oceanblue

Notes kept in the same color as the sea, far from shore.

Xiaofan tools, attention, and a life between languages 两种语言之间

scroll to descend
01 / light

Where the Light Gathers

I keep this place the way some people keep a notebook by the kitchen window — not for anyone in particular, but close at hand, in case something worth writing down passes through.

My days are spent somewhere between teams and decisions, and most of what ends up here started as a note on the margin of something else — a meeting, a walk, a slow afternoon when the light was good.

If you've wandered in, you're welcome to stay. There's tea on, most days.

02 / current

What the Tide Is Carrying

  • Trying to finish the workday before the workday finishes me.
  • Re-learning how to read a book without reaching for the phone every ten minutes.
  • Walking more. Talking less.
  • Noticing that the best conversations I have all week happen on Sunday mornings.
03 / depths

Below the Quiet Surface

Field note 01

The addresses we keep

There's a difference between an inbox and a home. I think about what it takes to build the second kind online — the small, boring choices that quietly shape how we're recognized over decades.

Field note 02

Tools that age well

The command line has outlived most of its obituaries. I'm curious what it still knows about craft that louder software has forgotten.

Field note 03

Reading at length

Most of what I learn now arrives in fragments — a paragraph, a quote, a thread someone screenshotted. The long argument is harder to hold than it used to be, and I want to keep the muscle for it.

Field note 04

Two languages, one life

Moving daily between English and Chinese — noticing what each one lets me say, and what each one quietly takes away.

04 / margins

Found in the Margins

"We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us."
John Culkin
"Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity."
Simone Weil
"A domain is the only piece of the internet you can actually own."
overheard, somewhere
Lately in the stack:
  • The Book of Disquiet · Fernando Pessoa
  • Letters to a Young Poet · Rainer Maria Rilke
05 / signal

A Signal in Low Light

If you've read this far, you might as well write. For work, for a good book recommendation, or for no reason at all.