SORAKALDEN

Apps · ~160 ideas · the one move underneath

THE MAKER

Apps and businesses, shipped solo — 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.

FLUA · the deck

FLUA · a card

SHIPPEDWeave

The graph nags for you

A minimalist weight-and-habit tracker built so the graph does the nagging. His mom lost 17 lbs with it.

SHIPPEDSuper Zen

Focus, made small

A focus / calm tool — the small, well-made kind of app he likes to ship.

Small tools

Feel-good utilities

A metronome that actually feels good; a tool to find the episode where a show finally gets good.

The domains change. The method doesn't.

— from the notes

Worlds since he was eleven

WORLDS & STORIES

He's built worlds since he was 11 — 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 constant isn't the genre — it's the building. Invented places, invented languages, invented people who somehow have to behave. The early novel taught him a trick he still uses: fake the progress until the habit is real.

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

The Swords of Darkness

The table

Homebrew D&D

A whole world with its own playbook — maps drawn by hand.

Learn it fast, then teach it true

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 throughline is the same loop the whole zine runs on: don't grind harder, find where the common advice is wrong, build the shortest honest path, and let sleep do the heavy lifting.

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

Built to understand

Pull out the insert · unfold the diagram

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.

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

Take it apart · find the fun · build it back

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.

Running 100+ hours behind the screen taught him to treat a campaign like a designed system: the frameworks that make a world feel alive matter more than the dice or the lore.

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 map I

Hand-built map II

The half he rebuilt on purpose

THE MODERN BARD

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

None of it was a gift. It was a project: pick the skill, run the sprint, get from zero to a stage. The specialist with a B-minus in everything else decided the everything-else was learnable too.

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

On stage, by choice

One camera · a single 23mm prime · golden hour

THE DARKROOM

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

Best · 01

Kōyasan

Tokyo

Osaka

Budapest

Lisbon

Nagpur

Best · 05

Kōyasan

Portrait

Tokyo

Him · Yosemite

The same engine, pointed at the body

THE ATHLETE

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

The body is just another system to debug. Control before speed; intention before intensity. And the pitch is a social tool: drop into a new city, find a pickup game, leave with friends.

Prioritize control and intention over speed.

— his own soccer training notes

Reps as writing

Read to build, not to collect

THE MIND

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

The library is an operating system: each book bought to be used, not shelved. The point of learning everything is that every skill feeds the next one.

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

A syllabus

Faint blue-line · not yet inked

THINGS I HAVEN'T PRINTED YET

The plates that aren't on the press yet — five of them, printed faint, in blue-line.

Not yet on the press

Distinct from the work — ideas, not portfolio

INK / THE COLUMN

Five essays, set as the zine's back-page articles. Read the teaser; the whole piece is its own thing.