach. It’s that you have to go hunting for them.

1. Being offline

The world has gone digital to the point where everything happens online. That brought plenty of good things, but it stripped away something simple: the right to disconnect.

Half the time you can’t leave the house without your phone, because certain places need you to carry a small computer in your pocket to do anything at all. My least favorite: reading a restaurant menu off a screen.

2. Silence

For a while, traveling around, I went looking for places where I could sit in silence (absolute silence doesn’t exist, but you know what I mean). It was much harder to find than I expected.

And the worst part is that something that should be possible almost anywhere has turned into a business. Countryside houses that cost more than a downtown apartment. Meditation and silence retreats. All of it selling something that used to come included.

3. One-ingredient food

One of my favorite things about being in Sofia is that the small food shops are still standing. There are supermarkets, but most of your shopping happens across 1 to 3 different places: the greengrocer, the butcher, the fishmonger.

And it’s exactly there, in the shops selling local and seasonal produce, where the bill comes out higher. Across the street sits the supermarket, stocked with things flown in from the other side of the world and ingredients you couldn’t pronounce, closer to a chemical compound than to food.

That’s the cheap option.

4. Being served by a person

Most shopping happens online now, and with big companies it’s basically impossible to reach a human (Amazon being one of the few where it still works).

But it isn’t just that nobody picks up. The whole act of talking to someone has turned into a chore.

When I was a kid I’d walk into a shop, ask the woman behind the counter, and she’d tell me what to buy. You built a relationship, she knew you, and that was worth a lot to me.

5. Clothes made of natural fibers

For a while now I’ve been buying almost only natural fibers. You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to find something fairly priced, well made, and that doesn’t fall apart in 3 to 6 months.

It’s a miserable process. Hundreds of brands, nearly all online, nothing you can try on, no way to know if it’ll last.

I bought a merino t-shirt from a French brand with glowing reviews and it lasted less than shirts I’ve paid 5€ for. 60€ in the bin. That’s the part that wears me down: not the price, but that you can read, compare, choose carefully, and still get it wrong.

Looking at the list together, the price isn’t what bothers me most. It’s the time. Reading, testing, researching, comparing.

All that searching gets paid for in attention, which is the first thing on the list.

I get that this is a problem of scale, and that cheap goods have let a lot of people live better. I’m not going to pretend otherwise.

But when the floor drops that far, what used to be ordinary can be sold as premium. That’s how a wool t-shirt ends up with a luxury tag and a seasonal apple costs 3 times as much.

None of this is exotic. These are ordinary things. What’s strange is that getting hold of them has turned into a project.

A forest outside Sofia. We call this luxury nowadays.

Building Picmal: Why I Still Believe in Simple, Local Mac Software

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

People More Interesting Than Me: Lucas Fischer

Thu, 13 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Almost 2 years after I interviewed Alex, this section is back. I wanted to pick it up again, and there is nobody better to do it with than Lucas. I had been following Lucas for a while (on Twitter, not physically) while he was building Futureland. But it was his work on Amore that got us talking. We have many ideas in common, and we share many values about software development, but also about life.

We talked about computers, care, the App Store, and what happens when the thing you worked on for years doesn’t work out. I hope you enjoy as much I did.

First things first: can you introduce yourself?

Hallo, I am Lucas Fischer, a full-stack design engineer from Germany who loves computers. Popular projects I have worked on include Futureland, Monologue and Amore.

How has traveling changed you?

The thing I love most about traveling and visiting different cultures is seeing that in a way we are all the same. It’s beautiful. We share the same problems, grief, and worries but also feel the same joy and bliss. Experiencing that makes me feel more part of the earth than a single nation. I wish everybody would have the freedom to travel and live wherever they want. It would be good for us.

It probably changed me in ways that other people could describe better, but I noticed that it made me feel less sensitive and more open. I was a pretty picky eater, but now I enjoy everything. Exploring a new cuisine is one of my favorite things to do abroad.

Before Amore, how did you end up here at all? I’m curious about the path into development and specifically why the Mac. It’s a smaller, stranger platform to bet on than the web or iOS.

I have been in love with computers since before I could read. The family computer was mostly occupied by me, and I would spend hours exploring what I could do with it. I played plenty of video games and experimented with every other program that was available to me at the time. That was around the Windows XP and Windows 7 era.

When I started high school, I had a side job as a bartender, and the cool thing to buy at the time was an iPhone 4, which introduced me to the Apple world.

At that point I still wasn’t coding or anything. Not much later we had an excellent computer science teacher who taught us Pascal. While my friends absolutely hated computer science class, I got hooked on coding immediately. Before that moment I was thinking about a career as a chemist, but after compiling my first Pascal program I knew this is what I want to spend my time on.

A good friend of mine had a MacBook Pro, and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. I saved up all the money from bartending and got one myself right before college.

The coding part of college felt easy, and so I didn’t have to attend classes much, which gave me a lot of time to play around with my Mac and Raspberry Pi. That’s when I started to build my first little web apps.

During college I got lucky and found my first few freelance clients, which taught me a lot about web development.

I always adored native Mac software, but I found it challenging to work on it myself. I tried a couple of times to get into making apps with Objective-C but always gave up after a couple of hours. It felt too hard.

When I worked on Futureland, we decided we wanted to have an excellent experience on iOS, so I learned Swift and got to work. Since then, I have barely worked on anything apart from Apple platforms.

While there is a lot of excitement about iPhone apps and the App Store, I always found myself more excited about the Mac. I think it’s because I spend way more time on it compared to my phone. It’s a great platform that doesn’t get the love it deserves from Apple.

I just love the Mac. I hope I can make a little dent and help other developers to build great software for it.

I love your work. It’s always very detailed, and I like how seriously you take small details. Where does that come from? I’m interested in the unglamorous part too: what your process actually looks like when you’re designing something, and where you go when nothing is working.

Thank you <3. When using something, no matter if it’s software or a physical tool, it makes me incredibly happy when I notice that something was created with great care.

