Axel Valdez Design Engineer

Hello,
I'm Axel.

I'm a Design Engineer living in Hermosillo, Mexico. I've been working in the software development industry for pretty much my entire adult life, in roles related to both front-end development and design. I lived through the browser wars, the web standards movement, social media becoming mainstream, and the decay of privacy online. Today I'm very much into the indie web and the small web movements. This website is my hub on the web, from work to hobbies and everything in-between.

Hello, I'm Axel

Latest

This is a list of the most recent posts on the blog, the stream of consciousness and memories.

Assignment

I stopped writing for a while, since my road trip to Arizona last month, and my mind has been wandering too much. I feel like I can't anchor my thinking in a single thing at any given time.

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reflection mental health • Aug 10, 2026
I trust Apple a bit more than Google. Not because Apple is a charity, but because their business model is selling me hardware, not selling my behaviour. Google's incentive is to watch me, Apple's incentive is to upsell me. I prefer the latter.

— Adële's Blog, The perfect equipment set

Thought #48 • Jul 31, 2026
Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie

I saw Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie two nights ago, and it blew my mind.

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media • Jul 30, 2026
As a general rule, computers are much faster and much dumber than people think they are. They mostly just fake being smart by being dumb really fast.

I don't know where I got that quote from, but I found it in my ephemeral notes today and made me chuckle :).

Thought #47 • Jul 29, 2026
On ADHD and productivity:

Most productivity advice is built for neurotypical brains. Linear. One thing at a time. Sit down, focus, finish.
That’s not how my brain works. My brain is parallel, associative, pattern-matching, constantly firing. It’s not broken. It’s just running different software.

Siddhi Mittal, How I Made ADHD My Superpower

This reminds me of that time where everyone used windows and, as a mac user, following a tutorial for anything required translation, adaptation, and searching for equivalences. And most of the time it didn't work anyway.

Thought #46 • Jul 28, 2026
Free Spirits

A road trip to see CA7RIEL & Paco Amoroso

Jul 24, 2026
Boxes

The worst possible thing I can do when I'm having a bad AuDHD day is start organizing my office, and that's the main thing I'm inclined to do, probably to somehow reclaim a bit of control.

The process is the same every time. I wake up, maybe tired after having only a few hours of sleep, and the tiredness throws off my morning routine. Maybe I didn't feel like brewing coffee, or I wasn't hungry and postponed breakfast. Or I overslept a little bit and I'm rushed to start working. Whatever it is, I feel like I'm not in control.

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mental health • Jul 16, 2026
Tortuga

When Andrés, my oldest son, was 9, we were watching a video about Logo, the programming language. He got especially excited with Turtle Graphics, where you have a "pen" on screen that you can draw with using commands to move it.

That night I started a project using p5.js and my limited programming skills to do just that, drawing with commands, replacing my missing knowledge with unnecessary overcomplication and spaghetti code. But hey! It worked!

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parenting technology • Jul 15, 2026
I Miss Getting Lost

Smartphones have made traveling immeasurably easier. And I don’t think that was entirely free.

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technology reflection • Jul 14, 2026
Quiet Tech

A couple of weeks ago I read The Last Quiet Thing by Terry Godier, and it made me very conscious of what my devices were asking from me.

I keep talking about seeking calm to everyone who’ll listen, and still I hadn’t seen it like that: our devices demanding work from us.

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technology • Jul 13, 2026
Older →

Web Rings

I participate in several IndieWeb and SmallWeb webrings.

If you don't know what a webring is, you're probably too young and/or too cool. Here's an explanation.

IndieWeb Webring

A webring to find (and be found by) other folks with IndieWeb building blocks on their sites.

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Generation Lissa

People who started making websites in the late 90s/early 00s and are still here.

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CSS Joy

A webring for people who take joy in messing around with CSS.

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Retronaut Webring

"Some of us miss the messy old days of the Internet where we tried to get along and we'd link to each other's sites and it was all so much fun."

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