hi, i'm rafael camargo
i make computers do things
apparently
i spend a lot of time around React, Next.js, and the edges between product and platform, but the stack is usually just the starting point. what i really care about is making things scale without becoming slow, fragile, confusing, or painful to work on
i'm at my best in small, highly collaborative teams that move fast and ship frequently. i build software that stays clear as it grows, fast where it matters, and polished enough to feel effortless
if you look closely enough, though, you'll see that i get paid to add, change, or preferably remove text from some files
recently written
i spend a lot of my time building things for developers, then a little more building things for myself. the two overlap more than that makes it sound. something i learn at work might become a talk because explaining it usually shows me what i missed. a small idea or stupid joke might turn into a project for no better reason than wanting to know whether i can make it work
attention map
the attention map is a temporary record of where that time went over the last month, at least while i was sitting at a computer. it cannot tell the difference between a productive afternoon and several hours spent making the wrong thing work, but the hours count all the same. when i'm not making something myself, though, i'm usually reading, listening, watching, or keeping track of things other people made that i don't want to lose
things that stayed
Chungking Express, 1994
i watched this after coming home from Hong Kong, and the whole movie landed differently. the step-printed movement, cramped rooms, color, noise, and people constantly brushing past one another no longer felt stylized so much as remembered. i loved it as a movie; it also became a way back
S., 2013
this turns reading into investigation: notes in the margins, loose attachments, stories inside stories, and the constant suspicion that one more clue matters. it demands real attention and is inconvenient to read anywhere that is not a table, which is part of why i love it. i only stop short of five stars because it can be genuinely hard to read, and i've found it almost impossible to buy a new copy
amo, 2019
few albums can rearrange my mood this quickly. it is weird, dark, heavy, melodic, and never especially interested in behaving. amo means love in Portuguese, my language, and knowing about Oli Sykes' ties to Brazil and affection for the country gives the title an extra warmth for me. the attachment is probably too personal to explain cleanly, which may be exactly why it belongs here
MIGNONNE, 1978
i listened to this while living in Japan, which means the compositions now arrive with an entire place attached. the warmth, arrangements, and atmosphere can bring that period back before i have time to notice. to me, it is one of the defining albums of Japanese pop, with songwriting and arrangements that still sound completely alive
The Little Prince, 1943
one of the first books i remember reading from beginning to end without noticing the time. it was one of my mom's favorites and became one of mine too. years later, finding the Little Prince statue in Busan felt like a small circle closing
Mr. Robot, 2015-2019
i nearly skipped this because people kept describing it as the “hackerman” show. once i watched it, the hacking quickly became the least interesting part. this is a frightening, stressful story about deeply flawed people, including a main character whose problems can become so overwhelming that they paralyze him the relationships between the characters, and how they change under that pressure, are what kept me invested through the series. it is beautifully shot, especially in how it uses strong colors, and its larger argument about how fucked society is at its core feels uncomfortably plausible. some scenes still give me chills
on my side of the screen, it is 00:00, and Florianópolis is keeping the weather to itself for a moment.
you're roughly from Florianópolis and reading this at . neither number is especially useful, but here they are. this place has been years in the making and still refuses to be finished.
it holds work, experiments, stories, other people's fingerprints, and a few things that don't entirely belong anywhere else. not everything needs to. anyways, i hope you enjoy :))
since you read all the way down here, you might as well leave a little proof you were here in the guestbook