In software today, I see that less and less, unfortunately. Most of it feels cheap and careless. In the end I just want to create something that I use myself and that I can proudly share with friends and family. If I can’t stand behind my work, why even do it?

I rarely design something in ‘design software’. I believe design is how something works and feels. That’s difficult to figure out with a tool like Sketch or Figma.

What works best for me is a lot of prototyping. On the web, I made heavy use of HMR (Hot Module Replacement), and on the Swift side, I depend on SwiftUI Previews.

When nothing works, I ask my much more talented friends for advice and look through my ‘inspo’ folder, which contains hundreds of screenshots and screen recordings from apps and interactions I like.

Additionally, I find it useful to record my work and share it online. Right before I hit the publish button is usually the moment where the weaknesses of my work are most obvious.

Building on the App Store can be frustrating in ways that are hard to explain to people outside of it. What’s been the most difficult part for you, and what is Amore trying to do differently there?

It probably comes down to freedom. Having a single company decide what I can and can’t do on an iPhone is super limiting and frustrating. There are numerous apps that will never be built because they would have to go through Apple’s review process first. It’s not really possible to build personal software that’s only used by me and some friends and family.

It’s also limiting for larger projects I have worked on. Sometimes important updates don’t go out to users in time because Apple claims the app is against their guidelines when it’s not. There are thousands of stories like this.

The App Store is great for visibility, though, which seems to have changed for the worse recently too.

I am grateful that things are looking different on the Mac. Here we can use Developer ID for direct distribution, which means we don’t need to ask Apple for permission to publish an app and can skip the App Store altogether.

With Amore, I try to make sharing apps with others, no matter if privately or commercially, as easy as possible. There is no app review and no 30% Apple tax. Just everything you need to build apps for the Mac.

Entrepreneurship is wild. What was the worst moment, the one where you seriously considered stopping, and what got you through it?

There wasn’t a single worst moment for me. I think not finding commercial success for Futureland after working so hard for multiple years was the worst thing that happened to me. I am grateful that I went through this time with amazing co-founders that I still consider close friends.

It took me a while to get back on my feet afterward, but it taught me valuable lessons, and I am grateful for where it led me.

What do you value most in life? And is there something you’ve changed your mind about in the last year?

The freedom to spend my time however I want to. This hasn’t really changed much since I started freelancing in college. I find the position I am in extremely privileged and wouldn’t want to change with someone else.

What do you think we will do as humans when work is automated by AI? I’m curious whether it has already changed your own process, and whether there’s any part of your work you deliberately keep it out of.

I honestly have no clue, but looking at the history of capitalism, I am mostly pessimistic about AI. I hope we will spend more time with other humans and reconnect with nature, but seeing how the majority of people are using this new technology today, I am worried about the opposite.

My utopia would be to have more time to follow our curiosity and interests. I would love it if we all had more time for play and spending quality time with each other.

I don’t like foundational models. They are ethical and environmental nightmares. They have utility, which has clearly been proven, but there is so much more to talk about, which is grossly under-discussed.

In my work, I have found LLMs to be useful for research, prototyping, and code review. That’s where they can cause the least amount of damage and be actually helpful. I try to keep them out of the creative process as much as possible because they make me lazy and stifle my imagination.

For software, I’m a big admirer of Reeder by Silvio Rizzi and Ivory by Tapbots, as well as Martin Lexow’s work in general.

When it comes to music, I find a lot of inspiration in the work of Kieran Hebden and Damon Albarn.

To unwind, I enjoy reading and watching films. “The Courage to Be Disliked” is a book I read years ago that still resonates with me. For movie enthusiasts, I highly recommend “Sore: A Wife from the Future”, which is, in my opinion, the best Indonesian film I’ve seen to date.

Notes From Five Months of Building

Wed, 29 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

It’s been five months since my last entry. I’ve been busy, but I guess that’s life. I’ve really wanted to write, and I’ve done a lot of it privately. So, I’m going to try again to pick up this habit of writing in public.

I’m writing these lines in Sofia. A while back I launched my first two projects: Picmal and Cozy. I’ve made some money along the way. I even got an offer to sell Picmal for five figures. But it’s not enough to live on right now. Even though it isn’t easy, I have a strong desire to continue trying. I want to stay in the game. I enjoy working on my projects daily. Over the past five months, I’ve learned a lot. So I’d like to share here an unordered list of things I’ve been learning during this time. Not all of these will be true, but they feel true for me now. They can help those of you who are in a similar place. Without further ado, here’s the list:

A one-time payment may not be the best option for your business, even though it benefits your users.
Look for healthy markets. You want ones where it’s not winner-takes-all. Aim for a few competitors—about 10 is ideal—but make sure no single player takes most of the profits.
Finding the right distribution channel is more important than the idea itself. The point is that you need a channel to show the product through. If you don’t have that, it doesn’t make sense to build it.
This is pretty obvious, but I still made the mistake again and again. Once you’ve built the first version of the product, spend 80% of your time on marketing. Engage with customers. Discover the channels that suit your ideal audience. Then, aim to be present in many locations. Take your time with it, but focus on this.
Do the short-term and the long-term at the same time. Short term, share your project in directories. Appear in many places. Contact potential users to ask about the project and how to improve it. Long term is SEO and GEO so you show up in search, building a brand around your project and creating an audience. Don’t wait for one or the other. Start doing both the moment you get some traction and see potential in your project.
To grow a B2C product, social media is likely your most effective option. Go viral and all that bullshit. If you’re going B2B, start by talking to at least 10 potential customers. This will help you find out if their pain points are real or in your head.
Entrepreneurship is wild, even for small apps like mine. You experience frequent fluctuations; the market around you changes, requiring you to adapt. Views on my projects are dropping for no clear reason—AI? I need to find a solution since this is one of my main selling channels. The bigger you get, the wilder it becomes, I suppose.
If this doesn’t work, it doesn’t mean you’re shit. The normal outcome is that nothing works. If you make some money, you’re already in the top 1% of people trying to build a business. You have to keep trying. Or not. You can give up and go do other things, enjoy your life in a different way.

