Let's start from the basics: can you introduce yourself?

I was born in Dallas, Texas to two Indian immigrants. My mom owns her own businesses and my dad is a Computer Science Professor. I grew up surrounded by children whose parents are in IT fields. Unsurprisingly, computers became a strong part of my identity.

I went to school at Columbia University in New York to study Electrical Engineering thinking I wanted to get into consumer electronics. I learned EE was not for me and took a software engineering job after graduating. I kept working my way up the stack, eventually becoming a designer.

I’ve worked exclusively at startups, including as a cofounder at Carrot Fertility.

When I’m not working, I like to take photographs, travel with my wife and two kids, run, bike, and write.

What's the story behind your blog?

I grew up reading blogs as a teenager in the 00s. I loved how each blog could be vastly different, unlike more standardized mediums like books. I always had the idea in the back of my mind of starting one of my own.

I briefly wrote for a technology blog, where I learned that professional writing in a newsroom wasn’t for me. So, I started a simple Wordpress blog where I life blogged like one of my influences, Danny Choo.

I eventually abandoned that blog on a trip to Japan that was a major turning point in my life.

This current blog started as a playground for front end tools. Since I built it from the ground up, unlike the earlier Wordpress one, I felt more motivation to develop it and poured more and more time into it. Design and technology naturally became the focus.

Some influences are Andrew Kim’s now defunct Minimally Minimal, Craig Mod, Anton Repponen, julian.digital, Maggie Appleton, and Paul Stamitiou.

What does your creative process look like when it comes to blogging?

Most of my ideas come up when I’m out and about, especially when I’m running. I run along the same path every day. I find that movement in a familiar environment allows me to tune out everything else. Somehow, connections between ideas magically start to happen in this frame of mind.

I add all new ideas into a long list I keep in Notion. Adding it to the list seems to turn vague thoughts into an idea that then persists and bounces around my head. When something seems clear enough to write about, I start delving in.

Some posts require a lot of research. In these cases, I use Readwise for capturing highlights from books and articles, Figjam for organizing thoughts on a canvas, and Notion if I need structured data.

I often write using Otter.ai for speech to text while taking a walk. This is especially helpful when I feel a lot of Resistance.

My wife reads all my drafts. She points out places where a non-native English speaker may have trouble and where I use too much jargon.

Do you have an ideal creative environment? Also do you believe the physical space influences your creativity?

I’m a big believer in the influence of environment on creativity. I’ve learned over time the effects that things like smell, temperature, and visual appearance of a space can have on my mood and creative impulses.

I have a desk setup that I find essential, especially when editing photos or writing. Having a space that I know by feel lowers friction and makes the process feel much smoother.

Sometimes, though, I feel stuck after spending too much time at my desk. In these cases, I like working out of the Apple Park Visitor Center. It’s kind of like a cafe within an Apple Store.

A question for the techie readers: can you run us through your tech stack?

The blog has gone through many iterations over time while sticking to the same repo. Currently, the site is built using Gatsby, React, and Tailwind. Posts are written in MDX. Type is set in Inter and IBM Plex Mono. I use Plausible for analytics.

I have a handful of scripts and tools that speed up specific parts of my blogging workflow. One example is a tool that turns a directory of images into markup including EXIF information like aperture, shutter speed, etc. I’ve been writing even more tools now with the help of LLMs.

I write my drafts in Obsidian and copy them over to my repo. I edit code in VSCode.

Photos have been shot on a variety of cameras, though I mostly use the Leica CL digital camera these days. I process them in a Lightroom with a set of custom presets.

I design the site and draw graphics in Figma.

The site is hosted on Netlify.

I use Mailchimp for my newsletter.

Given your experience, if you were to start a blog today, would you do anything differently?

The main change I would make (which I still may make in the future) is to not use Gatsby, and stick with something simpler. I have found Gatsby to be more trouble than it is worth. For example, my build times out on cloud services like Netlify and Vercel. Hence, I manually deploy and don’t get the advantage of automatic deploys.

Financial question since the Web is obsessed with money: how much does it cost to run your blog? Is it just a cost, or does it generate some revenue? And what's your position on people monetising personal blogs?

Per month, I pay $19 for Netlify, $19 for Plausible Analytics, $12 for Vimeo video hosting, $19.99 for Lightroom and Photoshop, and $20 for Figma. My Domain is €34.90 a year. I will soon start paying for Mailchimp once I hit my maximum of 2000 free subscribers. Altogether that’s about $90 a month.

I currently make a tiny bit of money from affiliate links on my review and desk setup posts. These cover some of the monthly fees. I’m considering setting up a membership program in the far future, but I don’t mind losing money on the blog since I consider it a hobby.

I also don’t mind when creators charge for their writing, especially if it is done thoughtfully like Craig Mod and Ben Thompson. I support a dozen or so people at the moment.

Time for some recommendations: any blog you think is worth checking out? And also, who do you think I should be interviewing next?

Aside from the blogs I mentioned earlier, I’d check out Aegir.org, Matt Sephton, Faith Arslan, frantic.im.

Final question: is there anything you want to share with us?

I’m making a product recommendation site called zen of things. It’s a bit like Wirecutter, but with a focus on good design instead of price. Check it out and provide feedback if you like well designed objects!