The movie felt like watching an actual F1 race, but I was only about as excited as an actual race could make me. I consider this a negative, as I couldn’t find much that validated the movie’s existence.
While the film was technically good, I personally did not like various creative decisions. For example, the choice to include actual F1 race car drivers and teams only to show them being defeated by two fictional characters felt disappointing. Furthermore, there wasn’t much in the way of character development or other strong aspects that would have elevated the movie. The main character is played by Brad Pitt, who is now 61 years old.
I’ve attended few hackathons, often through ASU, and they’ve painted a disappointing picture of what hackathons are or have become.
Online, especially in memes, hackathons are often portrayed as high-energy events full of incredibly skilled, competitive developers building impressive prototypes in record time. In reality, many of the ones I’ve attended were filled with students still very early in their learning journeys, several struggling with basic remote deployment or project setup.
Most recently, I attended Sunhacks, one of ASU’s larger hackathons. While I appreciate the effort that went into organizing it, I left unsure of what the event was really trying to achieve.
The strong presence of sponsoring companies, Google, Amazon, Base44, and others, seemed to steer the event toward lame AI-related projects. I don’t think this was intentional; it’s just what happens when the showcased tools and challenges revolve around LLM APIs. As a result, many teams, including mine, ended up producing AI-driven web apps that all felt somewhat similar. Very few projects stood out as novel or experimental, and even the more creative ones didn’t seem to receive much recognition.
The judging process also suffered from scaling issues. There were too few judges for the number of teams, which likely led to uneven evaluations. Early teams had a better chance of being seen thoroughly, while others may have been skipped or reviewed hastily. This kind of fatigue bias is well known, and should be easy to plan around, but somehow, the organizers missed it completely.
That said, there were positives. The event offered great opportunities to socialize and meet new people, and I got to see several neat ideas and clever implementations from other teams, even if none of them ended up winning.
Still, it’s hard not to notice the broader trend. With the economy tightening and companies hiring fewer students, there’s a growing sense of disengagement at these events. Many company representatives seemed to be there merely to maintain a presence, devoid of any real enthusiasm.
It maybe suggests a larger trend, a waning trust in the economy at large, where both companies and students are becoming more cautious, more restrained, and less optimistic about the near-term and possibly long-term as well.
If you’ve had a different experience, I’d love to hear your thoughts.
I had an opportunity to volunteer at Feed My Starving Children (FMSC), and I came away amazed not just by their achievements, but by how well they’ve built everything around their mission.
Most nonprofits struggle to balance compassion with coordination, but FMSC has somehow mastered both. They’ve built a machine that blends technology, logistics, marketing, branding, capital, man-power, the spirit of competition and goodwill into something that feels more like a community celebration than charity work.
Turning Labor Into Leverage
Running any operation, even nonprofits, costs money. Labor, especially in developed countries, is expensive. But FMSC has flipped that challenge on its head. They use volunteers, and the volunteers are also part of their marketing.
Almost everyone in their packing facilities is a volunteer, from the people sealing bags to those stacking boxes on pallets. And yet, it doesn’t feel like “work.” They’ve made volunteering fun by gamifying the whole process.
The Joy of Packing Meals
When I joined, our group had six packing stations competing to see who could pack the most meals. Every few minutes, someone would shout out, announcing that one more box had been packed, everyone would cheer, and we’d push to beat the other tables. In just two hours, our group packed over 44,000 meals, enough to feed thousands of children. This would not be possible without FMSC’s fantastic planning and execution.
There’s music, energy, laughter, and a sense of friendly rivalry that makes time fly. It’s smart design: people want to help, but they also want to feel like they’re part of something exciting and effective. FMSC gives them exactly that.
The Tech Behind the Impact
What impressed me most, though, was the technology behind the experience. Everything runs smoothly because of their website and digital systems.
You sign up online, pick a location and time slot, get email reminders leading up to your shift, and even receive a confirmation after you check in at the facility. The website isn’t just functional, it’s strategically built to eliminate friction at every step.