That’s it for now. I’m going to write more about this topic in the next posts, and I’m also picking the People More Interesting Than Me series back up. I’ve already reached out to a few people for the next interviews.

Writing this lines from 369 coffee shop.

Why Not Live?

Sat, 07 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

On these rainy days, I’m reading two books. They’re shaping me in surprising ways. They also express feelings I already have.

One of them is Anna Karenina.

I see a clear reflection of myself in Levin.

Konstantin Dmitrich Levin is a landowner. He spends much of the novel in an existential crisis. He could live off his wealth or take an important role in Moscow. He chooses neither. That life feels wrong to him.

He rejects the modern world. He keeps asking the same question: what is the point of living?

Levin represents a quiet kind of vitalism. His wisdom does not come from ideas or debates. It comes from physical work. During harvest season, when he joins the peasants in the fields, he finds peace. While working, he stops thinking. He stops searching for answers because he no longer needs them.

The other book I am reading is Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

Tolstoy and Nietzsche were contemporaries. They likely never read each other. They both shared something important: a strong rejection of rational modern life. They preferred a life guided by the body, not the mind.

But they looked in opposite directions.

Nietzsche looked upward, toward the overman, toward the creation of new values. Toward saying yes to life in all its cruelty and beauty. His vitalism was aristocratic, heroic, and vertical.

Levin gazed down at the land. He sought humility and aimed to dissolve his ego through work and family. His vitalism was rural, horizontal, and grounded.

Yet both say the same thing in different ways.

You can only live through action, never through pure thought. You do not need permission. You do not need justification. What you live is who you are; nothing more.

The modern trap

Modern culture twists this message.

It suggests that being authentic means knowing yourself. It treats you like a fixed object, as if you don’t change over time.

That is the trap.

Because if you are always evolving, there is always more work to do. Always another layer to dig into. And as Byung-Chul Han puts it:

Today, everyone is an auto-exploiting laborer in his or her own enterprise. People are now masters and slaves in one. Even class struggle has transformed into an inner struggle against oneself.

You exploit yourself because it is never enough; because you are never ready.

Kierkegaard saw this coming in the nineteenth century. He called it despair: infinite reflection that paralyzes you.

His answer was not more analysis; it was the opposite: the leap of faith.

You commit to a way of living, to a decision. You stop weighing options without considering logic. You jump without a safety net. You suspend judgment and move forward.

Between Nietzsche and Levin

Real vitalism, for me, lies between Nietzsche and Levin.

Nietzsche tells you to stop feeling like a victim. Don’t blame your circumstances. Instead, act according to your desires.

Levin encourages you to stay humble. Know your limits, appreciate small things, and live simply.

In chaotic times, focusing on living feels right. Concentrate on what you can control. Take that leap of faith. Let life flow again.

No rush. No self-exploitation. Just movement.

Life doesn’t wait. Through action, you become who you are.

Everything else is just suffering.

The rain and rainbows of those days

What happens when everything is perfect?

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The other day I was reading Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and I stopped at this line:

That everyone has the right to learn to read corrupts in the long run not only writing but also thinking itself.

Nietzsche saw something early on. When a skill becomes universal, the craft behind it often erodes. Not the result, but the way. The relationship between effort and mastery starts to weaken.

It made me think about AI.

With AI, everything becomes more accessible. When you write a message or a letter to someone you love, or when you build an app or make a film, speed increases. But something important slips away: the bond between the creator and their creation.

That struggle between wanting to create and actually creating used to be important. It was part of learning. Part of ownership. You struggled, failed, tried again, and through that process, the idea became yours. When creation becomes instant and disposable, what remains of that bond? What does it even mean to make something anymore?

And that is where the real risk appears.

Not that machines will replace us, but that we will start creating without care. That we will outsource not only execution, but intention. That we will become operators of tools rather than participants in the act of making. Everything polished. Everything correct. The room felt empty, lacking any signs of life.

Yet this loss carries its own answer.

In the film Her, most communication happens through AI. Still, Theodore’s job is to write letters by hand for other people. Why would anyone pay for that when a machine can do it faster and better?

In a world focused on efficiency, people start to crave the opposite. They want the imperfect, the human touch, and the sense that someone real is present.

That is the line I hope we do not cross.

The need for the human. The imperfect. The crafted. Not because it is more efficient, but because without it, we risk forgetting what matters at all.

The scene in Her where Theodore is writing a letter

On making things that matter

Tue, 20 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

About a week ago, Picmal reached 200 users.

For some people, that number might feel small. For others, it’s big. For me, it’s symbolic.

At 15, I started a forum. I was curious and bored. It combined two things I loved: football and video games. I called it Futbolgame. Not very original.

I didn’t have a plan. I didn’t think about growth, positioning, or marketing. I wanted to build something. Somehow, that forum passed 200 registered users, even without a clear reason.

What surprised me most was not the number itself but everything that came with it.

I started learning Photoshop because some users wanted banners for their profiles. I met new people for the first time. We spent hours discussing various topics, with a focus on football. The forum wasn’t huge, but it gave me something special. It sparked my curiosity, grew stronger, and brought me joy as I made something special for a few people.

Looking back, I realize how easy it is to overcomplicate things now. We obsess over names, branding, positioning, and storytelling. We try to make everything perfect before it even exists. And often, that’s exactly what kills the idea.

Back then, I had no strategy, no expectations. I made things, learned along the way, and enjoyed the process.

And honestly, that’s still what matters most.

If you enjoy creating, the rest is secondary. You never know if something will turn into a living until you make an attempt. And you cannot force yourself to care about an idea because it sounds good on paper. Real interest does not come from an idea bank; it starts with real curiosity. You want to understand a problem and spend time with it.

That is where the best things come from.

I am not in a position to give advice, but if there is one thing, it is this: create if you feel the urge to create. Follow what truly inspires you. Try things. Express yourself.

