Book Notes: Building a Micro-SaaS Business: https://tjpalanca.com/2025/10/07/book-notes-building-a-microsaas.html

Book Notes: The Psychology of Money: https://tjpalanca.com/2025/10/06/book-notes-the-psychology-of.html

I’ve been consistently using vibe coding for both work and personal projects. One challenge I’ve had with data pipelines is specifying a test large enough so we can delegate a larger loop to the LLM. I want to try using tools like {pointblank} to encode what I mean by “the data feels right”.

I use US English in personal conversations and UK/Singapore English in professional conversations, because it’s fancier.

“Hop, little bunnies” is basically Crossfit for toddlers.

Kiro is a new AI vibe coding IDE with a focus on writing specs, turning that into a design, and then turning that into tasks. You’re basically a product manager now, managing a very enthusiastic, very weird software engineer. That’s super exciting! https://kiro.dev

Kiro

The AI IDE for prototype to production

kiro.dev

One thing that’s been great for my productivity is recognising when things aren’t worth my time, even if they lead to a small financial loss.

tjpalanca.com/2025/01/30/w...

I was trying to evaluate an investment in HSBC’s AT1 perpetual bond — I was worried about a situation similar to Credit Suisse, where AT1 bonds were wiped out, but equity holders were paid. ChatGPT’s o1 model did reasonably well in guiding me th... https://tjpalanca.com/2024/09/21/i-was-trying.html

dbt Singapore Meetup: Using dbt for accounting and investment reporting: https://tjpalanca.com/2024/09/13/dbt-singapore-meetup.html

Exploring the Polars Dataframe Library: https://tjpalanca.com/2024/09/06/exploring-the-polars.html

#8: Writing is thinking, weak passport problems, and economic growth: https://tjpalanca.com/2024/08/20/writing-is-thinking.html

With Super Duolingo, I found myself doing lessons repetitively to gain more XP, rather than maximising what I could learn by progressing further. I feel like incentivising based on “new words learned” would make it a more fulfilling experience.

Someone needs to do a series on the various “stock exchange person facepalming and looking worried” photos on top of every piece of financial markets news these days.

Book Notes: Everybody Writes by Ann Handley: tjpalanca.com/2024/08/06/b... 💙📚

Book Notes: Everybody Writes by Ann Handley

I was stuck in my writing so decided to do some very elaborate procrastination by reading this book. I was initially drawn because it seemed to focus more on writing for marketing and general purposes...

tjpalanca.com

I resolved to write around 300 words a day, and apart from the actual writing output, I feel a lot less scatterbrained. Ulysses makes it effortless to set a daily writing goal. I love the pretty little graph the app makes to gamify the experience:

Renewing a US tourist visa in Singapore as a foreigner: tjpalanca.com/2024/08/02/r...

Renewing a US tourist visa in Singapore as a foreigner

Holding a Philippines passport means you will plan most international travel well in advance. This is especially true for trips to the United States. (Photo by Erica Jahn on Unsplash) I hold a weak pa...

tjpalanca.com

Chinese tradition during weddings suggests gifting a red packet that at least offsets the cost of your seat, and there’s something beautiful about that, when done willingly.

Welcome back to what is essentially an annual newsletter 🥲. In this issue, find out why digital gardening didn’t work for me, how I want to own my content, and my new gig combining accounting and data engineering. https://tjpalanca.com/2024/07/24/digital-gardening-didnt.html

I'm settled into my new writing setup (hopefully, at least for the next year). Principles were: - Use purpose-built apps for writing (Ulysses) - Publish once on your site, syndicate elsewhere (Micro.Blog + Zapier + Buffer) - Easy capture (Apple Shortcuts)