TJ Palanca

Book Notes: Building a Micro-SaaS Business: https://tjpalanca.com/2025/10/07/book-notes-building-a-microsaas.html

Book Notes: The Psychology of Money: https://tjpalanca.com/2025/10/06/book-notes-the-psychology-of.html

I’ve been consistently using vibe coding for both work and personal projects. One challenge I’ve had with data pipelines is specifying a test large enough so we can delegate a larger loop to the LLM. I want to try using tools like {pointblank} to encode what I mean by “the data feels right”.

I use US English in personal conversations and UK/Singapore English in professional conversations, because it’s fancier.

“Hop, little bunnies” is basically Crossfit for toddlers.

Kiro The AI IDE for prototype to production

Kiro is a new AI vibe coding IDE with a focus on writing specs, turning that into a design, and then turning that into tasks. You’re basically a product manager now, managing a very enthusiastic, very weird software engineer. That’s super exciting! https://kiro.dev

One thing that’s been great for my productivity is recognising when things aren’t worth my time, even if they lead to a small financial loss.

tjpalanca.com/2025/01/30/w...

I was trying to evaluate an investment in HSBC’s AT1 perpetual bond — I was worried about a situation similar to Credit Suisse, where AT1 bonds were wiped out, but equity holders were paid.

ChatGPT’s o1 model did reasonably well in guiding me th... https://tjpalanca.com/2024/09/21/i-was-trying.html

dbt Singapore Meetup: Using dbt for accounting and investment reporting: https://tjpalanca.com/2024/09/13/dbt-singapore-meetup.html

Exploring the Polars Dataframe Library: https://tjpalanca.com/2024/09/06/exploring-the-polars.html

#8: Writing is thinking, weak passport problems, and economic growth: https://tjpalanca.com/2024/08/20/writing-is-thinking.html

With Super Duolingo, I found myself doing lessons repetitively to gain more XP, rather than maximising what I could learn by progressing further. I feel like incentivising based on “new words learned” would make it a more fulfilling experience.

Someone needs to do a series on the various “stock exchange person facepalming and looking worried” photos on top of every piece of financial markets news these days.

Book Notes: Everybody Writes by Ann Handley I was stuck in my writing so decided to do some very elaborate procrastination by reading this book. I was initially drawn because it seemed to focus more on writing for marketing and general purposes...

Book Notes: Everybody Writes by Ann Handley: tjpalanca.com/2024/08/06/b... 💙📚

I resolved to write around 300 words a day, and apart from the actual writing output, I feel a lot less scatterbrained. Ulysses makes it effortless to set a daily writing goal. I love the pretty little graph the app makes to gamify the experience:

Renewing a US tourist visa in Singapore as a foreigner Holding a Philippines passport means you will plan most international travel well in advance. This is especially true for trips to the United States. (Photo by Erica Jahn on Unsplash) I hold a weak pa...

Renewing a US tourist visa in Singapore as a foreigner: tjpalanca.com/2024/08/02/r...

Chinese tradition during weddings suggests gifting a red packet that at least offsets the cost of your seat, and there’s something beautiful about that, when done willingly.

Welcome back to what is essentially an annual newsletter 🥲. In this issue, find out why digital gardening didn’t work for me, how I want to own my content, and my new gig combining accounting and data engineering.

https://tjpalanca.com/2024/07/24/digital-gardening-didnt.html

I'm settled into my new writing setup (hopefully, at least for the next year). Principles were:

- Use purpose-built apps for writing (Ulysses)
- Publish once on your site, syndicate elsewhere (Micro.Blog + Zapier + Buffer)
- Easy capture (Apple Shortcuts)