In a world where everything is measured, optimized, and packaged, seeing someone do something honestly and without pretending is rare. Maybe it makes less money. Maybe it never becomes a business. But your soul does not run on revenue.

If we spent less time chasing what seems profitable and more time exploring what truly interests us, we would probably see better ideas, more originality, and work that actually means something.

Bye 2025

Mon, 29 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

As 2025 comes to an end, I realize I have written less in this newsletter than I would have liked. Maybe my sometimes extreme perfectionism has held me back. Partly because I felt I had nothing worth sharing, and partly because what I wrote did not feel good enough.

I think this is a feeling we all experience at times, whether when writing or when trying to express ourselves in general. But the point of this newsletter is not to deliver something polished. It is more a way to talk about what happens to me, how I feel about it, and how I interpret it, while I try to make a living from this whole entrepreneurship thing.

So I guess I should think less and do more. I have applied that advice to other areas of my life, but not here. And 2026 feels like a good moment to start.

When I stopped overthinking and started doing more was the moment someone finally paid for something I made

Picmal - my first native Mac app

When I say I have not been writing here, I really mean it. I did not even write to say that I launched an app. Picmal is my first 100% native Mac app, and by not overthinking things and simply shipping something that was useful to me, I ended up discovering that it is useful to others too.

I am close to reaching 200 paying users. From the outside, especially when you see so many companies making millions every year, that number might seem tiny. For me, it feels huge. It is proof to myself that I can build things that are genuinely useful to other people.

So yes, the same idea again: think less and do more. By pure algorithmic coincidence, this YouTube channel found me. Elisha talks a lot about how his life started to improve once he stopped overthinking and began acting more, referring to it with the term _retardmaxx_.

I guess he is right. And since my newsletter is called nonsense, maybe I should start honoring that name a bit more.

End of year rituals

My visual board for 2026

Last year, when I wrote my year review, I mentioned something I have been doing since 2021. I take the photos I shot during the year and go through them month by month, writing down what I was doing and small anecdotes from those moments. It is my way of keeping those experiences alive.

Last year I changed that dynamic a bit. Instead, I started answering a set of forty questions. I liked the idea because everything becomes much more concrete, while the goal stays the same: to preserve those small moments you lived during the year so that when you come back to them later, once they are no longer fresh, they are still there waiting for you. Almost like a freezer for memories.

I added one more thing to this ritual last year, borrowed from my friend Marynes. At the end of the year, she always creates a vision board with things she wants to do in the following year. If you are a visual person, having this present throughout the year helps a lot. With a single glance, it reminds you of what you want for the year, and of the ambitions or aspirations you have for the future.

It felt like a much healthier way to approach next year’s goals. Not as another checklist or yet another work project to deal with, but rather as a gentle reminder of what we want to prioritize, both in the coming year and beyond.

5 things I liked about the offline world in 2025

Onomichi. I went there for my birthday and loved it. A beautiful town full of cafés with gorgeous views, where you can feel a deep sense of peace. It is wonderful to sit and watch people pass by, take the ferry across the water, wait for the train to cross so you can take photos, and wander up the hills getting lost among its temples. If you ever have the chance, go.
Lake Villa Kawaguchiko. This was a great surprise. Being at the foot of Mt. Fuji is breathtaking. I only stayed one day, but it was enough to fall for it. I woke up at 4am to see the lake with the mountain in front of me. Highly recommend staying here if you visit the area.
PECKiSH bakery. Six months in Asia make you miss a few things: good bread, good ham, maybe cheese. But to my surprise, if you keep looking you can find great stuff. This bakery in Taipei has one of the best croissants I have ever had in my life. Pinky promise.
Dongyanshan National Forest. It does not matter if it is raining (like when I went) or clear, this national park is worth a visit. It is beautiful, full of trails, and perfect for spending a day getting lost. Full of flowers and trees, and close enough for a day trip from Taipei.
Sutera Sanctuary Lodges. The Kinabalu Park area is great for hiking. That part of Borneo is fantastic for spending a few days on the trails. This lodge was a perfect base. The cabins are well equipped and really beautiful.

5 things I liked about the online world in 2025

Alex West’s books. If you have ever wanted to make a living from your own projects, you will find yourself in these books. And the best part: they are free. Alex shares how he found, launched, and grew Cyberleads to $1M a year. He does not sell dreams. He does not give advice. He just tells his story as raw as he can. Sometimes you will think: this guy is a genius. Other times: this guy is an idiot.
Photos by Alex Kittoe and Samantha Cavet. Probably my two favorite photographers this year. I almost made it to an exhibition Alex had in Seoul but could not go in the end. His photos make me want to live in the US every single day. Samantha made me more drawn to photographing flowers and to stopping to really look at them. Her collection A Quiet Life is beautiful.
Vizi’s newsletter. Vizi always inspires me to do things with more care, to take life a little less seriously, and to step away from the numbers. We live like slaves tied to work, leaving our souls behind along the way. Reading him helps you reconnect with that part of yourself.
SEO course by Danny Postma. For $89, this course is incredibly useful if you want to live from your projects. SEO is not dead, and it is necessary for many projects to work long term. Danny explains techniques in a simple, practical way that you can apply from day one.
Fast Software, the Best Software by Craig Mod. With the enshittification happening in software thanks to AI (which I love, by the way, but let’s not overdo it), fast software is becoming rare, even though our hardware is 20 times more powerful than a decade ago. When I read this article I realized that one of the main reasons I choose one app over another is how quickly it lets me access data or complete the task I opened it for. A great reflection by Craig, and I believe we as users need to demand this. It is one of the reasons I want my own apps to follow these principles.

What about 2026?

Beyond Picmal, I have a few apps planned for next year. Some of the problems I want to solve:

A journaling app that respects your privacy and keeps your thoughts truly yours.
A way to stay in touch with your professional network without feeling like a salesperson.
Using your voice everywhere instead of typing, for those moments when your hands are busy or your brain moves faster than your fingers.

