André Torgal: #personal Feed

Acid For The Children

2025-01-20T00:00:00Z

The strange tale of a boy named Flea starts in Rye, NY. It was all very normal. But soon his parents divorced and his mother Patricia remarried a jazz musician. [...] He was on the streets by 14 and soon after, met another social outcast and drug user named Anthony Kiedis. They formed a band that would become the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

I wanted to buy it since I watched Flea's interview. As soon as I got it, took me a couple of weeks to finish. Had to stop to watch the Suburbia (1983) movie, which led to watching The decline of Western Civilization and everything else by Penelope Spheeris.

It's all related, believe me.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

I know the feeling.

This Woman's Work - Essays on Music

2025-01-20T00:00:00Z

Edited by Kim Gordon and Sinéad Gleeson, features a collection of 17 essays about women who kicked in doors - pioneers, activists, feminists.

My wife gave it to me on my birthday, in 2022, I believe. I read a couple of essays, and then lost it on a plane. I bought another copy – not the hard cover version, though 😢 – and devoured it in a few days.

Not all essays are brilliant or even easy to read. But all are meaningful and they all taught me something about important.

Writing doesn’t have to be hard

2025-01-01T00:00:00Z

Let's quickly catch up and take it from here.

It seems like I took another one of those long breaks from blogging.

But I have been craving to come back to this.

What I’ve been up to

Let's start with languages: they have been a big part of this journey and I have just surpassed the 400+ day streak on Duolingo 🤯.

The daily Ukrainian, Arabic and/or German practice is paying off! It’s hard to put into words how rewarding it feels to see someone’s eyes go wide when I say, “It was a pleasure to meet you. I hope you have a safe flight home” — in their language 🤣.

Music has been another cornerstone. Almost every day, I’ve practiced paradiddles and stick control at home. I have learned over 300 songs, spent endless hours in the studio improving them. That feeling of finally nailing a drum part that once felt impossible? Pure magic.

Then there’s tennis. A sport that’s teaching me patience and perseverance. I can finally hit a solid (OH) backhand drive and my first serve is getting consistent. I dream of finally beating that friend. It's been like 30 years since we first played. I never took a set from him.

Oh! It's nice to have "hobbies"

Someone might say.

But they miss the point, entirely.

Busy growing old

I see people getting old and some aging better than others. I noticed that the ones that seem to be aging faster have a couple of things in common: they stopped learning new things and they're no longer showing curiosity about things that are new or strange to them.

We can't stop growing old, of course. But I am hoping that the aging process is not that linear and that we have some leverage over at least a few parameters. Since I learned that cardio is trainable I ditched that old idea of me

I love cycling but my cardio limits my ability to climb 😫.

I took it as a challenge to start training. And even if I didn't believe from day one that it work at all, I gave it a solid go. One year later, at 51, I get to top of that hill 💪 with ease. In my 30s I would pass out before the middle.

So, ... busy living my midlife crisis to the fullest? Yes! Very predictable. So much on time, that it feels ridiculous. But I embrace it exactly for what it is.

In the end, I am grateful this crisis involves so much playing and so much learning.

And for once, I feel comfortable in my wrinkling skin, being a kid, playing with my favorite toys and learning new tricks.

Writing, de-complicated

I also started writing some sort of book.

Honestly. 🤣 I am sticking to the trope, as hard as I can.

Needless to say, and e-x-a-c-t-l-y as the trope goes, it might take me a few years to finish it. A decade. Most likely, I won't finish it at all... But here’s the thing: once I stopped worrying about who might read or judge my words, and started writing just for me, the pressure disappeared.

With that weight off my mind, I started having fun writing again. And fun not just writing, editing as well. And it got even better when I shared it and got to hear some friends reading it out loud.

That's when I started wishing this blog was flowing as well. But coming back to this blog is another challenge, another level. It's always coming back to a certain plausible audience. Not a particularly concrete audience, though. More like an idea of. And this idea is not always as kind as a friend chilling in the balcony after a good meal.

But screw it. I do not need to polish these posts. 😇 Embracing imperfection and settling for good enough is working wonders in other areas of my life. And I also want to keep it simpler from now on. Writing doesn’t have to be a performance; it’s just a tool for connection. And I’m not here to impress anyone (especially you, yes, you 😬).

I just want to focus on what I’m trying to say and enjoy it.

The joy, by the way, lies in the process, not the outcome. 🙃 And the less I overthink it, the more fun it becomes.

What's next?

A little over a year ago, I was completing my 50th tour of the solar system.

I thought it was the perfect excuse to come back to this blog. I wrote a post in my head, over and over, something like "My own fifty at fifty", inspired by Tony Hawk’s insane youth.

In this post I would list how I (re)learned to cycle without using my hands, or how I learned how to hold still at every red traffic light, without putting a foot to the ground. I would mention my clean one-hand backhand, and how I can shout the score in nine different languages. Playing with the toys, learning new tricks.

But I missed that window. I meanwhile turned 51, just two months ago, and while I am proud of each new trick I learned, I don't think they're worth a post.

I expect to be blogging about some of the projects I have been working on, though. I am learning new digital tricks as well. I have been cooking with new ingredients, and it smells like cool stuff.

This is me, hitting the play button again.

Hello.

Writing is hard

2023-03-17T00:00:00Z

Can I somehow break this cycle and find a sustainable pace without these year-long interruptions? Or do I actually need another break?

Why I do even write?

It starts with a need to process my ideas and emotions. Finding the right words and shaping them into a coherent narrative feels deeply personal — it’s a conversation with myself.

But writing is also about sharing. Once those words are out there, they’re no longer just for me. They become a way to connect.

Friends occasionally read my posts and encourage me:

You need to write more.

Eventually, complete strangers also stumble upon my work. Someone reached out once to ask questions about an article on design systems. Not only I learned that it was showing up in search results - strangely gratifying - I had the opportunity to connect with another human 🤗 with whom my post had deeply resonated.

It might all just start as a need to find clarity, to quiet the inner dialog by working mindfully on the words. But it also brings me connection, and the sense that maybe — just maybe — some of those words can be useful to others.

What I struggle with

In a world buzzing with bots and AI, why should my words matter? Why not offload everything to ChatGPT and let it churn out polished prose?

The robot wrote that 👆. It is not my tone, my voice. Not even an attractive idea. Well, .. I guess I understand why the robot would suggest it. 🤣

Part of my challenge is finding a voice — a consistent, authentic tone that reflects me. But that’s tricky when I write about so many things: work topics, music, personal reflections, ... I feel like each topic demands a different tone, vocabulary, and focus.

Then there’s the internal noise: the voices in my head critiquing every word, the fear of boring my audience, and the nagging doubt that my English (not my first language) isn’t good enough.

It's all about practice

Friends keep encouraging me and giving me tips. Following their wise advice, I restarted reading books consistently, expanding my vocabulary, beginning to appreciate writing styles I wasn't familiar with. I started practicing offline with writing techniques, writing down my dreams, the works...

But the pressure to get it “just right”, and the disconnection I typically end up feeling when reading the results, often saps the joy from the process.

It turns out that practicing writing is also hard 😅

Taking a break

Yep. I’m at that point again.

I need to stop thinking about this and take another one of those long breaks.

Maybe stepping away is part of the process — time to let ideas quietly grow in the background. Live it out. Invest more time into learning languages, drumming, and sports. Those are always guaranteed to deliver rewards.

And maybe, when I return, I’ll find the words waiting for me.

Until then, this is me hitting pause.

Is there anything more metal than a correfoc?

2023-03-05T00:00:00Z

No! 🤌 Not even close! There is nothing more metal than a Catalan correfoc.

It's 10 minutes past 9 and I am still shaking in awe and excitement for all the crazy things I saw today. 🥁 🔥 💥 🐉 👺 But it isn't over yet, is it?

I am right in the middle of Plaça de la Vila de Gràcia and the square is packed with people, costumes, gadgets, drums.

Today's events are related to the traditional celebration of Sant Medir, which is actually observed one week after, on the 3rd of March...

... best known for the tonnes of sweet and toffees thrown to the public from the horses, floats and lorries

Well, no traces of sweets, lorries, or even saints for that matter. Today's event consists of tabalada - drumming around the neighbourhood - and correfoc - burning stuff down the streets and plazas.

The history of the correfoc is rooted in ancestral stuff going all the way back to the 12th century. 🤯 It has waned and resurfaced several times, most recently in the 80s with the arrival of Democracy. The commitment to keep traditions like this alive and kicking is a very Catalan story in itself. 🤘 Also metal as fuck.

The last of the obnoxiously loud and hazardous, yet beautiful and mesmerising, pyrotechnics has just been smoked out. Now the smoke is settling down.

But the drumming is still raging on. 🥁 Four different groups converged here before the grand finale and over a hundred people of all ages are having a grand tabalers jam session.

Baixeu! 👇 Baixeu! 👇

Someone screams from the middle of the jam.

And the jam goes quieter 🤫 as they play clicking sticks on the sides of the drums. And they literally get down. They duck, squat, playing softer and closer to the ground.

clickity-clack 🥢 clickity-clack 🥢

Then the surdos start banging a stronger rhythm.

And the tension is building up again.

dum! 🥁 dum! 🥁 dum! 🥁 .............

dum! 🥁 dum! 🥁 dum! 🥁 .............

That's when I notice, on the left, one other surdo player still ducking, and playing softly. 🤔 Why is he still hiding behind the drum? 🤔 And why isn't he actually powering through?

I see the person next to the shy drummer, clearly instigating them, pretty much pushing them:

Get up! Come on! Play with them!

So the dude, stands up and joins the dum! 🥁 dum! 🥁 dum! 🥁 ...

Wait... Is that me?

