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.
Axel Valdez

Content Timeline

This timeline shows the 20 most recent posts across the blog, the stream of consciousness, memories, and links sections.

  1. Robin Spielmann

    iamrob.in

    A beautiful website: clean, fun, colorful, calm, and full of fun things like the postcards section. This one got me excited to revive my own website. Thanks Robin!

  4. Birthday Goat Yoga

    A trip to Arizona with mountains, goats, and mountain goats (in the stereo)

  5. The magnetic particles in a mixtape hold much more than just music. Baked into the tape is also the person’s intention. They’re in their room, hovering over the pause button wondering if you’ll catch the meaning behind that lyric they chose. Hoping you feel what they felt when they first heard that guitar solo. Each moment on the tape is a moment spent thinking about you.

    From Digging the Greats: Mixtape series

    Thought #23

  6. IIIMGS

    This blog is built on 11ty, and I use Decap CMS to update it (editing code directly gets old reeeeal quick). I don't love image management in Decap, though, and I always wanted a better and quicker solution for that. So I made my own.

    Continue reading →

  7. CCCOLUMNS

    I’m a huge nerd for notes. A long time ago, I learned not to trust my memory, so everything that comes to mind and needs to be remembered goes into a note. There’s this idea that the brain is an excellent processor and a very shitty storage solution. I fully subscribe to that notion.

    I already use a system in Apple Notes, heavily based on Forever Notes by Matthias Hilse, but very distilled and simplified. However, I wanted an even more immediate quick-note system that was always up front and ready, so I made just that.

    Continue reading →

  9. I gave vibecoding a second chance this week, this time sticking to technologies I'm familiar with. Instead of trying to make an iOS app (a completely unfamiliar territory for me) I made some web apps for very specific needs of my own. It was like night and day. A few hours here and there over the week, and now I have two really really useful web apps that I'm sure I will use every day.

    I'll make a proper post as soon as I can get to it, but I wanted to save this note as a reminder that this stuff can be good.

    Thought #22

  10. Drugs and Normality

    White Pills, by Thought Catalog on Unsplash

    I never did drugs in my youth because I was too afraid, but I always had this curiosity of how it would feel to be high. I imagined pure awesomeness and bliss.

    Continue reading →

  11. Headphones

    Airpods Max, photo by Stephan Riedl / Unsplash

    I love headphones. I love them because music has always been my safe place and headphones were my way to carry that with me in public, except I never allowed myself to use them.

    Continue reading →

  13. I just listened to Cory Doctorow's Daddy Daughter Podcast, a talk with his 16-year-old daughter. His struggles to have her talking and elaborating about things, and her reluctance to be in the episode made me feel so calm about my own teenager and the dynamics of interacting with him.

    I think the earlier we dads accept that there's no way to change how irremediably uncool we are in the eyes of our teenage kids, the smoother the ride is.

    I love you, Andrés. I'm fairly sure you'll never read this, but if for some reason you do, you can bet on that.

    Thought #21

  14. I just had a full conversation with my 8-year-old son about the possibility that we live in a simulation, using our brain's data as an avatar for extending life using an after-death simulated environment and the possibilities of it all. I'm so happy to be raising nerdy kids <3.

    Thought #20

  15. Tengo una sensación extraña cada vez que muere una persona cercana que en alguna medida marcó una diferencia en mi vida. No hablo necesariamente de luto, dolor, o tristeza, sino de esa sensación de que sin esa persona, y con su ausencia poco a poco notándose menos hasta volverse la normalidad, el mundo ya no es igual. No es necesariamente peor, ni mejor, sino diferente.

    Aunque uno no cambie mucho, aunque las dinámicas de la vida sigan ininterrumpidas, todo sucede ahora en un lugar distinto.

    Thought #19

  16. El miedo a la muerte

    Desde muy pequeño he estado asustado con la idea de la muerte en general, la de mis seres queridos, y especialmente la idea de la mía propia.

    Aunque con los años he podido ir gradualmente y a cierto nivel reconciliándome con la idea, este miedo empezó siendo paralizante. Al nivel de ser un niño de 6 años que no podía dormir pensando en eso.

    Continue reading →

  17. Matt.

    — Hi, I’m Mateo Pérez
    — Hello, I’m Axel Valdez. I just got here yesterday
    — So, what do you do exactly?
    — I’m a UI designer, and I also do front-end code. Mostly HTML and CSS, but also some JavaScript, usually for interaction stuff
    — For how long have you been doing these things?
    — It’s been like... 15 years now. Wow.
    — And what do you like the most?
    — CSS, definitely. I would be happy if I got to just do CSS forever.
    — Alright. That was your English test. You’re fine.

    That was my first interaction with Matt Perez, on my second day at Nearsoft in 2011. He kinda intimidated me at that time, mostly because I had read a lot about him on social media, and he was already a legend for founding Nearsoft, this weird and utopian software development joint in Hermosillo. At that time we were small. About 35 people including designers, software engineers, recruiters, and admin staff.

    Continue reading →

  18. I organized my vinyl records, and I found out I have 16 of them still wrapped, new, unplayed. And they're good albums, too. I think starting on Monday I will sit down and listen to one of them daily. I'll report back here. Or maybe I will set-up my music blog —The Headphonist— again, to write about them.

    Thought #18

  19. Pocket notebooks with drawings in the covers

    I got a small pack of Posca paint markers and I want to draw on every surface around me. These are my pocket notebooks.

    Thought #17

  20. Sometimes it gets reaaaally dificult to trust the process.
    Inhale... hold... exhale.

    Thought #16

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.