All of them will share one thing: AI as a quiet assistant, not as the main character. I believe AI works best when it supports your thinking, not when it replaces it. A subtle layer that helps you move faster, not one that takes over your ideas or decisions.

I will share what I learn along the way here. The wins and the failures.

There are also some questions I have been sitting with, and that I want to explore more deeply:

Are we living through something similar to 18th century Romanticism?
How should we approach creative projects without burning out?
How do we keep our health in order to live a happy life?
How do you market your project without going crazy and spending 24 hours in front of a screen?

I do not have answers yet. But I think writing is a good way to find them.

So, bye 2025. A year where I learned, again, that the best way to move forward is to stop waiting for things to feel ready. The only way of learning is by friction.

I would love to hear from you. What are your end of year rituals? Any offline places or online corners you discovered this year that I should know about? And what are you planning for 2026?

You can just send me an email to hello[at]albertogalca.com.

See you in 2026. With more nonsense.

The continuous work of our life is to build death

Mon, 13 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Ever since I was a child, I’ve been somewhat obsessed with death. It’s a topic many cultures don’t discuss much, yet it’s fundamental for the simple fact that we’re all going to die at some point.

I’ve always had this idea of collecting reflections from others, not so much to think about death, but rather to learn how to live. To learn what mattered to those who are no longer here and how, thanks to that, we can reevaluate our existence on this planet until we’re no longer here.

The title of this essay encapsulates the philosophy of my life perfectly:

The continuous work of our life is to build death

No one embodies this philosophy better than Montaigne.

He was a skeptic through and through, so much so that his main motto was: “Que sais-je?” (What do I know?). But his doubt wasn’t paralyzing, it was liberating. By recognizing the limits of his knowledge, he freed himself from pretending to live perfectly or appearing to be someone he wasn’t.

In 1571, he retreated to his castle tower to write. There, surrounded by books and aware of his mortality, he decided to observe himself without filters. He wrote about everything: his fears, his contradictions, his failures, even the most mundane aspects of his existence. He explored, doubted, contradicted himself from one essay to another. His writing is radical in its honesty: personal, contradictory, profoundly human.

Montaigne viscerally understood something Euripides had expressed centuries before:

How can you think yourself a great man, when the first accident that comes along can wipe you out completely?

This awareness of fragility didn’t paralyze him, it awakened him. He knew his time was limited and that spending it on pretensions or living for others was wasting it. That’s why meditating on death didn’t seem morbid to him, but practical: know yourself, accept yourself, and live calmly, without thinking you’re more than you are, knowing your time is limited.

For Montaigne, preparing to die was the first step to living well. Accepting that you are ephemeral, contradictory, and imperfect finally allows you to be fully alive.

You’re in that tower, whether you know it or not. The question isn’t whether you’re going to die, but whether you’re going to live before you do.

Some of the references in these essays are from the book How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer , which I recommend.

The only way I’ve found to step away from the computer at a decent hour

Sun, 20 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I’m someone driven by obsessions, and by phases.

When I’m in one of those phases where I want to do everything on the computer, I forget about the rest of the world. I can spend 18 hours straight in front of the screen, and as you can imagine, that’s not sustainable. Because then I burn out and go three months without wanting to touch the computer.

I’ve always tried to set a time to shut down the computer and do something offline, like writing or reading. That time has always been 8:00 pm. And I’d be embarrassed to admit I could count on one hand the times I’ve actually done it on my own will.

So I said: “Fuck it, I’m going to find a way to fix this.” I don’t want to be the one deciding anymore. So here’s a super simple tip for how I handled it.

Just open your terminal and type:

crontab -e

Once you’re in, add this beautiful line:

0 20 * * * /usr/bin/osascript -e 'tell app "System Events" to shut down'

If you want to pick a different time, just ask ChatGPT how to do it or change the 20 to whatever hour you want (for example, 7pm would be 19).

To exit vim successfully, remember to hit :wq. Finally, check that everything is in place with crontab -l.

If it shows up, you’re all set. You can close the terminal and forget about it. Now, every day at 8pm, your computer will shut down and you’ll have no choice but to settle for a sad little notebook or a boring book.

Publish your macOS App outside the App Store

Sun, 13 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

When I first started building Picmal, a simple image converter for macOS, the App Store was the obvious destination. That changed quickly.

Your browser does not support the video tag.

Picmal demo

After paying for the Apple Developer license and getting my first version ready, I hit an unexpected wall: every time users tried to save an image, a permission dialog appeared. It was intrusive and ruined the experience. The cause? Apple’s sandbox restrictions.

The only way around it was to skip the App Store entirely and distribute the app independently.

But before that, let me tell you why I built Picmal in the first place. The idea came from a daily frustration: opening a browser, finding an online converter, uploading images, waiting for them to process in the cloud, and then downloading them again. I wanted something simple, fast, and offline.

So I decided to make it native, even though I had never built a fully native app before. That was challenge number one. Challenge number two was finding a smooth way to share it without the App Store.

After some research, I discovered Gumroad. It turned out to be the simplest way to sell and distribute my app directly. Here’s how I did it:

Step 1: Build and Export the App from Xcode

Once your app is ready for release, do the following:

In Xcode, go to Product > Archive. Select the method “Direct distribution”.
Wait until the build status shows “Ready for Distribution”.
Click on “Export” and you will export the .app file.

Step 2: Create a DMG Installer

To give users a better experience in order to install the app, I used create-dmg, a simple CLI tool that outputs a polished DMG file.

