Sora Kalden

20

The Maker

Building

Apps, ~160 ideas, and the one move underneath all of them: find the right thing to build, then build the honest version. The domains change; the method doesn't.

Flua is the lead — the fastest honest path to a new language: one expertly-ordered deck, real native audio, and spaced repetition that does the thinking for you. He taught himself Japanese to A1 in ~20 focused hours with the method, then spent a year building the app that strips out every ounce of the friction that makes people quit.

Weave is a minimalist weight-and-habit tracker built so the graph does the nagging; his mom lost 17 lbs with it. Super Zen is a focus and calm tool — the small, well-made kind of app he likes to ship. Alongside them: a metronome that actually feels good, and a tool to find the episode where a show finally gets good.

Underneath everything is the idea engine: ~160 catalogued app, game, business, book and product ideas, each ranked, named and MVP-scoped — roughly 28 of them games — and a habit of turning the best ones into real, shipped things. The invitation is open: grab one off the shelf and build it with me.

"The domains change. The method doesn't."— from the notes

See Flua → My apps →

~160 ideas and counting — and the ones that ship.

8

Worlds & Stories

He's built worlds since he was 11 — and never really stopped.

A fantasy novel he faked his way into finishing and published at 14. A 150k-word dark epic in progress — The Swords of Darkness. A homebrew D&D world with its own playbook. And a manga he still wants to make.

The thread through all of it is the same: start before you're ready, build the habit by faking the progress, and let the world get real on the page. It's storytelling as a craft, not a hobby — the same brain that ships apps, pointed at character and plot.

"Because I had to fake progress, I accidentally built a real habit. It makes me wonder how many things we could actually finish if we just tricked ourselves into starting."— on the teen novel

Painterly key art for the worlds and stories

Worlds since he was eleven.

14

Learning & Teaching · The 30-Day Sprint

Learning & Teaching

How he learns anything fast, and why he's building the courses he wishes someone had taught him — math, statistical and computational thinking, built for real understanding instead of the exam.

The method is a 30-day sprint: pick a skill, go all-in for thirty days. Japanese to A1 in ~20 focused hours. Tone-deaf to singing from memory in a month. Badminton, YouTube, shipping.

The trick isn't grinding harder — it's refusing to start until he's found where the common advice is wrong, then building the shortest honest path and letting sleep do the heavy lifting. The domains change; the method doesn't.

"Being called smart my whole childhood made it part of my identity — and I was more afraid to lose that title than I was to fail a class."— About Me

2

Games & the Table

Take a system apart, find the fun, build it back better.

A Balatro-inspired dice roguelike in design. A board game in progress. And D&D run as systems — 100+ hours behind the screen, where the magic isn't the dice or the lore but a handful of frameworks for a world that's already moving when players walk in.

Roughly 28 of the ~160 catalogued ideas are games. The common thread: every design decision is a question about where the fun actually lives.

"Any time the best strategy isn't the most fun strategy is, I believe, a failure of the game's design."— from my consumables essay

Hand-built maps for the table.

12

The Modern Bard

Singing, standup, improv, voice acting, speaking — the half of himself he rebuilt on purpose, charisma treated as a built skill.

For years he was a specialist — very good at one thing, B-minus at the rest. Then he treated the soft skills like any other 30-day sprint: tone-deaf to singing from memory, awkward to comfortable on a stage, a voice trained on purpose.

Performance isn't a gift here. It's a discipline, practiced where it's uncomfortable, until it reads as natural.

"I could not sing. I could not dress well. I was not particularly fit or especially charismatic. I was a very well-compensated specialist with a B-minus in everything else."— how I became superhuman in 2 years

4

Photography & the eye · Illustrations

Illustrations

One camera, a single 23mm prime, golden hour.

Portraits, fits, and the cities I've lived in — Osaka, Tokyo, Kōyasan, Budapest, Lisbon, Nagpur. One camera, a single prime, natural light, graded by hand.

"You can't study the color wheel for two hours and understand it. You have to train your eye over a long time."— on color

Portfolio portrait, natural light — Portrait

Portfolio portrait at golden hour — Best

Portfolio frame from the cities series — Best

18

The Athlete

The same engine he points at apps, pointed at his own body — and the sports that are how he makes friends in a new city.

Soccer, badminton, volleyball: not just training, but the social key to a new city. The body gets the same treatment as any other skill — a system to debug, a feedback loop to close, control prioritized over speed.

It's the most literal version of the through-line: point a curious, methodical mind at something hard and don't stop until it works.

"Prioritize control and intention over speed."— his own soccer training notes

6

The Mind

A reading life run like a syllabus — philosophy, history, business — all read through one lens: read to build, not to collect.

Books aren't trophies here. Each one is chosen for what it lets him make next, and the disciplines are deliberately cross-wired — because the real return is in how the skills feed each other.

"Everything is interconnected. Singing makes you a better speaker; games train you to perform under pressure. Each skill feeds the next. If you want to be truly unstoppable, learn everything."— from the notes

10

Quests · Things Unbuilt

Dreams

Things he hasn't built yet.

Write a TV showhe's watched thousands of hours of film and anime, only the best, mostly to take apart why they work.
Finish the mangathe "next Death Note or Game of Thrones": a complex plot that's somehow easy to follow.
Make Westworld realas a game you can actually live inside.
Open a caféa third place for serious makers — writers, artists, builders, one room.
Find the peoplethe talented, curious people he'd do all of the above with.

Painterly key art for the dreams not yet built

No goal yet. Just the doing — and the wanting.

16

The Codex · Marginalia

Writing

Distinct from the work — ideas, not portfolio.

I

How I Learn Anything in 30 Days

Not willpower — a method: find where the common advice is wrong, build a feedback loop, and let sleep do the heavy lifting.

II

The year I walked away from $250k

At my financial peak I was lonelier than I'd ever been — so I quit, lost almost everything, and spent a year figuring out what a life is for.

III

What Actually Makes D&D Peak

After 100+ hours behind the screen, the magic isn't the dice or the lore — it's a handful of frameworks for a world that's already moving when players walk in.

IV

Why the best schools taught me to forget

I optimized for the grade at every school I attended, and it worked — which is exactly the problem.

V

I Used My CS Degree to Debug My Weight Loss

I'd done everything right for six months and the scale wouldn't move — until I stopped treating it like willpower and started treating it like a bug.

7

Summon Party · Let's build something

Connect

I'm looking for people who are excellent at something and curious about everything.

Collaborators, co-conspirators, friends. If any of these worlds is also yours — or you just want to scheme — say hi. The best things in my life started as a five-hour first conversation with a stranger.

Say hi → See Flua → My apps →

⬡ Ability Scores

❖ Portrait

⚄ Roll for Fate

✦ Backstory

⚒ Proficiencies

🜂 Inventory

✷ Spells & Methods

✠ Quests · Unbuilt

✒ Codex · Marginalia

Building

Worlds & Stories

Learning & Teaching

Games & the Table

The Modern Bard

Illustrations

The Athlete

The Mind

Dreams

Writing

How I Learn Anything in 30 Days

The year I walked away from $250k

What Actually Makes D&D Peak

Why the best schools taught me to forget

I Used My CS Degree to Debug My Weight Loss

Connect