Yes, indeed. Aquell noi soc jo 🙃

Never have I lived a moment that would fit the HowWeGotHere trope more perfectly than this one.

The whole drum group comes back together, standing up, jumping around, screaming.

And in my little bubble, time is slowing down ... and I am thinking.

I guess I made some cool decisions along the way.

So what exactly brought me here, to this exact moment, this drum, this stick?

As the trope goes:

For that, we have to rewind back a year.

Long story short

One year ago I had just lived through the toughest winter of my life (so far 😅) and I had to make some radical changes in my life.

These changes involved a commitment to start playing music with other people but that didn't quite work as expected, so I had to dig deeper into my courage, and go out of my comfort zone.

I found the courage to ask the Tabalers de Sants to join. They are the percussion group supporting the Colla de Diables de Sants, the "devils and beasts" group of Barcelona's Sants neighbourhood.

I have been rehearsing with them since the beginning of 2023 and I must be doing good 😬 because I was already allowed to play a couple of weeks ago, when several groups were invited by the organisers to drum from the sidelines of Barcelona's half marathon.

I had a blast playing with them while watch all those 🏃‍♀️ 🏃‍♂️ 🏃‍♀️ 🏃‍♂️ 🏃‍♀️ 🏃‍♂️ runners go by. Hopefully they were energised by both the great drumming and my occasional mistakes. 😬

Correfoc de Sant Medir

Tonight was different, though. Tonight was a full on correfoc! 🔥

They invited me to play, but I thought it was better to just get acquainted first. So I volunteered to go with them, help them load and unload the gear, take photographs, and record some video. And focus on the fire. Get in the thick of it and conquer my fear.

If I had a panic attack, I could just run away and go hyperventilate somewhere else on my own 😅 and not mess up the formation or disappear with a drum piece.

I eventually ran out of battery before the main event. I wasn't anticipating that they would play for so long. First in the evening walking up the Gràcia neighbourhood.

Then after dusk, walking back down, following the diables and the fire back to Plaça de la Vila de Gràcia.

No matter how close I got to the fire, the sparks, the loud blasts, I felt no fear at all. No negative thoughts, no phobias, no sweaty hands ... Adrenaline for sure. But above all, I felt bewilderment, wonder, admiration 🤩 and fooled around like a child, watching everything with the eyes of a child.

I can only wish I can come back a few more times. Playing with them for sure. But also again to capture some of this mayhem in all its glory with a better camera 📷 and even closer to the action. 🎥

Finally, after the final "burning" and devil's dance, the jam went on for a while. One of our surdo players had hurt his hand and had basically called it a day.

I picked up his instrument and took it back to the jam. Looking for someone else that might want to play it. But hoping to find no one and just hold on to it. I haven't even practices this particular type of drum, first time smacking it really hard - it fucking rocks, by the way 💪 metal as expected.

I picked up a simple rhythm and tagged along.

Get up! Come on! Play with them!

Ok! Gràcies! Moltas Gràcies!

🥁 dum! 🥁 dum! 🥁 dum!

The toughest winter and some steadfast decisions

2023-03-03T00:00:00Z

As an aftershock of the lockdown and deconfinement agony, I started having anxiety attacks every now and then.

This is the story of my descent into a paralysing fear of being anxious. 😱 And how I picked up a racket and a pair of drum sticks to replace cigarettes and procrastination with sweating, friends, and commitments. 💪

I got through the lockdown just fine. 🙈

For the rest of 2020 and most of 2021, I also got through the confinements just fine. 🙈 🙊 If we forget a frozen shoulder injury that took 18 months to heal, of course.

But by the end of 2021, with everything almost back to normal, I suddenly experienced a few anxiety attacks. First at a cosy dinner with friends, a street market, a walk around the neighbourhood.

And later, during the 2022`s winter, things got way, way worse. I mean real, real bad. 😟 Like having frequent panic attacks at seemingly arbitrary places or situations. A supermarket isle, a regular work meeting, the last step down a staircase, ...

Always without signs of real danger, and without any common context or apparent cause. And without warning. 😮‍💨

Agoraphobia? Claustrophobia? Stress? 🤔

At some point I was convinced I had developed some sort of agoraphobia. There were cases when just leaving the house for groceries was enough to trigger the scare.

From the desk where I am writing this post I can see the spot in the patio downstairs where I suddenly felt dizzy 💫, nauseated, trembling, hyperventilating. Palms sweating, heart racing, compressed chest, dry mouth, everything all at once.

Oh no! Fuck! Not this shit again.

I recall trying to look up to the sky, in the distance, or just down to my feet. Taking deep breaths, trying to get a hold of me, trying to walk one step forward at a time, trying to think.

I eventually ruled out agoraphobia because it was also happening when working comfortably at my desk, in the quiet cosiness of home.

At this point I was pretty much expecting a panic attack any given day. Some were mild and I could get back in control with a glass of water and a few minutes chilling. But on 3 occasions, if I recall correctly, I ended up trembling in a hospital waiting room, patiently asking for help.

Yes I know it's probably all in my mind, but can you please check my chest? it hurts and my brain is telling me that I am about to die at any moment.

That bad.

Some things had to change

My last big panic attack happened in May 2022. It started after a normal lunch on a normal Tuesday and it lasted more than 3 excruciating long hours.

Just a dude in his mid-life crisis, with some weird long blue hair, having a panic attack. He will be fine.

I always empathised with the doctors and nurses at the hospital. They had to be proportionally concerned with me, versus the pandemic priorities around them. That is to say: they were zero preoccupied.

But I am sure 200 minutes of hyperventilation, palpitation and uncontrollable shaking can't be any good for anyone's physical health. Not to speak of the mental health. I had been spiraling down this pattern of oh fuck, is it happening again? and I had to break this self-reinforcing and maddening cycle.

At this point I had already tried a few prescriptions. Mostly placebo and natural stuff, either prescribed at the hospital or suggestions from family and friends. But these weren't working at all. And anxiolytic medication is not an option I ever want to contemplate.

The next step was to get professional mental health assistance.

However, as I looked through numbers I could call - different therapeutical approaches and people I could ask for advice - I asked myself a clear cut question:

Did I try everything within my reach to make this stop?

Obviously not.

My fitness was also at an all time low, and work related stress probably at an all time high. 😫 I was still smoking a few cigarettes 🚬 a day, drinking too many cups ☕ of coffee, and having irregular sleep schedules.

These factors are undoubtedly all connected, and the chance to disrupt the patterns and break the cycle, was right there in front of me.

I just needed to commit to a few radical changes.

Get with the program

Quitting tobacco and reducing coffee, were the first evident answers. But it was also clear that I had to make other adjustments. Otherwise, this experiment wouldn't last long. Eventually, I could even be making it all worst.

Within a day of my last visit to the hospital, I settled with the following resolutions:

Quit smoking. Effective immediately, forever.
Only drink coffee in the morning.
Take a break from work. The upcoming holidays are a serious thing.
Get fit. Start doing sports daily.
Get busy.

I quit smoking in June and didn't have a single serious anxiety attack since then. I have felt some mild symptoms, but was always able to control it just with breathing.

The rest of the program was essential to get through it, though. Especially the get busy part. I had already quit smoking a hundred times so I knew how important it is to have something to do instead of that cigarette. In practical terms, every single time I would crave a cigarette, I had to quickly replace it with something else: something good.

I really look forward to writing about the get fit part and how I started playing (obsessing) about tennis. I will probably also write about the cold turkey approach to overcoming a 30 year old addiction.

Post: tennis

Post: cold turkey

But for now, I'll wrap this up with the strongest strategy I could find to get busy: back to playing music!

Get busy following my dreams

Going back to making music on my own wasn't going to work in this context. Spending hours alone, at this same desk where I work, recording and mixing, consumed with tiny details until stupid o'clock is a terrible idea for someone wanting to quit smoking.

Instead, I needed a serious and purpose driven commitment to making music with other people. And I mean more than a Thursday evening jam with friends that gets cancelled now and then, leaving me anxious, craving, ...

Post: jamming

I meant a commitment to join other committed people in creating music together, rehearsing regularly, and playing live, semi-professionally.

First I tried to find a band as a guitar player. But couldn't find one. Eventually, I did meet a singer-songwriter that was looking for a support musician. I even auditioned for them and it looked like it could work. But they thought my playing style didn't actually fit. It was cool 😎 they said, but I do not have that jazz they were looking for. 😏 They were right about that. I've got no jazz in me.

So I had to dig deeper into my courage, and go out of my comfort zone. Way out of my comfort zone. 😜

Tabalers is not batucada

This next step was actually making me anxious, and it took me a couple of months to muster up the courage. I had seen these local groups of people playing drums in the street many times, some of them in the context of these crazy correfoc events.

Was playing drums close to the fire something too intense for someone afraid of having a panic attack? Or was this exactly what I needed?

I reached out to my neighbourhood's group, the Tabalers de Sants group, the percussion group that supports the Colla de Diables de Sants.

👋 I am a Portuguese dude that lives here since 2017 but it took me 5 years to find the courage to get in touch. Every year I watch groups like yours playing at correfocs and I feel this mortal envy of the fun you're having there. I have plenty of rhythm and have been playing drums, guitar, bass for a long time. Can I join?

I am not a local. And despite the 5 years in Barcelona, I didn't make that many Catalan connections.

Somehow, their quick reply, was a bit of a surprise:

Of course you can join if you have desire to be a part of a drumming group for a colla de diables.

This devil groups thing is a Catalan tradition that involves fire, explosions, beasts, drums, ... 🔥 🐉 💥 🥁 In short, the most metal thing I have ever seen.

I wanted to join because of the music, the drumming together with others. But the reply is unambiguous: I need to be all in, and comfortable with everything else.

So, what if the only way out of the paralysing fear was actually through, literally, through the fire? 🔥

Continue reading, to know what happened when I got up close to the fire, the dragons, and everything else.