It also handles:
Volunteer scheduling and time slot management
Group coordination (for schools, churches, or companies)
Donations and meal sponsorships
E-commerce for artisan goods made by communities in places like Haiti
Impact tracking and progress updates
The entire volunteer experience — from sign-up to packing — feels like it’s been engineered for engagement. And that’s where FMSC really stands out. They’ve invested in systems that scale generosity.
Trust and Transparency
People give their time and money when they can trust it’ll make a difference. FMSC reinforces that trust beautifully. Every session begins and ends with real numbers, how many meals you packed, how many kids that feeds, and where it’s going.
They also partner with schools, churches, and local organizations in Africa, Haiti, and other countries to ensure the food gets where it’s needed most. You can see the results right there on their website, stories of children who are healthier, growing, and even able to go to school because of these meals.
Engineering Hope
Their signature product, MannaPack Rice, is another brilliant example of practical engineering. It’s a carefully formulated blend that provides all the basic nutrition a child needs, easy to store, easy to ship, and hard to spoil.
It’s so efficient that I found myself wondering if I could buy some for myself. It’s like a “universal meal,” designed purely for function.
A Place for Everyone
What struck me most during my visit was the mix of people. Seniors, kids, entire families, all working together. Some came with churches or schools, others with coworkers. For a few hours, everyone is focused on a shared mission.
And because the process is so streamlined, both in person and online, the barrier to entry is almost nonexistent. You just sign up, show up, and make a real impact. That’s what good technology should do.
Why FMSC Works
Feed My Starving Children doesn’t just rely on compassion. It designs for it. From the way they automate volunteer scheduling to how they communicate results, every part of the experience is intentional.
It’s not just a nonprofit, it’s a tech-enabled movement built around human connection. And it works.
Volunteering at FMSC has been quite a learning experience for me. And I hope other firms can also replicate how FMSC is running the operation.
I’ll definitely be going back. And I’ll be telling everyone I know to try it, not just because it feels good to help, but because it’s inspiring to see how smart design and engineering can turn goodwill into global change.
Violet Evergarden is one of the most remarkable anime series in recent memory, distinguished not only by its visual elegance but also by its thematic depth. At its core, the series is a meditation on grief, healing, and the struggle to communicate emotions that often feel inexpressible. Nearly every episode has the capacity to move the viewer to tears, yet it never feels manipulative; instead, the emotional weight arises naturally from the characters’ journeys and the quiet sincerity of their stories.
The direction and editing are finely tuned, allowing moments of silence and subtle gestures to carry as much power as sweeping climaxes. Each 25-minute episode is carefully constructed, offering a complete narrative that resonates long after it ends. What elevates the series further is how it situates Violet’s personal growth, her attempt to understand both her own feelings and those of others, within broader reflections on love, loss, and the human need for connection. The result is a work that is as emotionally fulfilling in individual episodes as it is in its cumulative impact.
This was a surprisingly fun Superman movie to watch.
There were a few reused shots toward the end, especially in the scene where Superman and Lois Lane were lifted into the air, but that didn’t take away too much from the experience.
What I liked most was how this Superman wasn’t presented as perfect or undefeatable. He struggled, made mistakes, and often needed help from his friends, his dog, and other allies. That made his victories feel earned and the story more engaging.
He also wasn’t portrayed as flawless. He had emotions, lost his temper, stumbled in interviews, and even went through a short existential crisis when he realized the message from his parents wasn’t what he thought it was. This forced him to choose his own path rather than simply follow what was given to him, and that gave his character real development.
The older Superman films, at least from what I know, often portrayed him as an almighty figure and a projection of American might. That image feels outdated and a bit cringe to me. While this movie still carries a trace of that patriotic framing, it’s toned down enough to let the human side of the character come through. For me, this made the film far more compelling than Man of Steel or the earlier versions.
