Alex TerendaDesign & engineering

Now

What I'm up to. Last updated 18th September 2024.

Building

  • A product studio - Turning my product design and engineering practice into something more substantial.

Writing

  • A small newsletter - Eclectic writing for a handful of my closest friends.
  • Specialism vs generalism - Identifying effective polymathy and resolving the tension between a generalist skillset and a specialist-first market.

Reading

  • Cloud Forensics Demystified - You would think after medicine, programming and crypto I would have built up a tolerance for weird and arcane fields.
  • The Mom Test - A classic reference manual that I reread whenever I'm about to attempt something interesting.
  • A Country Doctor's Notebook - I still have a soft spot for physician writers and their work.

Listening

  • Metamuse - Cerebral product design takes focusing on craft over careers or trends. Dismayed to find it on hiatus as it's really excellent.

Playing

  • Sunless Sea - A forgettable gameplay loop paired with some of the most compelling writing and worldbuilding I have ever seen.

Learning

  • Languages - I live in Portugal, my partner is Spanish and my family is Polish. Had fun learning to read Greek over summer. Picking up as much Japanese as I can before visiting an old friend in Tokyo next year.
  • Godot - Betting on open source, testing myself as a solo creative and pining for "a heroic age of games authorship".