A normal MACBA day

2023-02-02T00:00:00Z

In a world of rules and restrictions, Barcelona is definitely an exceptional place. A (free) visit to MACBA on a cloudy winter Saturday.

MACBA (the museum) is free every Saturday and a friend invited me for a visit. A poor day for taking photos, but I thought I'd snap some skateboarding for a collage. I have a terrible phone with a terrible camera - something I might actually want to fix - but I can't resist the 📷 snap 📷 snap 📷 snap.

Also took some pictures inside. And had a lot more fun than I could ever expect. 🤣

Modern Museum of Modern Art

MACBA rotates stuff from their collection with temporary thematic exhibits that last a year or two. I am very curious about the current exhibition as it resonates with a page from Duchamp's rules of engagement.

Taking its title from Glissant’s book, Poetic Intention can be understood as an exercise in breaking free from the institutional framework.

Break free, yeah! ✊ I'll come back to see this in detail.

Meanwhile, we took a tour of the many floors and checked out a couple of the short term exhibitions.

If This Were a Beginning of Infinity

Powerful, powerful stuff. ✊

The body of work of the late María Teresa Hincapié (1954–2008):

... a Colombian artist specialising in what we might call ‘the poetics of everyday life’ in performance, transforming routine actions into symbolic acts to create a methodology in her practice.

A privilege to learn about this artist through the eyes of other talented artists. Hincapié’s body of work focused on ephemeral, quotidian, and intimate human topics. Her work was performative, political and activist - reivindicativo - and ultimately impossible to capture.

Also: anti-fascist feminism. ✊

Yet, here we are: appreciating the irony of getting acquainted with her legacy via pictures and other artefacts, in a quiet museum room. An irony tinged with sadness, as you learn that her life was cut too short and that her beautiful project, a progressive school dedicated to the collective and the communion with nature, was never finished. 😢

Fierce fight for a cardboard box

Now, for something completely different (or maybe not): how to completely throw out both the quiet and museum in quiet museum room.

This performance by María José Arjona was going up and down the corridors kicking and flipping cardboard boxes in the air. My first thought when I saw them from 3 floors above was that some kids had walked in and decided to wreak havoc in the museum. Because MACBA Saturday afternoon's are free - free as in free beer. 🍺

Turns out it's a performance. And it's inviting visitors to interact. Within the minute I was kicking a box down the ramp. And as I tried to role-play some basketball moves with a box, one of the performers went full on judo, climbed over me, knocked me down, and we ended up rolling on the floor.

Literally 🤣 🤣 🤣 rolling_on_the_floor_laughing.

Not the first time I engaged in some contact improvisation yet this was not what I expected to happen when I walked in the museum earlier.

Plea against evil

It's hard to miss the message. MACBA usually hosts thought-provoking and relevant modern art. If you didn't get it yet, one last look at this rather disorienting piece might clarify things a bit.

It is a plea against war and violence

Antoni Tàpie

Not something I can contemplate for long, as the artist intended. But I am aligned with the cause. Peace.

🛹 Skate Spot

If you live in Barcelona - and you like skateboarding - you might take this for granted and forget that you are privileged. Of course, that's what privilege looks like.

It's crazy that I can cycle here in under 20 minutes! Crazy that some of my best friends live right around the corner!

One of the most iconic "spots" for the sport in the world.

Wikipedia, Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art.

I can't skate to save my life: I would probably be able to skate faster than a zombie, for a bit ... But I would crash on the first sidewalk because I can't ollie over a piece of paper. 🥴

Watching these people skate puts everything into perspective. I definitely wanna be around them when the zombies come.

With this collab we wanted to give something back to the community, and we decide to align the entire long curb.

I'll be back

I'll come back for more free ride Saturdays.

A big corporation sponsors it. I appreciate that - and I'll take it - even if I believe the world will one day be able to have art without them. So I am not linking their name here.

Australian Open 2023

2023-01-30T00:00:00Z

First Australian Open that I follow from the beginning since 1994 or so 🎾 Sabalenka won her first slam, Novak Djokovic made it to the 22nd, and I am loving this sport more than ever.

I have been warming up for 2 years now, since I decided - mid-pandemic - to start following this beautiful sport. I was a huge fan as a kid, up to my early 20s. Then I lost interest and pretty much blinked - for 2 decades - while Serena Williams, Federer, Nadal, Djokovic wrote some of the most spectacular pages of this sport's history.

In the lat 2 seasons, I have been learning the players, who's who, who's hot, and who's not. I have my favourites now, so I am vibing with the season since the first week of 2023.

Glad that I woke up just in time to see 2 of them win slams! 😅

Awesome finals, fair winners

🏆 Sabalenka's first

Aryna Sabalenka's first grand-slam! Congratulations!

This final was an awesome ball smacking battle. Sabalenka and Rybakina are probably the most offensive players on the top 20, maybe along Garcia and Swiatek. And they're arguably the most powerful of these 4.

In a match with just over 220 points there were a total of 26 aces and 82 winners! 🤯

Aryna Sabalenka looks like in a much better head-space than last year. Even when she almost double-faulted her way into a horrible scoreline in the second set, she laughed it off.

On the other side, Rybakina keeps adding depth to her game and evolving. She has only 3 titles in her career so far but one of them is a slam. She took the first set by a small margin and looked poised to take the championship.

But Aryna found an extra gear to serve more aces, to drive more winners, and dig better angles, without compromising consistency. The fair winner of a very even match.

Both will win more slams, maybe even this year. The field is very tight at the top and there are 3 slams lefts to grab. In my opinion, Garcia, Swiatek, Jabeur, Pegula, Sakkari, they all have a shot.

Watch: Elena Rybakina v Aryna Sabalenka Highlights

Djokovic's 22nd

What to say? I am rooting for the man! I want to see where this narrative goes. GOAT, for sure! But how many? Novak now 22 slams now, 10 AOs! And he is back at #1. Alcaraz, Tsitsipas, Ruud, Rublev, all relegated.. again.

And even if it looks at times like the age is catching up with the living legend, having played Rublev, Paul, de Minaur, Djokovic dropped one set - one single set - in the whole tournament.

As for the final...

I am saying Tsitsipas takes a set ... the third.

No! Just 3 sets, just over 3 hours. Tsitsipas did too many unforced errors and never really threatened! Yes, there was a set point on the second, an early break on the third. But that's not threatening for Novak, is it? Then the forehand just collapsed and the next 20 attempts at a winner went straight to the net.

In other news, Tsitsipas is playing better than ever and clearly attempting to deal with the family and synchronous coaching limitations. Will he make it this year? Will he ever be number one?

Watch: Stefanos Tsitsipas v Novak Djokovic Highlights

Early losers

Jabeur (2nd round), Garcia and Sakkari (3rd round), and Swiatek (4th round): the big losers of the women's draw. On the men's side, Ruud (2nd round) and Medvedev (3rd round) both lost winnable matches, against Brooksby and Korda respectively.

Nadal, Musetti, Berretini, Karatsev, Bublik, Nakashima ... all losing in round 2. Always happens, there's always the ones that fall a bit short. There are 128 players going at it, and 96 of them are eliminated on the first few days.

But yeah, you read right: Nadal is on this list and its weird. Thiem? Wawrinka? I don't think people, even fans, expects a quarter final. But we love watching them play a couple of rounds, so please keep playing! Is this the short-term future of Nadal already? Or will he retire? No one knows - and it's no one's business but Rafa's.

I expect this topic to dominate this season, and not without controversy, as not everyone observes decent ground rules for discussing player retirement. As for me, looking at how the last two slams went down, I am lowering my expectations.

Match of the tournament

Insane 5 sets between Murray and Kokkinakis on the second round.

Also, probably, rally of the tournament.

Not surprising that Murray started the next match - against Batista Agut with 1% battery. 🔋 He was dragging his feet - really dragging, not just the usual - from the very beginning. Even more than he usually does 🤣 The surprise was that he lasted 4 sets.

Formula 1 is insane, we just wanted to confirm

2022-07-23T00:00:00Z

They said it couldn't be done, but we drove to France to take a look. In the end, F1 is not that great experience to see live. Unless you are interested in the beautiful decay of civilisation 😏 because all of this is obviously not sustainable.

We were driving from Barcelona just to watch qualifying Saturday (there were no more tickets for race day!) and I was terrified when I heard there are usually traffic jams and huge queues around the circuit.

Our audacious plan was to wake up at 6AM and drive from Barcelona to Marseille, deal with the orientation, the queues, the traffic, the parking lot, and the overall 🖕 🚗 experience, everything before 2 PM.

Would we make it in time? Reddit had the answer.

Doomed plan… when I went in 2018 it was 3 hours queue to leave the circuit back down the 1 way road. I would say watch it in a bar.

Checks out: it is insane

Obviously if you are flying this circus around the world, inviting 400 thousand car enthusiasts to a remote, agricultural place, with people driving hundreds, some times thousands of miles, to park in an improvised parking lot.

Oh yeah, you can ride the helicopter instead, if you fancy.

Obviously, there will be queues. And carbon monoxide. And sweat and disposable plastic bottles. And disposable "fresh humid air in a can" ... 🤯 And all the other emissions and 🌲 unfriendly side effects.

And in the end, ...

True we didn't watch a race. But I know how races go from 📺 TV. The supposedly added benefit of sitting in a stand, and watch up close those 3 corners? 👎

They roar, they're fast, and then they're gone. Quite monotonous.

And you get no commentators, no hype, no realtime data, no angles, no replays, no audio, ... and no comfort from your couch or even a close by toilet.

Sounds of Silences

2022-06-09T00:00:00Z

I was like 11 when I first heard this album. It took me not long to memorize the lyrics, the jokes, the sound of everything in the intervals of the songs. This might be the origin story of my fixation with music, especially popular music, played live in front of an audience.