In the terminal you need to execute this:

# Install create-dmg if you haven't already
brew install create-dmg

# Create the DMG installer
create-dmg \
  --volname "Your App Name" \
  --window-pos 200 120 \
  --window-size 600 300 \
  --icon-size 100 \
  --icon "YourApp.app" 175 120 \
  --hide-extension "YourApp.app" \
  --app-drop-link 425 120 \
  "YourApp.dmg" \
  "source_folder/"

Once it’s done you will have your DMG installer ready, but you need to do an extra step, which is notarize this DMG too to avoid getting an error like this:

Step 3: Notarize DMG installer

First I highly recommend you to create a profile so that every time you have to notarize your new releases you don’t need to remember the password:

xcrun notarytool store-credentials --apple-id "your-email@example.com" \
  --team-id "YOUR_TEAM_ID_HERE" \
  --password "your-app-specific-password" \
  your-app-profile

Note: The password you use here must be an app-specific password generated from your Apple ID account. Regular Apple ID passwords will not work for notarization. If you haven’t created one before, follow Apple’s instructions to generate an app-specific password for use with notarytool.

After creating the profile you need to notarize the DMG file with your newly created profile:

xcrun notarytool submit YourApp.dmg --keychain-profile "your-app-profile" --wait

Now you need to staple the DMG:

xcrun stapler staple YourApp.dmg

And finally you are almost ready, just to check that this process has worked, you can check it in your terminal using:

spctl --assess --type open --context context:primary-signature -v YourApp.dmg

# Expected output:
# YourApp.dmg: accepted
# source=Notarized Developer ID

If you see something like this message, you’re done. You can upload your DMG to Gumroad (or wherever you prefer) and start selling. Here is how it looks my app in Gumroad:

Picmal app listing on Gumroad

If you’re interested in experiencing Picmal, you can buy the app and start using it today.

Routines make you feel at home

Wed, 12 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Novelty has always attracted me far more than what was already obvious to me. It always promised better future plans, while I looked at my side, staring at that static and boring present with a face of indifference, making it clear that I was ignoring it.

I always thought routine was suffocating—until I discovered it could heal.

Because everything depends on the kind of routine you find yourself in. A routine that is good for the soul can never be suffocating, and it was clear that, at the time I had those thoughts, I wasn’t in a pleasant routine.

I’m writing these lines from NODE Coffee in Taipei. It’s one of the few cafés that opens early in the morning, so it has become my place of pilgrimage whenever home feels too small or when I simply want to be outside.

Here I am, counting the stamps I have left for my free coffee, practicing my embarrassingly low level of Chinese, trying to greet the café staff with a Zao an (good morning).

I’m learning to recognize the notes of the La Marzocco coffee machine as it hums endlessly, over and over again. Meanwhile, I wait for the different actors of my day to appear, as if I were the protagonist of The Truman Show: the lady who always comes with her cart to buy coffee, greeting everyone; the man who always sits in the last outdoor chair, cigarette in hand; and finally, the suited man who looks like he stepped out of a Yakuza movie, always carrying his Starbucks cup.

When you enjoy a routine, everything becomes easier, clearer, and more beautiful. You notice the details better, like when you rewatch a movie. You begin to understand the gears that keep these people’s lives running. You appreciate novelty even more because it shines brighter when not everything is new.

That’s why I know the key in life isn’t to escape routine but to create one we love—one that makes us walk around with a smile. And when that’s not possible, one that helps us regain a bit of sanity before losing it completely.

People who have met me in recent years always tell me I’m a routine-driven and highly organized person. The truth is, I never saw myself that way—until I realized that routine was good, that I didn’t have to run from it, and that I had to pack it with me on every adventure.

Everything I once hated—doing the same thing every day, seeing the same people, walking through places I know with my eyes closed—is now among the things I value most.

We never know when we’ll do something for the last time. That’s why repeating it daily is a way of being grateful for being alive—a way to feel a little more at home, even when we’re traveling around the world.

The gentleman from the Yakuza with his Starbucks cup

Your own rules

Mon, 17 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve always been someone who sees things in black and white, believing that things are either one way or the other. And for those of us who think like this, life eventually slaps us in the face with a big dose of gray. That’s when we realize that life is one big “IT DEPENDS.”

Universal rules don’t exist, which is why we need to be careful with the hair growth sellers we encounter every day. They’ll tell you their way is the right way, that it’s foolproof. But the truth is, you’re going to go bald, and nothing can stop it. The only choice you have is to accept it and find yourself a good hat—or embrace the baldness with pride. It’s up to you.

The reality is that no one can teach you how to live better than yourself because no one else is inside your head. We need to draw inspiration from others, absorb their energy, and use it in the best way we can. But no advice works straight out of someone else’s mind. It’s only when we shape it, adapt it to our own worldview, that we can unlock the full potential hidden within an idea.

Our way of seeing the world is unique, built from fragments of all the experiences we gather throughout life. And while our experiences may resemble those of others, if we look closely, we’ll see that no two are ever exactly the same.

Robert Kegan has an interesting theory about the stages a person must go through to become an independent adult. Around the age of 20, we enter what he calls the “Self-Authoring Mind” stage, where we take responsibility for ourselves and begin developing our own rules and values.

Robert Kegan Stages of Adult Development

That’s why, when I see so many people stuck in this state—never reaching that stage—I feel a deep sense of sadness. They complain about the government, their parents, or society as a whole, but I don’t see them using that frustration to take control of their own lives.

So never look for the easy way out. There are no magic formulas, and if someone tries to sell you theirs, run as fast as you can. Effort and time put things in their place and shape better people.

Feel free to doubt everything and everyone. No one holds the absolute truth about anything because what worked for them won’t necessarily work for you. Experiment, make mistakes—your path is only found by walking it.

Even if you think someone is horribly fascist, sexist, or just an idiot, expose yourself to all kinds of ideas. Even if you completely disagree, don’t lock yourself in a bubble—just listen. Otherwise, you risk falling into your own trap, believing your truths are the only ones that matter.

And then, the idiot will be you.

Of course, don’t take my word for any of this. Get out there and create your own rules of the game.

An empty calendar

Fri, 14 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Since I started working as a developer, I’ve always had the same problem: I have a terrible allergy to events scheduled at a specific time of the day (call them meetings, call them whatever you want).

I’ve always been a bit of a “rebel” in that sense. I still remember how, at one of the first startups I worked for, I would often arrive outside the expected hours because I had spent more time at home reading or doing other things than I was “allowed” to. That’s why they introduced a new policy requiring all employees to start work before a certain time.