I wonder show I’ve been avoiding for silly reasons. I wish I’d watched it sooner. It’s well animated with a good and meaningful story you’d want to see.
One of the highlights for me was the fight sequence near the end between Dimple, the once-evil-turned-good spirit, and the broccoli god monster. It actually made me imagine how incredible The Gamer manhwa could have been as an anime adaptation. Unfortunately, the author ended up steering it in a disappointing direction, but the foundation is still strong enough that it could make for an amazing show someday.
I recently built an e-commerce site for a clothing business using WordPress, and the experience left me genuinely impressed by what this platform offers out of the box. As developers, we sometimes get caught up in the latest frameworks and technologies, but this project reminded me why WordPress still powers 43% of all websites on the internet.
A Feature List That Just Keeps Going
What struck me most was the sheer breadth of production ready functionality available without writing a single line of custom code:
Drag-and-drop WYSIWYG editor
Prebuilt, customizable themes
User dashboard for managing products, posts, and accounts
Flexible user roles and permissions
REST and GraphQL APIs for developers
Integrations with Facebook, Instagram, and almost any other platform
SEO stuff, static pages and analytics
Support for customer reviews
Full e-commerce setup in just a few clicks
Compatibility with nearly all payment gateways
Mobile apps for managing stock, taxes, shipping, coupons, and sales
Low cost hosting
Building even half of these features from scratch would have taken months. WordPress delivered them instantly.
The Reality Gap: Developers vs. Business Owners
Working on this project highlighted something crucial that we developers often overlook: the enormous technical knowledge gap between us developers, business owners, and end customers.
I could have built a React or Next.js application with all the latest bells and whistles. But imagine asking a clothing business owner to update their product catalog by editing markdown files and pushing to a Git repository. It’s not happening. And I can’t imagine spending months building a dashboard to solve this problem, when an open-source production ready one already exists in WordPress.
And I did do exactly this once before, using Next.js to build an e-commerce site, for another business. It was alright, I spent a month on it, but I’d pick this over Next.js, and I’ve built this in what feels like 4 hours.
The technology has to work for the actual users, not just impress other developers. WordPress gets this right by prioritizing usability over technical sophistication.
A Humbling Experience
Here’s what really got to me: I later created a blog using WordPress as a headless CMS, feeding content to my custom-built site. The WordPress admin interface – which I was only using as a backend – had a better-looking UI than my own frontend. That annoyed me a bit, but it was also enlightening.
The Bottom Line
WordPress succeeds because it solves real problems for real people. While we chase the latest JavaScript frameworks and architectural patterns, WordPress focuses on making website management accessible to everyone. There’s wisdom in that approach.
For many use cases, especially content-heavy sites and e-commerce stores, WordPress remains the pragmatic choice. It’s not always the most exciting option, but it’s often the right one.
Want to experiment with WordPress hosting? I have excess server capacity available. Feel free to reach out if you’d like to try it out for free.
This manga, when I finished reading it, I hoped I could forget about, so that I could read it all over again.
The anime version though didn’t strike me the same way.
The main character calls himself the god of conquest. Conqueror of the hearts of women, in dating simulator games.. Based solely on the premise I wouldn’t have read it.
But Manga Rock, the leading medium of Manga Consumption outside Japan at the time had The World God Only Knows as one of the most popular new manga’s at the time, and it stayed that way for a long time. Seeing this motivated me to give it a go, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I’ve recommended this manga to so many people, and almost none of them have read it, heh. It’s been 10 years since I read it, and I fear my current self wouldn’t agree with what my teenage self found worth remembering.
I can’t put much weight on the numbers in this review since it’s been so long since I read it, but I fully intent to re-read it soon and re-review it at that point. I’m only writing this down so confidently since I know that basically no one will be reading these reviews.
This manga without a doubt though, has left a profound impression on me.
It’s not all fun and games though by the way. The character development in this manga is really good and will likely make you very sad. If you intend to give it a go.. well now you know that.