Let's put aside the fact that no one listens to albums anymore, or even talks about music in those terms. The item, the object, the gift, are as much from that bygone era as our capacity to sit and listen to it end to end, no shuffles, no interruptions.

We got other things, not complaining. But asserting that it has become quite hard to develop relationships like this ❤️ in 2020.

Favorite 17 live albums of all time

I could totally ☝️ do that. But I won't.

But if you ask me what's the best album of all times, of a certain band, genre or decade my answer is more and more likely to be a live album. Just the same way that when I hear about a new band I rush to watch videos of them. Because I want to see the people and their music happening, like in KEXP, ideally in front of an audience like in Tiny Desk.

Origin story

This must have been the album that kicked off my fascination for live music.

I was probably 11 when I found it, so right around the time it was released. It was part of the record collection of at least one of my cool uncles and/or aunts and it was kind of a family favorite.

So thank you family! for this introduction. 🙌

I took a tape home and listened to it a million times. And when back at my uncle's, I would pull out the sleeve and read the lyrics back to back. Or play 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover on repeat until I drilled all the words, silly rhymes, and puns into my little sponge brain.

Fast forward 40 years

I sit now through a back to back listen and it looks like I memorised much more than just songs.

🤯 It's all coming back to me. Not only I remember which song comes next, the lyrics are coming back pretty fast as well. And, whoa! I remember all these funny little speeches in between songs.

Well, it's great to do a neighborhood concert. [.. screaming ..] I hope everyone can hear us. I hope that the sound is good. [.. acknowledgement ..] I hope we are blasting Central Park West and Fifth avenue pretty much away [.. whistles ..]. I just want to thank the Police Department and the Fire Department and the Parks Commissioner, and Ed Koch. [.. booing! ..] And Particularly, you know, people that never get recognized for doing good deeds for the city [.. yeah! ..], a group of people that have donated half of the proceeds that they're making tonight, the guys who are selling loose joints [.. yeah! ..] are giving the city half of their income tonight [.. roaring ..].

Not that I knew who Ed Koch was, and why that sounded like a joke to those on stage. Neither I knew what a joint was, and neither did I care. But I do remember asking why the crowd always goes [.. yeah! ..] a bit after each song starts.

Probably my imagination

Oh, more chills... insights... 🤯 I realise I never watched a video of this concert! My visual memory is all from the pictures in the album sleeve... and probably my imagination.

The stage versus audience dialog must have got me hooked. And I could play it back over and over, picking up people shouting words between songs, during songs...

I thought it might be somewhat crowded but we seemed to have filled the placed. [.. screaming ..]

And the whole thing is captured in deep stereo field with such fidelity that with my eyes closed it was possible to get an almost video-like image of that huge crowd.

And in the naked light I saw, 10 thousand people, maybe more. [.. screaming ..]

Listen on Spotify to The Concert in Central Park. Do you it with your eyes closed. Listen for the crowd. Chills. Imagine how big...

Play it in your head, from your imagination.

I bet you can get the video like experience I mentioned above.

Video-like video experience

Or you can just cheat 👇

Remastered from a VHS tape for your enjoyment. 😂

Well It's 2022.

We have access to everything, but there are some types of experiences that we seems we can't have anymore.

Elliott Smith

2022-01-24T00:00:00Z

Elliott Smith, was an American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. Smith was born in Omaha, Nebraska, raised primarily in Texas, and lived much of his life in Portland, Oregon.

A desperate drunk man once asked?

How can someone so talented die so young?

Here's why:

His songs about broken hearts, broken homes and the drinking life led him straight to the stage of the Oscars. Can his music save him from himself?

Misery Loves Elliott Smith

RollingStone, September 1998.

From all the tragic stories of rock n'roll, Elliott Smith's must be – at the same time - the saddest and the most absurd.

♪ drink up, baby ♪ ♪ stay up all night ♪

Twenty Twenty One

2020-08-02T00:00:00Z

I have a bunch of "songs" 🎸 recorded at home, here in Barcelona, that I was hoping I could record better in the studio. But thats not happening soon because our world leaders suck, so I am just going to leave them here.

So here's the first one. Apparently, I called it Twenty Twenty One on the 24th of January of 2020 but I have no idea why. I remember I was playing with an old tune and mashed it up with the Twin Peaks soundtrack and then took it from there.

<Audio url="/_media/audio/another-one/twenty-twenty-one.mp3" title="Twenty Twenty One" duration="2:42"

Right before Spain went into lockdown I went to Oh Yeah! studio for a session with some friends. We played this song for a bit and it sounded good. I was making plans to record it better with some of them.

Then I put the guitar 🎸 down for the next 3 months.

Where do these songs come from?

tl;dr: These songs come playing music with a lot of strangers.

When I came to visit Barcelona in 2015, already thinking of moving here, I ended up one night in a studio in Poblenou, jamming with an old friend from London and his friends from here (more exactly from Italy and Venezuela). We spent close to 5 hours in this place called Rockodromo having the time of our lives without having ever played together before.

We eventually moved here in 2017 and my first job, teaching at Ironhack, was actually there in Poblenou. And among the teachers, students, and staff there were quite a few musicians. Ended up in Rockodromo again for epic jams with people from Catalunya, Cyprus, Norway, Chile, Guatemala, Ecuador, ... Mind utterly and internationally blown.

I later moved to another company and created a Jam group chat to schedule regular sessions with folks from the office. Another melting pot of cultures - Germany, Austria, England, Japan, Australia, Catalunya - and musical genres - Rock, Punk, Metal, Electronica, Jazz.

Rockodromo had closed meanwhile, but we discovered a couple other studios and the happy days continued, with regular jams, once or twice a month.

All along, the more people I met at the studio, and the more we exchanged ideas there, the more music I was writing at home. So I put down most of my old material - all this stuff I created back in Portugal and London and that I never really "finished" - and started recording the new ideas.

By the end of 2019 I had like 20 songs and had done many many takes, but all of them at home.

Next steps

I was hoping I could reunite with the people that influenced all this, and ask them for help to record some takes at the studio. But meanwhile 2020 is happening instead and we're not going to studios at the moment, so fuck it, might as well just share them as they are right now.

I am not giving up on improving this. I fucking love these tunes and would love to hammer some real drums in.

For now, I am interested in feedback. Liked it? Hated it? Get in touch.

Massive Attack - Eutopia EP

2020-07-11T00:00:00Z

Black Lives Matter. Save The Planet. End Inequality. ✊ 2020 SUCKS. Massive Attack just released a 3 song EP and it contains more insights on the sad state of our world than everything else you saw today. I am writing this on the day it was released, trying to process it and taking some notes.

Found out about Massive Attack's new release, a 3 song EP called Eutopia accompanied by 3 videos, via a tweet by Mario Klingemann, the author of the computer generated animations in the videos. I'll talk about Mario after hearing the songs, but for now just know that the visuals are intense.

But the content is even more intense. And I mean politically charged as fuck. If you know MA, you expect them to make art about today, and you can only wish they would make it more often. But what we have here is that the year is 2020 and the world has upped the game, so MA raised the bar as well.

These are 3 songs dominated by spoken word, interesting human beings addressing real urgent issues like inequality, debt, precarity, automation, extinction, and neofascist populism, pretty much head on.

In Massive Attack's own words:

The spirit of this EP, its elements and ideas have nothing to do with naïve notions of an ideal, perfect world, and everything to do with the urgent & practical need to build something better. In this sense, Eutopia is the opposite of spelling mistake.

Massive Attack x Algiers

First song features Algiers which I basically know from this subversive 2017 masterpiece. But I can't really figure out which sounds Algiers are bringing to the Massive Attack track.

Warning: if you suffer from hypersensitivity to flashing lights, or just not in the mood for procedural skulls deforming and reforming endlessly, don't watch this. Just listen. Or save for later.

Tune in to the voice of Christiana Figueres, this former executive secretary of the united nations framework convention on climate - pause to catch breath and sarcastically appreciate the title. The speech addresses what needs to be done. The urgency of doing it now. I am in! Let's fix the food chain. Let's align citizens, governments, businesses. Wait.. Hum?

Some good old framework thoughts right there. I appreciate the direction: everyone working together, can't disagree with that. But why put People and people's own abstractions such as business and government in the same plane? Behind these abstract fantasies there is people. Companies are not living entities with special rights, so make the angry old man behind all the bullshit, yes the one with the obscene wealth, come back down and "work it out" with the rest of the people.

End rant.

The social fabric of our world the health of democracies and the wellbeing of people can either be destroyed or made stronger by a crisis such as the one we are living

*Christiana Figueres

With that I can't disagree.

Massive Attack x Saul Williams

Second song. Tax havens head on. Countries must collect the taxes from these evasive dodgy multinational krakens. Speech by Gabriel Zucman, UC Berkley, professor of economics & inventor of the Wealth Tax policy.

I buy the socialism, fine. But what's with ALL the ALL CAPS, and WHY is EVERYTHING VISUALLY soooo OVERWHELMING? What's with this map ZOOMInG in and out and SPAWnING mountains and lakes, and I am STARtING to feel a tad sick. I have to close my eyes.

There. Very well done. Voiced by Saul Williams which I knew nothing about until 20 minutes ago. First thing I noticed was associated acts: Trent Reznor, Nine Inch Nails, The Mars Volta, Rick Rubin, The Kills. Also, poet, actor, rapper, keyboards, guitar, percussion. At this point, I am asking should I know this person?! and then check out Saul's Tiny Desk concert and - oooooh, fire! - I wanna know more! But I get it, Saul has been singing about the whole BS head on and it is a though business out there.

