Notes from a busy season
And why I'm writing again: there's just so much cool stuff going on, I'm about to burst!
Friends,
This mailing list has been quiet since early 2023 when I posted about a trip to Mazunte, one of my favorite beach towns on the Oaxacan coast in Mexico. The list went dormant, but I absolutely didn’t. When it comes to my work life, I’ve been very much alive and productive in the AI space, which (despite what you might hear from pessimists) is an absolutely transformative technology that shows no sign of slowing down.
In addition to coding, I’ve been spending at least 10-20 hours a week in the studio making cool music, promoting raves again, and getting all sorts of other little (and big) projects off the ground, all while basking in the hum of Mexico City, which remains my favorite city in the world. Consider this a catch-up, but also a small manifesto about what I think matters right now.
If you subscribe to this list just for music updates, I do have some news on that below the technical items.
1) I wrote a new book!
Patterns of Application Development Using AI is all about how the ability to drop human-like black box components into otherwise traditional software systems is totally rad and revolutionary. I tried to write it in a very approachable way, and the first part of the book provides a fairly gentle introduction to LLM technology basics. Even if you’re not a programmer, you might still find a lot of this material interesting. It should also help explain why Nvidia’s valuation is now $5 trillion!
Here’s a coupon code to download it for $20 bucks (valid for 30 days). The Leanpub version is available in my original English, plus 31 other languages! Amazon has dead tree versions too if that’s more your vibe.
2) Ruby on Rails is still winning, especially with AI
Rails taught a generation that great conventions can enable small teams to perform like great companies. Throw agentic AI coding into the mix and now suddenly individuals can deliver at the same rate as entire teams (see my tweets about that below). The trendy expectation for this phenomenon is that someone, at some point, will be able to build a 1-person company valued at a billion dollars. I used to have doubts about that happening, now I don’t.
That same ethos that was revolutionary for Ruby on Rails starting 20 years ago works great for AI coding agents: sensible defaults, clean boundaries, fast feedback, boring reliability.
4) Human ingenuity and creativity will soon be the only valuable commodity we have left, and this has important implications…
AI will give you (and billions of other humans) leverage that’s hard to imagine right now unless you’re fully immersed in it the way that I am. Leverage that amplifies whatever is already true about your life and capabilities. If you’re bored now, you have no idea how bad it can get. If you’re scattered, you’ll scatter faster. If you’re disciplined, you’ll produce at a terrifying clip. If you’re talented and creative, you will create on larger and more ambitious scales than ever before. (As a disciplined and creative person, this is why I find AI unbelievably exciting.)
In the long run, since AI automation will take care of all the boring stuff in our lives, I think the only valuable commodity left in the world will be human ingenuity and creativity. That’s why I’m doubling down on my creative projects, which mainly consist of making music.
9) Music is my kung fu
Music is my dojo. I practice almost every day — not because I have to, but because it’s the one arena where there’s nowhere to hide. You can’t fake groove. You can’t prompt your way into emotion. The studio humbles you; even though I make music with computers, it’s still the perfect antidote to coding all day with machines that pretend to be creative.
The past year has been one of my most prolific ever. I finally released a full artist album. I also finally scored a release on Armada, Armin Van Buuren’s famous label. I’ve released tracks as Obie Fernandez, Kyberian, KNBI, EDDIE HD, and Zerodé, representing a wide range of musical genres and emotions. I’ve even started SINGING MY OWN SONGS, HOLY CRAP!!! Some of the work is cinematic, some is unhinged, but ALL of it is powered by the same curiosity that drives my software experiments.
There’s also Saindra, the AI vocalist I’ve been developing along with a creative team based here in Mexico City. Saindra is part collaborator, part mirror. She’s my outlet for a songwriting urge that’s been decades in the making, and it turns out that Spanish lets me tap directly into my muse way better than English. Together we’re exploring the edges of what “human” even means in music. It’s strange and beautiful and still evolving.
I’m also back in the event world, promoting Inmundo nights here in Mexico City featuring high quality trance and techno. (I’ll be headlining alongside the legendary Solarstone on November 28th.) The goal isn’t to scale; it’s to cultivate scenes that feel real. If you’ve ever danced until sunrise at a place that felt like home, you know exactly what I mean.
Music remains the truest metric for my life: if I’m writing, experimenting, performing, it usually means everything else is aligned. It’s my discipline, meditation, and rebellion all in one.
10) Mexico City remains home base, for now...
CDMX is chaos and grace, cement and bougainvillea. It keeps me grounded, and despite the pollution, healthy. I don’t have a car; don’t need one. The amount of stimulation here also keeps me curious, the only sustainable fuel I’ve found for living a happy and fulfilling life.
That said, I’m coming up on 3.5 years living in the same apartment. That’s the longest contiguous stretch that I’ve ever lived in the same home for my entire adult life. Crazy, right? Lately I’m starting to feel the itch to move and even considered San Francisco, in order to be at the epicenter of the AI action. On the other hand, it’s also where the effects of the valuation bubble popping will be felt worst, so… probably not a great idea.
What’s next? I’m keeping my options open ‘til the end of the year. I’m drawn to problems that need that odd mix I’ve honed: Rails instincts + AI orchestration + product taste + shipping bias. If you’re building something that lives at that intersection and needs momentum, you’ll know if this was written for you.
And finally, don’t worry because I have no time or inclination to flood your inbox with emails like this. Expect irregular dispatches, perhaps years in between: but always with ideas that I hope you’ll find worth pressure-testing, patterns you can borrow, maybe even a track or two you’ll fall in love with. If any of this resonated, please hit reply. Tell me what you’re building. Or just say hi.
More soon,
Obie
P.S. If you forwarded this to someone who thinks like us, big big thanks. You’re my kind of people.