Building
~160 ideas and counting — and the ones that ship.
Flua (tryflua.com) — the fastest honest path to a new language: one expertly-ordered deck, real native audio, and spaced repetition that does the thinking for you. I taught myself 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 — a minimalist weight-and-habit tracker built so the graph does the nagging. My mom lost 17 lbs with it. Super Zen — a focus / calm tool. Small tools — a metronome that actually feels good; a tool to find the episode where a show finally gets good. More apps live at kalden.me.
The Eight Sides
I · The Maker
Find the right thing to build, then build the honest version.
“The domains change. The method doesn’t.”— from the notes
II · Worlds & Stories
He’s built worlds since he was 11 — a novel published at 14, a 150k-word dark epic in progress (The Swords of Darkness), a homebrew D&D world, and a manga still to make.
“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
III · Learning & Teaching
The courses I wish someone had taught me — math, statistical and computational thinking, built for real understanding instead of the exam.
“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
IV · Games & the Table
Take a system apart, find the fun, build it back better — a Balatro-inspired dice roguelike, a board game in progress, and D&D run as systems.
“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
V · The Modern Bard
Singing, standup, improv, voice acting, speaking — charisma treated as a built skill.
“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
VI · Photography & the eye
One camera, a single 23mm prime, golden hour. Portraits, fits, and the cities I live in.
“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
VII · The Athlete
The same engine I point at apps, pointed at my own body — soccer, badminton, volleyball.
“Prioritize control and intention over speed.”— his own soccer training notes
VIII · The Mind
A reading life run like a syllabus — philosophy, history, business — read to build, not to collect.
“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
The Method — the 30-day sprint
Pick a skill, go all-in for 30 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 I’ve found where the common advice is wrong, then building the shortest honest path and letting sleep do the heavy lifting.
Dreams — things I haven’t built yet
Write a TV show. Finish the manga — the “next Death Note or Game of Thrones.” Make Westworld real, as a game you can actually live inside. Open a café that’s a third place for serious makers. Find the talented, curious people I’d do all of the above with.
The Salon — photography
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.
Writing
Distinct from the work — ideas, not portfolio. 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.
Quietly
And some things I do purely for myself — painting like no one will ever see it, building and painting Gundam kits, singing in the mornings, the occasional cosplay. No goal. Just the doing.
Let’s build something
I’m looking for people who are excellent at something and curious about everything. Collaborators, co-conspirators, friends. The best things in my life started as a five-hour first conversation with a stranger. sora@sorakalden.com · Flua · My apps.
© 2026 Sora Kalden · Sora Kalden is the name I go by. Legally, Swarnim Kalbande.