ratio53.com

Hello World.

Mon, 11 Aug 2025 00:00:00 GMT

It was my birthday recently. This made me reflect on the past year. I dug into my Obsidian vault to find out where I was one year ago. I didn't find anything.

So I went further back and found a note from two years ago:

I want to write more.

Well, thanks, past-me. If you had actually written more, I would now know what you did one year ago. The feeling of not finding a journal entry made me a bit sad. But we can't dial back time. So, heads up, change the present and shape the future.

I checked how much I actually did write in the past two years. I wrote on 91 days. That's only about 12% of the days. That can be improved.

I am going to make this website my small corner in the big internet where I write about topics that interest me. The websites from マリウス.com and jonashietala.se, both of whom I have followed for a few years, inspired me. I've always admired their cozy online spaces.

For anyone who needs reasons for why to start writing, read Alex's post that I stumbled upon on Hacker News... two years ago!

This site is my way of making sure the next two years won't be as empty in terms of writing.

The Anatomy of a Great Product

Tue, 09 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Whenever I buy a physical product or choose a piece of software, I try to select things that will give me maximum satisfaction and last as long as possible. I often found myself choosing one product over another without being able to explain why, but that hunch usually turned out to be the better long-term choice.

I've distilled this instinct into a set of objective criteria that help me determine if a product is truly great. When in doubt, they help me choose one product over another.

What Makes a Product Great?

First, we have to establish what "great" even means. I've broken it down into four categories, in order of importance:

Usefulness

The product does what it promises, reliably and effectively. Too often, I see products that try to be fancy but completely miss the point of usefulness.
Longevity

It's built to last: durable, repairable, and not disposable. This also means its design is timeless. From a business perspective, the company behind it is sustainable and profitable, ensuring continuity for the customer.
Quality of Craftsmanship

No cheap shortcuts were taken; only high-quality components were used. The product shows high attention to detail in its engineering and construction. It reflects care and pride.
User Experience (UX)

The product feels good and is enjoyable to use. Every touchpoint shows that the creators cared about how the user perceives and experiences their work.

Some people won’t care about these things, for reasons like "it just has to work." But to put it in Linus Torvalds’ words: those people don't have good taste.

How to Spot a Great Product

Using the definition above, I've developed a few guiding principles to help me spot great products:

The CEO Uses the Product

This is my favorite indicator, as it's easy to check and almost always guarantees the product is great. The reason is simple: CEOs who use their own products experience the same pain points as their customers, and they have the power to fix them. These CEOs genuinely care about the product, and you can feel it.
Word-of-Mouth Referrals

When people recommend a product simply because they love it, that's a powerful sign. It means the product is so good that it's worth talking about. For the business, this is the best kind of marketing, which in turn helps them grow and improve the product.
A Passionate Community

Great products often foster a passionate community. Look for active forums, thriving chat servers, user-made tutorials, or a rich ecosystem of plugins and themes. This is a sign that people are so invested that they dedicate their own time to celebrating and improving the product. It's one of the most powerful indicators that a product is truly special.
It Isn't Overhyped by Marketing

Marketing is necessary to connect a product with users. But there's a line between genuine marketing that sells a product for what it is, and hype that sells a regular t-shirt as the greatest innovation of the century. Great products often speak for themselves.
No Dark Patterns

This applies mostly to software, but finding dark patterns like vendor lock-in is a big red flag. Good products don't need to trick or force users to stay. Users stick around because they want to. It's that simple.

A Few Examples of Great Products

Here is a short list of products that meet these criteria:

ASKET is a clothing brand whose co-founders regularly share what they are wearing. In my opinion, this is some of the highest-quality clothing you can buy. I bought my first pieces two years ago; they've been washed weekly and have held their shape and color perfectly. Another great thing is that the clothes have no external branding. The are timeless, simple, high-quality garments.
Framework: Just watch their latest launch event, where CEO Nirav Patel speaks about their product with an in-depth knowledge not often seen in CEOs. Their community and their commitment to upgradability and repairability speak for themselves. It's a great company with great products.
Pebble is the exception that proves the rule of longevity. Though the original company shut down, the product was so beloved that its community kept it alive to this day. It’s the ultimate sign of a great product: one so good, its users will it back into existence. Founder Eric Migicovsky is officially relaunching the brand, and I am extremely excited about it.
Obsidian.md is, in its simplest form, a note-taking application. Its CEO, Steph Ango, uses the product extensively himself.
Laravel is a great web framework. To this day, founder Taylor Otwell still writes most of the code. You can feel how well-thought-out the framework is, and how it prioritizes the developer experience to make it a breeze to work with.

Let me know about other products that fit this category!

To Watch This On Your TV.txt

Sun, 10 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Yesterday I stumbled upon a text file distributed via a torrent from 2013. The name of the file: "To Watch This On Your TV.txt". The contents:

You need to connect your TV to your PC. HDMI cable is easiest but there are
lots of other ways depending what ports your TV has on the back.

Download the Cyberlink Power DVD 10 from here [omitted]

When you have connected your PC to the TV, on your PC, right click on the
desktop and select "Screen Resolution". When you open that up select "Multiple
Displays" and choose "Extend Desktop".

You will now see your desktop on your TV. Install PowerDVD or use Windows Media
Player or whatever you want to watch it with. Open up the program but don't
maximi8se the screen, you need to be able to drag it about your desktop. Drag
the screen to the side of your desktop and you should see it come up on your
TV. Maximise the screen and you can watch TV shows on your TV and still be able
to use your PC whilst watching TV.

Ignore the subtle ad for another torrent. The content is what made me laugh. It begs the question: who was the target audience for this? Why include a hardware tutorial for someone who possesses the technical background to torrent files in 2013?

But on the other hand, it's a wholesome artifact. After all, torrents are only sketchy and dangerous.

Reading it gave me flashbacks. It reminded me of a time when people published things on the internet simply for the love of it, to help a stranger, with zero monetary incentives.

I miss this era of the web.

Strange how a random text file in a 13-year-old torrent can bring it all back.

Thank you, kind stranger.