As they announced it, looking around at everyone, I knew deep down that it was really about me. And I think this has always been the case, even since I was a kid.

I never liked being forced to do anything. I never liked anyone telling me what to do with my time. What if I don’t feel like eating on a Saturday at 3 p.m.? What if I don’t want to meet up with you at 4 p.m. on Sunday for any reason—or no reason at all?

I’ve always been very jealous of my time. I’ve always wanted all the time in the world for myself. And I want to be the one who decides who I give it to and who I don’t. It’s a selfish act, but I believe that every good thing that happens in life comes from having the time to do what you truly want to do—not what others expect of you.

It’s precisely in that time you don’t give away to others that the best ideas are born. It’s where a writer faces a blank page and creates an incredible story. It’s where a painter adds the final brushstrokes to what will be considered a masterpiece. Magic happens in the time we choose not to fill with obligations.

As I mentioned before, my life strategy has always been to follow my curiosity and let it guide me. Just as I do with my life, I do with my time. I aspire to have an empty calendar and an empty backlog.

To not know what I’ll do tomorrow and to use the present as my compass. To focus my energy on what truly matters. To seize moments of inspiration and act—rather than waste them doing something I don’t want to do.

Because our existence is finite (and very short), do what makes sense to you, even if no one else understands it. And when you’re tempted to take the easy way out by telling yourself you don’t have time or that your current circumstances don’t allow it, try to find a way. The truth is, you are free to do whatever you want.

As Sheldon B. Kopp put it:

You are free to do whatever you like. You need only face the consequences.

And this is precisely what’s so frightening—accepting that this decision might leave you feeling more alone, poorer, or cause you to miss out on opportunities that might have led you to a better place in the future. But we can never truly know if that would have been the case.

So, as Taleb says:

Missing a train is only painful if you run after it.

Even though Taleb can be a bit crazy at times, I’m sticking with his team. I’m not going to run after any train. I’m going to follow my curiosity. I’m going to keep my calendar empty. I’m going to clear out my backlog and leave it clean. I’m going to wait for inspiration to come and do with it whatever I please.

I’ll sit and wait for the next train. Or the one after that. Or maybe none at all. Who knows.

Places of silence in Bangkok

Fri, 07 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

It’s been a while since I last wrote here, and to be honest, I’ve missed it. I could say I’ve been busy—but the good kind of busy. I’ve been working on my next project (which will be out very soon), taking photos, and getting ready for my third consecutive year of adventures in Asia.

A week ago, I arrived in Bangkok. If you’ve never been, it’s a very noisy city. Construction, cars, motorcycles, and tuk-tuks roar through the streets like lions, making their way through the chaotic rhythm of a big city.

When you find a moment of silence here, you hold onto it like an old friend you’ve missed. You appreciate it as if it were oxygen and savor it with a big smile.

Coming from Córdoba to Bangkok, I’ve been searching for silence like water in the desert. That’s why today, I want to share four places that have brought me calm—places I’m sure will do the same for you if you ever visit this city.

The first one is none other than the park where I’m writing these lines right now. Benchakitti Park is a massive green space in the middle of Bangkok. People here move at a slower pace, and you can clearly see the benefits of a quieter environment: conversations without raising your voice, phone calls with family and friends, and the freedom to exercise outdoors in peace.

Your browser does not support the video tag.

Benchakitti Park

The second place is the entire area near the river. To find it, you can head to Wat Sriboonreung Pier or any of the different “ferry” stops along the river. It’s a peaceful walk and a great way to get a glimpse of what the houses in this city looked like before Bangkok’s skyline was taken over by towering skyscrapers.

While you can’t walk the entire stretch from end to end, there are sections where you can, and I especially like it because you come across small temples and houses where plants seem to be the true hosts of the space.

The small streets near the Jim Thompson House Museum are a haven of peace—a quiet area where you can walk without traffic. But the real gem here is the William Warren Library.

It’s a small library inside the Jim Thompson Art Center, a quiet spot to read or write in peace. The whole place feels like an escape from Bangkok’s constant buzz, as if the city’s thousands of passing cars don’t exist. The library has comfortable sofas, outlets to charge your devices, and an atmosphere of complete silence.

Lastly, I can’t leave without mentioning one of my favorite cafés in Bangkok. JEDI Café & Bar has been part of Creare from the beginning. Aside from its great coffee, the best part is the back area that overlooks the river. If you’re lucky and it’s not too crowded, you can sit there, read peacefully for a while, and enjoy the calm—until the mosquitoes have nearly devoured you. It’s a wonderful place to relax if you’re in the city center, and it’s always better to go early when they’ve just opened.

Your browser does not support the video tag.

The back area of JEDI Café

These are my four places. If you’ve been to any of them or have other recommendations, I’d be happy to hear them.

Bye 2024

Fri, 27 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

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:

Open Google Photos: I would go month by month, writing down the things I felt or the fun moments I experienced during each specific month.
After finishing the first part, I would create three sections: one where I wrote about what went well, another for what didn’t go so well, and finally, one for my key learnings from the year.

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:

I’m someone who loves learning new things, but I find it hard to put them into practice. There are 2–3 things I’m really passionate about, and it’s difficult for me to make room for things I’ve never tried before. This year, however, I left that door slightly more open and realized I should do it more often.
Several family members passed away this year, and it only reinforced my approach to life: keeping things simple, as Edgar Allan Poe once said, and living with commitment, attitude, longevity, and purpose. It sucks that I have to learn these things this way, but often, there’s just no other way.
If you’ve noticed, almost every project I’ve created is connected to calm: Kalm, Silencezzz, or Natural.fm. That’s because what I’ve been seeking the most this year is silence. There’s been too much noise in my head, and I needed to sort it out. Nothing works better for that than silence, allowing everything to settle into place. As I wrote in Our Struggles Define Us:

”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.”