I'm one hour down this rabbit hole, trying to write about Massive Attack's release and checking out all the crazy shit Saul has been doing. Check Saul Williams's twitter for the latest stuff.

Massive Attack x Young Fathers

This is the easiest of the 3 videos. Reminds me of a Bjork video. But then it stops being nice. The million faces are unnerving. Even more so the fact that they're generated by code. Well done Mario, astonishing. Unsettling. I can't deal with this and I just listen.

Another speech. Professor Guy Standing, from SOAS University of London, co-founder of of the Basic Income Earth Network. Professor Guy also has the best vocal qualities to nail the dark trip hop you'd expect, and together with Young Fathers contributes to a classic, automatic, Massive Attack hit.

I hope thousands, millions, watch this one. And think about it. That we all agree that everyone needs basic economic security and we need to act fast to rescue millions from homelessness and starvation. Maybe I don't believe it "could be clawed back from the wealthiest through the tax system". And again I wish for better words than National Capital Funds. So many NOOOOs in 3 words.

Mario Klingemann's messed up generative art

Back to the visuals. The author is Mario Klingemann, artist, coder, speaker, and a few Artificial Intelligence things I don't quite understand because it's level 9000. I've been following Mario for a while, checking out the mind-blowing digital art, generated at a frenetic pace because the human is teaching the machine how to generate the art. AI is a slippery topic, and humans have it totally out of order, in so many ways.

Mario's work is Art. And somehow the fact that this is probably the Art in 2020, and it is totally happening right now, is even more distressing.

Getz/Gilberto Vol. 2, Live from Carnegie Hall

2020-05-15T00:00:00Z

This is one of my favourite live recordings of all time. I got the extended version for cheap bucks at a record store. And later, compared to other friends' copies, realised that this is the only version that really matters here, because the original release, which contains only separate performances from Getz and Gilberto, is missing the most important part.

Before proceeding, you should make sure you are aware of the dramatic contours of the historical context, and how this concert is an epilogue to a longer story arc, which includes international politics and a brutal reversal of fortune. Or don't, just ignore the backdrop. When I first heard this record, and fell in love with the characters, I also didn't know the first thing about their stories.

Getz and Gilberto were billed separately for this concert at Carnegie Hall. Opposite to the album they had completed together, but yet to be released, where João Gilberto's voice shares the space on each song with Getz's sax.

Also, in the single The Girl from Ipanema released 6 months before the show, and skyrocketing to eventually become the most famous Brazilian song of all times, they both share the song with a third voice, Astrud Gilberto, João's wife at the time, who sings the English version of Garota de Ipanema.

In my humble opinion, this concert was superbly captured by Rudy Van Gelder. Apparently, the Van Gelder sound was not very consensual at the time, but I wasn't brought up listening to jazz combos in person, so I might be too ignorant here to tell purity from technology.

Stan Getz quartet comes out first. I don't know how long they played, but there are only 4 tracks in the album. There's nothing Bossa about the Getz section. But again, to me, all tracks sound supreme and I just love how vibraphone and saxophone take turns occupying the centre, and how much dynamics there are in the performances.

Then João Gilberto takes the stage. Sitting, murmuring, fingerpicking in his own unique, inimitable style, supported by a very discrete bass line, and minimalistic drumming, and not much more happening there for 20 minutes. The sound is very clear and transparent again, the dynamics are gone, everything is now velvet. But the recording adjusted to the more intimate sound of João Gilberto and you can hear every detail.

You can Listen on Spotify to Live from Carnegie Hall as it was originally released, but you will totally be missing the point, so keep reading.

In the original release, clapping fades out aggressively after the 6th song by Gilberto. But this is where the performance gets really interesting. The third act, the reveal. The missing piece on the 10 track version.

On the night, the two headliners performed separate sets before being joined by Gilberto's then wife, Astrud — whose voice was heard on their big hit from the original album, "The Girl from Ipanema" — for the completion of the Carnegie Hall concert.

Getz introduces act three, and as the band kicks off the first song, "It Might as Well be Spring", for some reason, the husband and wife miss their cue. Awkwardness ensues.

And now we would like to bring out the wife of the great artist. I present Astrid Gilberto. [.. four bars ..] The wife and husband are nowhere to be found [.. stalling ..] I'll tell you a few stories, .. there was a cowboy ..

They eventually show up. Laughter. The song restarts, and it's amazing. But it gets better. Getz goes on to introduce the next song. First introduces the composers because they are in the house and because they wrote this next song especially for Astrud.

Never Trust your heart [.. Astrud giggles, someone corrects Getz ..] Only trust your heart [.. audience laughs ..].

The set goes on to include a husband & wife duet on Corcovado and an extended and lazy Girl from Ipanema. The crowd claps for a long time, the stage rearranges for an encore as João Gilberto asks for a microphone for his guitar.

The show ends with Eu e você which means me and you. Gilberto leads, Astrud sings. That's two. Then, Getz's solo sneaks in between verses. A romance for 3, to wrap up this third act.

They divorced the next year. Not sure if the affair is an urban myth but, if you are curious, there are several articles, such as this one that support that narrative.

Getz/Gilberto

2020-05-10T00:00:00Z

This album is an incredible historical document, as much as it is a layer cake of precious stories, that I have been discovering since it entered my life in the late 90s in CD format.

Imagine you are in Portugal, in 1962, and you are listening to this new Brazilian song. You have been a fan of Brazilian artists for a while. You recognize the beat, you appreciate the lyrics. You notice the Jazz drums, the soft brushing, the double bass, the piano, the elaborate chord progression, but that's not particularly new for you. This vibe has been kicking in for a few years.

Suddenly the first chorus is over, and out of nowhere, a tenor sax crashes in and takes the main theme into a full 36 bar solo. It's a disconcerting and dissonant moment where you can't place the music against a Copacabana backdrop or inside a smoky club downtown.

The timeline that leads to this record, starts with Bossa Nova brewing in the progressive and modernist middle class of late 50s Rio de Janeiro. Having previously borrowed some harmonies and structures from Jazz and other western influences to spice up - or rather smooth down - the traditional beats of Samba, this new beat from the exciting land of tomorrow was now being hyped up in the U.S. and Europe, and about to become the hot new thing.

There are many documents about how Bossa Nova took the world by storm, and almost all of them notoriously mention the direct influence of JFK's State Department which promoted several cultural exchanges under the politics of good neighbours such as the touring in Brasil of several American Jazz musicians, as well as exposure of Brasil's culture back in the States.

Watch on youtube

By 1962, Bossa Nova is already soaring through the airwaves in the States. Gilberto comes to Carnegie Hall for the first time, along a few other musicians to take part in a rather peculiar concert. What the critics in Brasil called a pathetic and disorganized flop was, for others, the epicenter of the Bossa Nova phenomenon, and it was set to change the course of Jazz and popular music for good.

On to early 1963 and the marriage is being consummated in albums which titles leave very little to the imagination: Getz and Byrd's Jazz Samba and Dave Brubeck's Bossa Nova U.S.A. So when Getz and Gilberto first walk into the A&R sessions in March, Bossa Nova is no novelty. However, its greatest chapter is still to unravel.

Produced by Creed Taylor and engineered by the extremely talented, innovative, and mega awarded Phil Ramone these sessions were quite eventful. Shockingly, according to Studio Stories: How the Great New York Records Were Made, what is now the most famous Brazilian song of all times, appears to have happened almost by accident.

On a lark, Astrud was persuaded to sing the English lyric to the song, ostensibly to be used as a demo. Ramone hung a U47 in front of Astrud - an untrained vocalist who'd never sung a note on tape - and five minutes later, The Girl from Ipanema was complete.

Unfortunately, just as quick as they were recorded, the sessions that would become an album awarded with 4 Grammies, were promptly shelved, for a whole year.

Meanwhile, the U.S. establishment is starting to see the Southern good neighbour with very different eyes. Progressive and socialist politics were taking Brasil too close to Cuba and the USSR, thus becoming a threat to the U.S. interests in the continent. When in November 63 Kennedy was murdered, the apparatus was preparing for several scenarios, including armed intervention.

Forward to March 1964, and Verve finally decides to release Getz/Gilberto. Also in March 1964, a U.S. backed military coup is now in progress, throwing Brasil into 20 years of brutal dictatorship.

With that coup in full flight, and one year after its recording, the Getz/Gilberto English-language rendition of “The Girl from Ipanema” featuring the lead vocal performance of João’s wife, Astrud Gilberto, was released. It would become a worldwide hit, and one of the most recognisable pop songs of all time.

You can read more about how the history of Bossa Nova in the U.S. is intertwined with the U.S. imperialistic meddling in South America, and the establishment of the brutal 64-85 dictatorship, in this great article from brasilwire.com or this brief retrospective.

Today we listen to these records without realising how unexpected, fresh, unheard they must have been to the crowds of the early 60s. None of it surprises us now. Bossa Jazz, Tropical Funk, Acid Jazz, Rock Hip-Hop, they might be playing in the background of your life before you even notice that they are a thing that had to be invented.

Realise that someone, somewhere, for the first time, experimented adding a rhythmic element of this to that, and immediately thought hm, this works. And then someone else was listening and threw a baffled hey, what is that!?. But in 2020, it looks like you could throw one of these mashups at another one - throw Gipsy Jazz into Ska Punk - and there is no way it is going to sound fresh.

So the only thing left is a hard task, but not an impossible one, to try to listen with unspoiled ears. For me, that starts with trying to immerse myself in the scenario, get closer to the characters, then try to identify the moment, and live what is happening there and when. Reading an artist biography, learning about the socio-economic context, or even nerding about the microphones engineers were using at the time always help.

But the thing that helps me the most is listening to live albums. And that's as good a reason as any for you to now read the follow up to this post, about Getz/Gilberto Vol. 2, one my favourite live recordings of all time.

