Operator profile · the eight sidesCH-03
Solo founder · builder · maker of too many things. I build apps and businesses, write worlds, run games, and learn hard things in 30-day sprints — and I'm looking for talented, curious people to make the next ones with.
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. 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 — a minimalist weight-and-habit tracker built so the graph does the nagging; his mom lost 17 lbs with it. Super Zen — a focus and calm tool. Small tools — a metronome that actually feels good; a tool to find the episode where a show finally gets good. The idea engine — ~160 catalogued app, game, business, book and product ideas, each ranked, named and MVP-scoped, roughly 28 of them games. More apps live at kalden.me.
The Maker — 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."
Worlds & Stories — A fantasy novel published at 14, a 150k-word dark epic in progress (The Swords of Darkness), a homebrew D&D world, and a manga he still wants 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."
Learning & Teaching — How he learns anything fast, and the courses he's building 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."
Games & the Table — A Balatro-inspired dice roguelike in design, 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."
The Modern Bard — Singing, standup, improv, voice acting, speaking. "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."
Photography & the eye — One camera, a single 23mm prime, golden hour. "You can't study the color wheel for two hours and understand it. You have to train your eye over a long time."
The Athlete — The same engine pointed at his own body, and the sports that are how he makes friends in a new city. "Prioritize control and intention over speed."
The Mind — A reading life run like a syllabus, 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."
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. 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.
Write a TV show. Finish the manga — the next Death Note or Game of Thrones. Make Westworld real, as a game you can live inside. Open a café that's a third place for serious makers. Find the talented, curious people he'd do all of the above with.
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.
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.
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.
I'm looking for people who are excellent at something and curious about everything. Contact [email protected]. See Flua at tryflua.com, more apps at kalden.me.