Rating: 3/5

It’s an interactive, movie-style game, and I really enjoyed it on my first playthrough. However, the game doesn’t let you skip dialogue, and on the second playthrough it became frustrating. Having to sit through the same scenes and conversations again made it tedious and boring. I wanted to explore different paths, but the lack of dialogue skipping killed the experience.

Because of this, I’m giving it a 3/5 rating.

For the past few months, I’ve been trying to get my photography side hustle off the ground. My initial assumption was simple: people are always looking for photographers, so if I start with very affordable rates, clients will follow.

I did all the necessary setup and busywork early on: insurance, a new camera, PPA membership, and the other basics that make things feel official.

What I didn’t expect was how difficult it would be to land paid clients. I’ve done a few TFP shoots, which were useful for practice and portfolio building, but so far I haven’t earned a single dollar from photography.

As I build my photography side hustle while working full-time as a software engineer, I keep returning to one idea: minimalism. Both fields pull me in different directions. Programming has taught me to strip things down to their essentials. Photography constantly tempts me with more gear, more tools, more stuff. Balancing the two has made me think deeply about what minimalism really means in creative work.

The Simplicity of Code

In programming, I live in a world of virtual tools. A laptop, an editor, a few accounts, and I can build almost anything. Over the years, these tools have faded into the background. GitHub, IDEs, frameworks, and cloud platforms all exist, but they feel weightless. They live on the screen, not in my bag.

We’ve all heard the classic question: “What would you do if you won a million dollars?” It’s a fun daydream, but let’s be honest, most of us know that’s a pretty unlikely scenario, so we don’t really think deeply and give very surface level answers. Instead, let’s talk about something that’s actually going to happen to most of us: retirement.

Thinking about retirement is a lot more grounded than fantasizing about sudden riches. Pretty much everyone retires at some point, and many of us are saving (or at least planning) for that phase of life. Even if it’s not something you’ve thought about in detail, it’s a realistic scenario. And the beauty of asking yourself what you’d like to do in retirement is that it can help you figure out what you truly want to do with your life right now.

A lot of developers seem to be afraid of generative AI and LLMs because it may replace their jobs.

But as an older developer who sometimes have a hard time keeping up with new frameworks and technologies, LLMs have been life saving. Not only my productivity is high but I am able to keep up new languages and codebases and be productive almost immediately. I used to think about moving to management because it seemed I could not keep up with tech but now I have new confidence that I can keep doing my hobby as a profession for another few years.

Raising Mentally Strong Kids (affiliate link) is one of better parenting books that I read recently. Highly recommended, 5/5.

A lot of parenting books have same concepts but it is good to re-read same ideas with different perspectives from various authors. It helps reinforce those ideas.

The main ideas are:

Focus on yourself first. Fix your issues, get good sleep, handle stress, do hard things, be a good example.
Physical activity is very important for brain development.
Fight Automatic Negative Thoughts (ANT).
Give kids chores, give them hard things to do, let them fail when stakes are low.
Choose authoritative parenting style. But don't nag, let kids learn from their mistakes and be there for them when they fail.

This was a hard movie to watch. Initially, it was hard to find sympathy for Charlie, the main character. He is slob and you feel a bit of disgust.

But as you learn more about him, you will love him and root for him.

Recommended. 3/5 stars.

This was good movie. Many review online said that this was pretty basic and standard plot but I still enjoyed it. Maika Monroe’s acting was amazing. Kept wondering if she is just being paranoid or there is a real danger.

3/5.

https://www.netflix.com/title/81166770

Maid on Netflix is gut wrenching, emotional show about a woman escaping abusive relationship with her kids. She has very little money and no social support. As a parent, it was really hard to watch. You will cry at times.

Highly recommended. 5/5

The first episode of Mo was so annoying that it took several months to finish it. But eventually the show gets interesting.

Mo is really annoying that is very hard to love him initially. There were moments when he got in trouble for his immaturity that instead of feeling bad for him, I felt relieved. I hate shows in which there are no consequences for stupid actions. Here, at least, he had to deal with the consequences of his stupidity.