An impossible album

2020-05-05T00:00:00Z

How can something made in such a dark place be so inspiring? How can someone so depressed find the time, the energy and the resolve, to complete this laborious, delicate, beautiful piece of art? And, rhetorically we might also ask: how can someone so talented die so young? 😱 What is being young?

Masterpiece

I have been listening to this album for 20 years and the more I listen to it the farther away I will be from ever having answers to any of these questions. And this is daunting because the answers seem to be all there in the album, while at the same time, they're obviously not. And it's one of those Schrödinger's albums, one where the author is simultaneously both dead and alive, plus a few more twists to the mind, the heart, and the soul.

Figure 8 is the fifth studio album by American singer-songwriter Elliott Smith, and the final album he completed before his death. Wikipedia.

Just like Jeff Buckley's Grace and Blind Melon's Soup, and countless others, from the first chords, first words, you are reminded how epic the whole experience of listening to the album is going to be. Like it's suddenly so obvious what it means to say these people will never really die.

And at the same time, from the first chord until the last note reverbs out, you can't avoid knowing how gone they are, and how so forever they are gone. And that this form, the interpretation, the mix, the whole form, is so final.

And yet, whatever is on that record, existed before, and it's timeless, and eternal. It might even occur, materialise, in these different instances, incarnations, album after album, one tragic loss at a time.

Solo perfection

Of course there is a but in here. For Grace and Soup, even if they revolve entirely and lyrically around the author's impending tragedy, there's also a brilliant band. And there's Andy Wallace. And that is an immense proportion of other human beings. Their skills, technique, and own passion, surrounding, supporting and completing the author, with instruments and voices, interpretation and arrangements, engineering and production.

I liked the idea of a self-contained, endless pursuit of perfection. But I have a problem with perfection. I don't think perfection is very artful. But there's something I liked about the image of a skater going in this endless twisted circle that doesn't have any real endpoint. So the object is not to stop or arrive anywhere; it's just to make this thing as beautiful as they can.

Elliot Smith, in a May 11, 2000, article in Boston Herald

In Figure 8, legend says, Elliott Smith alone, was jumping from instrument to instrument, who really knows for how many takes, how many loops, how much time, seeking perfection in lyrics, arrangements. All for the sake of it, "of doing it", round and round like a figure 8. There must have been some joy.

And so do I, when I listen to this album back to back. Round and round, Standing up to sit back down, deeper and deeper into the intimate world within a world? of this genius that was King for a day but bored and depressed for all eternity.

"Now I'm a policeman directing traffic Keeping everything moving, everything static I'm the hitchhiker you'll recognize passing On your way to some everlasting"

A long way to go, getting further away. Can't make a sound. And then a wordless Bye.

Goodbye

Interviewer: Do you have any favorite tracks?

Elliott Smith: I like the ones that are kind of weird, more idiosyncratic,... this one called "Everything means nothing to me"?

I don't even know what to say here. Rick Sanchez asked it already: "Why did someone so talented die so young?". I am paraphrasing, but yeah.

Watch on youtube

Interviewer: You are going on tour with the full band?

Elliott Smith: Yes, for the rest of my life.

The autopsy evidence was inconclusive as to whether the wounds were self-inflicted or the result of homicide.

A Schrödinger tragedy in itself, Elliott both stabbed himself in the heart and was murdered by who knows who. This ultimate mystery of Elliott's life, adds up to the album, forever going like a figure 8, forever going all four ways, forever lapping onto itself.

Tossa de Mar Rocks

2019-06-08T00:00:00Z

I am lucky to say I have covered quite a bit of ground around the Iberian peninsula, but I had never explored Costa Brava, even though I've moved to Barcelona almost 2 years ago. I had high expectations and it did not disappoint.

If you take a look at Google Earth, you can immediately tell that Costa Brava is a very green and hilly place, just next to a very blue and calm sea. The valleys descend to the sea and break through the cliffs at regular intervals, resulting in curiously detailed contours, and some pretty special spots.

Tossa de Mar

Last weekend, we booked a couple of nights in Tossa de Mar and took the bus from Barcelona. That's just over 1 hour and 12 EUR to get there.

Tossa is a classic postcard place, with a medieval walled town and a lighthouse at the top of this curious hill. You can tell that the entire place is devoted to tourism and I would not recommend visiting in the crowded months. But this year, summer had a slow start so we were pretty lucky here.

It seems like this was one of the first places in the region to be hit by mass tourism, back in the 1950s. The local narrative attributes this to the movie Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951), Ava Gardner's long stay in town, and Frank Sinatra's jealous visit.

Actually plenty of sculptures all around town, almost every corner, almost too many. Again, no pictures of those, but a quick google search for "Tossa+de+mar+Escultura" does the trick.

The calas around Tossa

Now for the really interesting part. Cala is Catalan for cove or small beach. If you ask the tourism office for interesting trails, they'll give you detailed instructions on how to get to Cala Bona and Cala Pola.

You have to walk up and down some hills for over an hour with not much shadow or places to rest. Again, we were lucky with the weather. I don't recommend doing this in summer heat peaks. 😓

It's all downhill from here. You'll arrive at a camping site, the road cuts right through it, and there it is!

This one is called Cala Pola. Probably way too busy in in peak of summer, as today it was already quite crowded.

But there is more. Get back on the trail and walk another 30 minutes, this time alongside the coast.

Suddenly, you are just on top of Cala Bona, wondering if the boats are floating in the water or actually hovering a bit above it.

There is almost no sand here and I can imagine this place becoming a total nightmare in busier days. But with a few groups of people scattered on both banks of this little cove, it's pretty awesome :-).

The skatepark

Now, this was an extra treat. Our hotel was not too far from the bus station, and right behind the station, a brand new skatepark. So, if you have one, take it with you. We did and it was totally worth it.

Hello World (Again)

2019-05-13T00:00:00Z

Here I am again, rebuilding the whole thing, enjoying React and static site generation and making plans to blog more often.

When I relaunched this website a little over 2 years ago, I was hoping to be posting here at least a couple of times a year. 😳 Meanwhile, I moved jobs a couple of times and even moved to a different country altogether, abandoning these plans in the process.

But, yes! the strategy and the ambitions did not expire. I do not want to go another 8 years without a site of my own.

Let's Fix It

I still believe that owning our content online is the way to go. Off with this broken model, enough social media and algorithms, and back to the basics, back to the true nature of the web.

As a consumer, I like to surf, read, subscribe to things, or simply stumble open them, bookmark them, save them for later. I enjoy following hashtags, following topics, not algorithms.

And as a creator, I want to live the freedom of dreaming up some stuff, experimenting, creating, sharing. Then breaking some shit, learning. Asking for help. Collaborating!

Check out this post by Matthias Ott about Why and How to go about Weaving our Web. He explains it much better - and more eloquently - than I ever could. #web #websites #letusfixit.

So What's Happening at andretorgal.com?

Started learning React more seriously some months ago and catching up on cool stuff such as PostCSS, CSS custom properties and browserslist.

I feel I was just stumbling upon - just like that :-) - a world of interesting possibilities.

That's when I decided to port my static website to React Static, and model this kind of old school website, that's pretty much coming up all modular and atomic-ish.

Feels like 2008 again (don't confuse with 1998). But unlike a decade ago, these days, the tools just seem to work, and provide you a great experience. And the browsers seem to be all Yes you can! whereas before, they'd be all like Oh no, you don't!.

Best of times, so far.

What's next?

There is a big backlog. It includes better navigation, blog rolls, footnotes, publishing my design system, continuous integration and so much more.

But staging is coming soon. Just ironing out some details with asset extraction and responsive images.

This website

2017-11-02T00:00:00Z

This is my home on the web. A place where I blog some thoughts and run a few experiments.

Here, you can learn more about me, my work as software engineer and other stuff I have been up to.

House rules

Just to be clear: this is my space - I own the content, the opinions are my own, and it does not represent the company I work for at the moment.

If you find something that resonates with you, or otherwise object to, feel free to drop me a line at hello@andretorgal.com.

On this website

You can find:

some longer form blog posts
neatly organised by tags
some meta notes about this website and its development

About Me

Work

A seasoned web developer and agile practitioner with a diverse background in engineering and management. I have been coding, leading, mentoring and facilitating for 25 years. Read more about my work.

Personal

A curious and passionate person.

❤️ music,
❤️ cycling,
❤️ software-engineering,
❤️ design-systems,
❤️ ideas.

Music

Every now and then I record something.

I invite you to listen to some of my music and to watch the videos I made for a few of those songs.

One is a lie

I once worked in an obscure, surreal, movie production, so my name is on IMDB.
I am afraid of heights, but I once bungee jumped from 68 meters high.
Cristiano Ronaldo used to chill at my neighbor's house, but I never really talked to him.
I got a tattoo of a French character done by an American dude in the Czech Republic.

Under the hood

This site is entirely static, generated from MDX files. For example, here's the source code for the page you are currently reading.

I'm using Astro as a generator with a few customisations pieced together with plugins from the unified.js ecosystem.

This site respects your privacy: no cookies, analytics, or tracking tools are used.

More information in the meta section of this website.

See you around

My music

2017-02-13T00:00:00Z

🚧 This list is incomplete!

I recorded a lot more at home in the past 15 years or so and I'll eventually upload more music.

Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy what I have here so far.

Ambivalent Red

Around 25 minutes of music I found the courage to call done. Call it post-rock if you will. It gets loud and noisy at some points. Hope you like it.

Also available in video at youtube.com/@andre.torgal

Drafts

Some tunes from the last 10 years or so. From the 40~50 "song" ideas I have seating on laptops and portable drives, some of it eventually finds its way online. But I still don't find them "finished".

Espírito da Paz (Redux)

Another attempt, at Madredeus 1994's Espírito da Paz this time recorded at home in Barcelona.

