Things I spend time on when nobody’s paying me to.

📖 Sci-Fi

Heavyweight, philosophical, preferably bleak. Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun is the peak. Peter Watts (Blindsight, Echopraxia) writes the hardest sci-fi I’ve found — neuroscience, consciousness, and aliens that make no concessions to human understanding. Neal Stephenson (Anathem, Snow Crash) for when I want something dense but slightly more fun. Iain Banks’s Culture series for the best AI characters in fiction.

I also read in Russian — Cixin Liu in translation (Задача Трёх Тел), classic Soviet sci-fi, and the occasional Dostoevsky when I’m feeling masochistic.

I keep a running list of everything I read with short reviews.

🏃 Hyrox & Running

Currently training for Hyrox pairs — a fitness race that combines running with functional workout stations (sled push, sled pull, burpee broad jumps, rowing, etc.). It’s the right amount of suffering.

Before Hyrox, I was inconsistently doing gym work and running. Having a race on the calendar turns out to be the only reliable discipline hack I’ve found.

🤖 Home Automation & Self-Hosting

I run a home server (Ubuntu, Docker Compose) with:

  • Plex + Radarr + Jackett — media management
  • n8n — workflow automation (this powers my Family Bot and personal AI assistant)
  • rclone + rsync — backup and sync across cloud and local storage
  • VPN — remote access to everything

I used to run a smart home blog (smarthome.university) covering Z-Wave, Zigbee, and automation routines. The blog is dormant, but the hobby isn’t. I still automate things that probably don’t need automating.

♟️ Chess

Recreational, not competitive. I play online (mostly rapid) and occasionally in person. I appreciate chess as applied game theory more than as a sport. The decision-making under uncertainty, the pattern recognition, the psychological warfare in time pressure — it’s a better model for strategic thinking than most business books.

🏛️ Stoicism

Practical, Roman, not academic. Epictetus (the Discourses and Enchiridion) and Marcus Aurelius (Meditations) are the core texts. I came to Stoicism through James Stockdale’s account of surviving seven years as a POW in Vietnam — he credited Epictetus for his survival. That’s the kind of endorsement no philosophy professor can match.

What I take from it: the dichotomy of control, negative visualisation, and the idea that your response to events matters more than the events themselves. Not as platitudes — as daily operating principles.

✍️ Writing

I write to think. Structuring thoughts in words forces clarity that thinking alone doesn’t. Most of what I write stays private (diary, weekly reviews). Some of it ends up in the writing section of this site.

I’m working on developing a more distinctive voice — direct, analytical, occasionally funny. Still figuring it out.

🧩 Minimalism

In design, tools, and lifestyle. I gravitate toward things that do one thing well. My website is text. My phone home screen has one page. My wardrobe is boring. I’m not dogmatic about it — I just find that reducing options reduces friction.