There’s nothing like action to clear your mind. For an overthinker like me, taking action feels like an act of faith—trusting that by thinking less and doing more, even when it doesn’t seem logical, I’ll gain clarity. And I can confirm that it works. After countless mental loops, I’ve arrived at interesting conclusions, which, in turn, brought an unexpected sense of calm.

That said, I like to wrap up this final newsletter of the year by sharing a few things I’ve really enjoyed:

Articles I enjoyed this year

Books I enjoyed this year

The Idiot by Dostoevsky.
Señora de rojo sobre fondo gris by Miguel Delibes.
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Murakami.
The Great Gatsby by Scott Fitzgerald.
100 años de soledad by Gabriel García Márquez.
Educated by Tara Westover.

Quotes I enjoyed this year

“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

Places I enjoyed this year

Hydra, Greece.
Bayonne, France.
Pum Pum Bakery, Madrid.
De Kas, Amsterdam.
Van Stapele Koekmakerij, Amsterdam.
Alma Ezequiel Montilla, Puente Genil.
Señor Cangrejo, Sevilla.

Next year, more to come

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

My life strategy is pure curiosity

Fri, 20 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

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.

*On this solitary path, you may occasionally connect with generous people who want to help you, which is a wonderful experience. *

Edgar Allan Poe was right

Fri, 15 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

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.

This is the only ambition I have in life

Alberto Gallego

A chat about curiosity, imperfection, and knowing when enough is enough

Could you introduce yourself?

How did you get into the software world?

I really liked your article titled “My life strategy is entirely based on curiosity.” People are now building personal brands and planning everything. Aren’t they doing things “just” out of curiosity anymore? Is curiosity decreasing? (I haven’t quite clarified my question :))

In your article titled “What happens when everything is perfect?”, you mention how artificial intelligence affects creativity. Why is imperfection important for humanity?

I agree with your article titled “They ruined our experience of discovering new things.” We are in an era where everything looks the same. Do you have any advice on how to find or create truly valuable content?

You have an article titled “On making things that matter.” As an independent developer, how do you decide whether a new idea is “worth building” or “meaningful”?

How can we keep our curiosity alive in adulthood and when we get lost in daily routines? How does your learning process work when you become curious about a new subject (e.g., a new programming language or a philosophical movement)?

What does success mean to you?

If I asked you to make a list of recommendations, what would they be? (Movies, books, TV series, blogs, YouTube channels, etc.)

Do you follow the news? If I asked you to give a list of people worth following, who would they be?

What advice would you give to those who want to enter this field? Everyone is entering through artificial intelligence or other means. What advice would you give to those who want to improve?

How do you spend your day?

How did you start blogging?

What is your perspective on making money online? How should a content creator make money?

I agree with you about “5 Things That Used to Be Normal and Are Now a Luxury.” Do you think there’s a way to incorporate these things into the norm of life, to make them commonplace through repetition?

Being offline

Silence

One-ingredient food

Being served by a person

Clothes made of natural fibers

You have also visited Türkiye. As a Turk, I am curious about your views on Türkiye. How did you find the city and its people? Was there a moment that particularly impressed you?

Is there anything else you would like to add?

People More Interesting Than Me: Herman Martinus

First things first: can you introduce yourself?

You don’t have social media: how do you approach being informed and staying connected to people without it?

Related to the previous question, how is your life without social media? What has this decision brought to you?

Following on from that: how do you approach your own business? How do people find your work and how do you build it, keeping in mind that you want to stay small and that you are thinking in such a long time frame?

You have an article I like about “active rest.” For people like us, who spend most of the day sitting in front of a screen, it’s really nice to move while resting. What kind of things do you do in your active rest time?

I like routines a lot. Considering everything we have talked about, what does a normal day look like for you? How do you approach the day, and are there any small habits or tricks that help you make better decisions as it goes on?

After everything you have built and decided, what are you still figuring out?

To finish, the usual question: any recommendations? Something you have read, watched, visited or discovered that you would like to share?

5 Things That Used to Be Normal and Are Now a Luxury

1. Being offline

2. Silence

3. One-ingredient food

4. Being served by a person

5. Clothes made of natural fibers

Building Picmal: Why I Still Believe in Simple, Local Mac Software

People More Interesting Than Me: Lucas Fischer

First things first: can you introduce yourself?

How has traveling changed you?

Before Amore, how did you end up here at all? I’m curious about the path into development and specifically why the Mac. It’s a smaller, stranger platform to bet on than the web or iOS.

I love your work. It’s always very detailed, and I like how seriously you take small details. Where does that come from? I’m interested in the unglamorous part too: what your process actually looks like when you’re designing something, and where you go when nothing is working.

Building on the App Store can be frustrating in ways that are hard to explain to people outside of it. What’s been the most difficult part for you, and what is Amore trying to do differently there?

Entrepreneurship is wild. What was the worst moment, the one where you seriously considered stopping, and what got you through it?

What do you value most in life? And is there something you’ve changed your mind about in the last year?

What do you think we will do as humans when work is automated by AI? I’m curious whether it has already changed your own process, and whether there’s any part of your work you deliberately keep it out of.

Recommendations are great, so would you like to share some? You can pick whatever.

Notes From Five Months of Building

Why Not Live?

The modern trap

Between Nietzsche and Levin

What happens when everything is perfect?

On making things that matter

Bye 2025

When I stopped overthinking and started doing more was the moment someone finally paid for something I made

End of year rituals

5 things I liked about the offline world in 2025

5 things I liked about the online world in 2025

What about 2026?

The continuous work of our life is to build death

The only way I’ve found to step away from the computer at a decent hour

Publish your macOS App outside the App Store

Step 1: Build and Export the App from Xcode

Step 2: Create a DMG Installer

Step 3: Notarize DMG installer

Routines make you feel at home

Your own rules

An empty calendar

Places of silence in Bangkok

Bye 2024

Articles I enjoyed this year

Books I enjoyed this year

Quotes I enjoyed this year

Places I enjoyed this year

Next year, more to come

My life strategy is pure curiosity

Edgar Allan Poe was right