Espírito da Paz

This was back in 2009, I believe. I was spending a lot of time on my own, recording instrumental rock versions of all the songs in this 1994 Madredeus album.

That's me, recording in my home studio, playing all the instruments except the cello.

These two tracks, in particular, I was quite happy with the result.

Soon (or never)

I have a few drives of takes, stems, bounces, whatnot .. but not much is mixed or mixable to be fair.

Years and years of recordings sitting in computers, since CoolEdit circa 1998, through a myriad of obscure DAWs all the way to my most recent favourite StudioOne.

Even in the last decade, on the small apartments of London and Barcelona.

Back in Portugal I actually had a fully functional studio in our basement. I mean a 24 track analogue Mackie, monitors, full mic'ed drums, headphone mixers, pre-amps - the works.

I was also in bands, pre web, even pre CD time. There were many demos, all recorded on tape, and I currently have none of that with me, though I have been trying to get in touch with old band mates and find out if any copies survived. I'll get there one day.

My story

2017-02-11T00:00:00Z

I don't expect you to read this. It's mostly a writing exercise, a reflection about how I arrived here, and I hope it helps me better understand where I am going. So if you do read it, drop me a line, I'd love to hear what you make of it. ;-)

8 inch floppy disks

My name is André Torgal and I was born in 1973 in Lisbon, Portugal.

My parents were both academics, physicists involved in the early stages of computing in Portugal. I remember the freezing rooms, the whirring tape reels, the screeching dot matrix printers. I remember punch cards and 8 inch floppy disks and how I was taught they contained "data" and were not to be messed with.

I remember that first, monochrome green, home computer. As long as I carefully parked the hard drive before shutting it down, I was even allowed to play with it.

Can't remember exactly what computer this was. But I am guessing a 5150. I have a vague memory of hearing words like Unix, Lisp and Fortran very early on in my life. But what I do remember with insane precision is the BASF, Maxell and Dylan logos.

Today, a toddler can tap and swipe away on a tablet before they learn to speak. But I am pretty sure that, for a 70s child, I grew up in an exceptional environment.

ZX Spectrum 48K

It wasn't long before I got my own computer to play with. My dad brought home this stupendous microcomputer from the UK and got me learning its rudimentary Basic.

In a couple of years there would be hundreds of games and a handful of mates to play them with. But I got a head start and had to copy hundreds of lines of code from magazine pages by myself. As an extremely curious and introverted creature, I got to spend days hacking these programs, modifying them, experimenting, invariably breaking them.

All PC, no consoles

Consoles were finally breaking into mass market and everyone was piling up audio tapes, cartridges and floppy disks with games.

Thanks to my father constantly upgrading his PC, I was once again ahead of the game. From 8086/8 to 80286, 386, blazing fast at 20MHz and immense at 20Mb. I was all over the first driving simulators and football managers.

And I was either playing them or trying to code a "better one" from scratch. I needed a permanent excuse to deep dive into Quick Basic and Turbo Pascal. And what were these Paradox, dBase things? Ah! Persist and query data. Challenge accepted.

Mix tapes

Meanwhile, I had become a teenager. I started riding my BMX around the block, building quarter pipes with new friends.

During high-school, music seized my entire life. I learned how to listen, how to feel, how to play. The tapes became the medium where we captured each other's vinyl collections and the mixtapes, the most real, p2p music discovery system ever invented, was at the center of everything we did.

I had been learning how to play guitar for 2 years now. Very slowly at first. But as soon as met other people learning instruments, we started a pop band.

And then a rock band, and then a punk one, and on to metal and several flavours of that. We spent countless hours in studios, played dozens of shows, and the mix tapes were replaced by our own demo tapes. Suddenly, computers didn't seem so relevant. I was acquiring other ways of expression. And growing a social conscience.

Full-duplex sound cards

Going to college, my friends were taking on Psychology, Linguistics, Sociology, Art. I was in love with all of it, but music was my real passion. Pragmatically, I chose Economics, the social science with a perverse twist and a better outlook into the job market.

Meanwhile, I kept throwing myself at every single calling: student association, activism, drama classes, voice workshops, assembling a photography darkroom in the school's basement.

And music, always the music: took on the bass, then the drums. Played in a few more alt-rock and alt-metal bands, almost graduating from Lisbon's underground scene. A hundred more shows and some more demos, a lot of sweat and a few scars.

Eventually I discovered MIDI, trackers and audio editing. I had my own nifty Pentium at the time and all it took was a AWE32 to get started composing, recording and mixing at home.

This primitive home studio would later evolve to a shiny full-duplex Terratec with a world of embedded synths. The old Pentium would eventually die and get replaced with a steady stream of audio oriented desktops. But some files dated 1993 lived on until today.

MP2

Meanwhile, the Internet had appeared. Some of my friends went straight to the bulletin boards, asking diligent questions, avid to learn how to build the web. But I was too busy finishing my degree and, at the same time, committed to a rock band and a drama group.

Don't get me wrong, the Internet was awesome. It had lyrics, tablatures, discographies and photos of set lists. There were fan clubs for all my favourite bands, both living and defunct ones.

And then there was the experience of downloading a song for the first time. We had access to UK radios and magazines playlists. And soon we would be uploading in Portugal for someone else to download in the US. For someone who grew trading mixtapes and pushing demos, you can imagine how deeply that resonated.

Well, MP2 sounded terrible. But you could totally see the future coming.

Adam Curry's unofficial MTV

When I learned about Adam Curry's unofficial MTV website, I gave it a go and learned just enough HTML to uploaded my band's lyrics and concert dates to Geocities. But it was a pointless exercise, I thought. The people attending our shows were the least interested in the school library.

Besides, the rock life was in decline. The 90s were a glorious rock decade, but ironically, MTV, the Internet, digital access and the massive summer festivals did nothing for the local music scene. On the contrary, small live venues were closing doors, bands were dissolving, band members were getting jobs and not turning back.

Everything is a system

Despite all the art in my life, I did learn a lot during my Economics degree. The insane amount of maths, statistics and econometrics was too much for me to cope with. But I did acquire an incredible set of tools for modeling reality and developed strong analytical skills.

My favourite subjects were Behavioural Economics, Political Economy and History of Economic Thought. But, being pragmatic about my chances at a good job, I took on some Marketing and Management classes and even threw a bit of Finance in the mix.

Junior person with a tie

Not surprisingly, I soon found myself in a suit, making enough money to muddle through early independence. But my lack of academic focus through college got me the job I deserved. An irrelevant position in a stalling company with antiquated methods and backwards values.

Despite being no business visionary, I knew for sure this wasn't the future. But most importantly, I felt there was nothing I could do to change things around me in such an environment. I definitely did not have the skills to do it. And definitely, I did not feel the passion.

Tripod

The next chapter was triggered by political events across the globe. East-Timor was on the verge of independence from Indonesia. The neighbouring countries were pressuring the occupiers and the situation was delicate. A tragedy like the 1991 Santa Cruz massacre felt eminent.

Triggered by the lack of mentions in European media, I decided to create a website in Tripod. In a couple of hours I had several pages up. In a couple of days, I knew all the HTML there was to know at the time. The website now had headlines, news, quotes, galleries and blinking banners.

Going full-circle

I got a few emails from strangers in different countries, people that had never heard about Timor or its Human Rights struggle.

These people were now relaying the news in other networks and communities.

I was having an impact.

I understood the power of those simple tags and set out to find what else was out there to tame.

What was this HTTP thing anyway? And CGI? I can run a website off a database? Then I can write a program to manage and publish dynamic content!

Just imagining what else was there to come, the future looked full of possibility and my head was running rampant with ideas.

My next website was my online CV, entirely built in Javascript and uploaded to a paid hosting service. I was going to learn how to code for real. I was going full circle.

I have been working with web things and engineering teams since then. This story continues in a page about my work as a software engineer, where I cover 1999 to present day.

About my work

2017-02-11T00:00:00Z

I am a web developer and agile practitioner with a diverse background in engineering and management. I have been coding, leading, mentoring and facilitating for almost 30 years.

Summary

I am originally from Lisbon, Portugal, where I cut my teeth as an engineer and manager, acquiring experience for 15 years across a few industries and companies such as SAPO and Quodis.

I moved to London in 2011, worked 4 years at EF Education First, then as the Head of Frontend at Property Partner (now London House Exchange), and as Agile Delivery Manager at Nexmo (now Vonage).

I arrived in Barcelona in 2017. Taught Web Development at Ironhack coding school, having had ninety three! students in little over a year. Since then, I worked briefly for Thoughtworks, two years for New Relic, and another two at Preply.

Mission

To experiment, learn, and grow in collaboration, inspiring others to do the same.

Values

Love, Freedom and Imagination.

Courage, Integrity and Loyalty.

Experience

Barcelona, Spain

At Preply, as Technical Product Owner for the Design System initiative,defined the rollout strategy and technical roadmap, as well as the governance and contribution models, advocating for system adoption through leadership engagement and strategy workshops, and establishing transparent tracking of goals and progress.

As the Technical Leader, drove architectural decisions trough a series of RFCs, and developed the initial prototypes of libraries and tools, including instrumentation to track component adoption throughout the company's codebase. The system was built with a design tokens first approach, focused on streamlining the authoring experience and automating the generation of documentation and code artefacts, enabling cross-platform distribution of themes, tokens, and deprecation notices.

Enabled adopters to become contributors, through training sessions and community building across the design and engineering crafts, supported by high quality guidelines and runbooks and continuous feedback loops.

System adoption improved user experience, ensuring design consistency, and enhancing accessibility and performance across all platforms, leading to significant business results, measurable through A/B experiments conducted throughout the rollout. Adoption contributed also to significant cycle time improvements, streamlining design operations and development experience, and ultimately enabled the company to fully rebrand all frontend and mobile applications in only a couple of months.

As a lead developer, at New Relic, developing and maintaining a very large frontend code base, within the world’s biggest observability platform, mentoring other engineers in XP practices, requirements gathering, analysis and technical writing, architecture, design patterns, frontend development, web standards and browser APIs.

As the Technical Product Manager, also managing the technical roadmap and planning iterations, reducing risks and toil and improving performance, instrumentation, observability, and availability.

At Thoughtworks Spain, as Lead Consultant, trying to learn some serious consulting and influencing skills, as well as strengthen my XP and Software Design. Did not disappoint: such a wonderful group of talented individuals, so much knowledge sharing going on, and so much expertise everywhere, it can even become overwhelming and hard to keep up with!

I was lucky to work on a large e-commerce platform with a mature CI/CD culture, and alongside experienced engineers, committed to best practices and quality. Great opportunity to work hands-on - mostly mobbing/pairing - with serverless architecture, infrastructure as code, observability, and other fancy stuff.

At Ironhack as Lead Teacher for the Web Development bootcamp in Barcelona, teaching full-stack web development - concepts, hacks and best practices - and sharing the love for Agile values and practices.

Great times at the Barcelona campus, working with an awesome team of motivated people with a growth mindset and a beautiful passion for continuous improvement. We iterated continuously on the curriculum, practices, and tools, establishing feedback loops everywhere and capturing the process in living documentation.

Another highlight here, the constant collaboration between the UX/UI and WebDev bootcamps. It inspired an atmosphere of possibility, of a world where the "hand-over" is no longer a thing. I guess that along the way, I must have picked up a few things about Design Thinking and Service Design.

Such a privilege to meet so many people, listen to the most incredible life stories, and learn new and unexpected things. Also a privilege to cross paths with all these students - ninety three of them - at such an extraordinary moment of their lives. :-)

London, UK

At Nexmo (now Vonage) as an Agile Delivery Manager, coaching a few teams through their discovery of Agile principles and values. Focused on individuals and interactions first: collaboration, face to face communication, courage, respect and vulnerability, explicit policies, pairing and mobbing.

Then, collaboratively exploring Lean, Kanban, Kaizen and others, experimenting with practices and tools, evolving towards flow, purpose and predictability, reducing waste, defects, inventory and technical debt along the way.

At Property Partner in a complex role with responsibilities in engineering and management.

Guided the team towards a more mature Scrum, and gradually introducing TDD, pairing, code reviews, Git flow, an automated styleguide and CI practices, as well as facilitating meaningful retrospectives and actionable insights. Together, we grew to deliver at a constant and sustainable pace, releasing code to production every other day.

Great opportunity to explore growth tools. UX research, analytics, A/B testing, referrals, customer support, CRM, every trick in the book.

Moved to London in 2011 as the first backend developer of a greenfield project within EF - Education First. The prototypes evolved into field tests, and the tests evolved into a mature platform. And the role evolved into Tech Lead.

The platform runs at a global scale delivering free online english tests to millions of users, assisting teachers in dozens of schools, and supporting the research behind the world's largest ranking of countries by English skills.

Also super proud to have helped building EF Class (seems to be now retired), an innovative EdTech product that helped teachers run engaging, interactive, and motivational lessons.

Lisbon, Portugal

My last year in Portugal was spent working with friends at Quodis, a company of five, including some of the best UX / designers out there.

We were pumping complex websites, engaging campaigns and beautiful visualisations at an incredible pace.

And we still found time to organise meet-ups and events.

Great team, wonderful times :-)

So excited about Scrum, after running a few ScrumBut explorations, that I got a CSP certification the next year.

Since then, regardless of my role as a contributor, lead or manager, I have been integrating valuable lessons about commitment, mindfulness, courage, respect and vulnerability and growing as facilitator and coach.

When I landed a web-developer role at Portugal Telecom's SAPO / Portugal Telecom portal I knew I had done something right. It was a superb opportunity to learn from the best engineers in Portugal at the time, and to have access to web at scale projects and mature tech.

While working there, built an entire new version of the SAPO Cinema vertical, on top of a service oriented architecture, designed from scratch to be low latency and high availability.

The popular online movies guide scaled 4x its audience after launching the new version and peaked around a million monthly unique users.

The WHATWG was rising, Firefox was launching. I was dreaming about a better web again and wanting to work full-time with web technologies.

Became a full-time frontend trainer/consultant, helping teams in media companies and digital agencies, (re)adjusting to a more modern web: going from closed source to open source, to semantic web standards, to more effective design/development collaboration.

(Re)discovering Agile since I first came across a certain manifesto. In the early 2000s, I was mostly learning XP and Agile Modeling, and how to design and develop in collaboration, writing tests, pairing and reviewing code.

Carefully extracting myself from the marketing duties, and now leading the R&D department and a small team of brave developers, I co-created an innovative product, the first of the kind in the automation industry. Using mostly web technologies for UI, but also going full hands-on with industrial hardware - networks, card readers, gadgets and sensors of every kind - we created a unique modular system, capable of managing thousands of inputs and devices and integrating with other systems.

Good enough to manage the traffic flow in the carpark of an opera house. Or monitor thousands of spots in an airport's car park using sound sensors. Quite a reception from the market! When I left mid 2006 there were 20 instances operating across the country, and plans to go much further. Last time I checked, it was in production for over a decade and even sold to other countries.

My one big shot at pretending to capitalism followed, kind of by chance. A young maverick heir with sufficient funds and guts, someone I had previously impressed with my mix of business and tech skills, trusted me to articulate his vision into a business plan for a technical spin-off of his family's more traditional company.

In the first 2 years we saw the new company become the most profitable business of the group and the market leader in the national mobility space, expanding its offering to traffic management, access control and automation integrations.

Meanwhile I had myself back into a role in marketing in the now familiar, very real, very gritty, mobility industry. But the business plan went beyond being a vendor and an integrator. We were also building prototypes for our own product, using Delphi, rudimentary electronics, and lots of creative glue. So we sold one, then two, then five. The product was viable, the demand was there.

Me and some friends created our own web-shop, developed a CMS in PHP3, streamlined a sales+delivery pipeline and went on to create websites for dozens of companies and institutions.

Unfortunately, as soon as this one and (so far) only attempt at being an entrepreneur was starting to look like a serious business, the dot-com bubble collapsed the market appetite for a couple of years. We were kind of late to the first party.

We had to move on, maybe jut for a while. But I think I became risk averse and never considered this path again.

It was only when I found a more technical role in the parking systems and access control industry that I felt I was truly creating value.

Pre-sales opened the opportunity to get involved and very much hands-on. Business analysis, requirements gathering, modeling, architecture, prototyping. Started playing around with VB, Delphi, databases, reports and learning about RAD, Rational, UML.

Somehow also got involved in training technical and sales staff and took an eye-opening course on training and pedagogy.

The 2 years after graduating felt a bit inadequate. The degree in Economics lined me up for a brief experience in the public sector, as a naif techno-junior. And then in commerce, as a mini person-suit struggling to find any poetry in commerce.

I knew I could do so much more if I were creating things. Instead of audits, studies, deals.

I was finishing university and creating my first personal website. The browsers at the time? Navigator and IE2. And dial-up bandwidth. On a good day, 30 kbps.

My story with computers goes way back.

Keyword dump

Management: product development, product management, technical product management, systems thinking, design thinking, service design, lean, kanban, design systems, release planning, technical debt management, risk management, coaching, mentoring, facilitation, people management

Engineering: architecture, modeling, distributed systems, high-availability, observability, xp, pairing, mobbing, tdd, bdd, ci-cd, web standards, typescript, javascript, react, angular, vue-js, astro, html, css, less, scss, web apis, tooling, node-js, scala, go, python, mongodb, couchbase, mysql, redis, rabbitmq, ansible, docker, terraform, cloud-formation, aws, gcp, azure

Kudos

I am lucky to have had the chance of working in remarkable teams. It has been an absolute privilege and pleasure to work alongside so many talented and inspiring individuals: business people, academics, engineers, and artists.

Particularly, the ones I had the even greater privilege of mentoring along the way. You all rock! And you will rule!

You can learn more about my work in my LinkedIn profile.

Or more about my back story, right here on this website.

And always feel free to get in touch.

Hello World :wave:

2017-01-03T00:00:00Z

My first website was hosted on tripod, back in 1995 and for the next 13 years I had a constant, tireless, and experimental presence on the web. But In 2008 I took my last site down. For a whole decade, andretorgal.com was nothing but a placeholder or a 404. It's time to change this sad state of affairs.

I am working on a few thoughts about why I am coming back to my own space on the Internet.

First things first: I always had the choice to keep going.

I've been writing about this in train of thought mode for a couple of days, asking a lot of whys and trying to reconstruct the narrative.

So... why I did I go for 8 years on social media without a site of my own?

Reflection yields insight, I found quite a few whys out of the writing exercise:

because I went down the rabbit hole, got addicted to social media and lazy
because I lost hope in the Internet of people and communities
because I failed to keep a conversation going on my blogs
because I lost focus and commitment
because I got frustrated and disenchanted
because I thought social networks would reward content creators
because I thought more friends online would result in more sites and blogs
because I thought everyone was going to be creating
because some times I think everyone is like me :-)

Each one of these could very well be a post on its own.

Finally, how is it going to be, going forward?

Reclaiming my web

This infinite space is still up here to take.

Be the change you want to see in the world.

Every journey begins with the first step.

Yada, yada :-)

Step 1

Back online under my own rules on my own domain.

Step 2

Nops, don't really have a step 2, or a plan.

I'll continue this by reading, reflecting, reaching out to friends and strangers.

Let's move on, let's stay in touch.