backstory

i never really fit in. spent a long time thinking that was a problem. it's not. this world is strange. we fight wars over skin color, geography, who or what we choose to call god, which genitals people have and which genitals their partners have. if an alien showed up and saw how we organize ourselves they'd fucking run.

fitting into that is not an achievement. it's fucking embarrassing.

i used to be a nihilist. then i realized nihilism is lazy. yeah, nothing matters. so what. that means i get to decide what matters. fuck just surviving. i'm here to live.

so i build things. always have. drones and 3d prints in college under the name blue building, selling projects to vit kids, a tender for a shell casing production line (ambitious and overreaching), a talent management agency with my brother, a streetwear brand called cactus and cactus that didn't work, battery bhaiya, an e-rickshaw battery venture where i interviewed 1,500 drivers before the unit economics killed it anyway, a payments app inside that same world where i outsourced the dev and learned to never do that again, chatbots, a legal research tool in 2023 that was clauseo before clauseo existed, fine-tuned llms, feynchat (no good icp), and now clauseo, ai legal research tools for indian lawyers. the order doesn't make sense and i don't need it to. i just need to be making something. and the people i care about all end up with something custom built for them sooner or later. that's the tell.

my first love was cars. as a baby too small for the newspaper, i'd sit on it and just stare at the zigwheels section. i could tell you what car it was from the headlights. i still can. jessica is my 2015 thar. manual, 2-door, the aerodynamics of two badly placed bricks (hear me out, makes for the best city car in a pothole ridden city like bangalore). the only car where calling shotgun is necessary or you're jumping into the back seat sideways. mia is my 2017 bs4 classic 350. carbureted, kick start, loud as hell, last one before they took all of that away. i'd rather have my left leg hurt in traffic than drive an automatic. i'd rather spend half an hour hunting for parking than take a cab. driving isn't getting from a to b. it's a physical, emotional experience.

my ideal car is a manual, rwd, naturally aspirated v12 that revs beyond 12k, mid engine, hydraulic steering or no power steering at all, lightweight and minimal. although i'd settle for a 911 carrera rs 2.7, a mclaren f1, a 997 gt3 4.0, a manual 458 (they don't exist, at least not from ferrari), a zonda, or a dino.

i love f1. not just the racing. the engineering. teams finding the most creative loopholes in the rules until the fia bans whatever they came up with. the x-wings, lotus's twin chassis car, benetton maybe cheating, the "brake steer," newey using the coanda effect to keep his exhaust blown diffusers alive even as they kept trying to ban them, the double diffuser, mercedes's das. that is beautiful to me. i love karting too. shaving tenths by perfecting entries and exits. driving is meditative. empty road or track, same mode.

i play football too. not well, not yet, my dribbling and shooting are both works in progress. but i show up and run my lungs out, and for 90 minutes the only thing in my head is the ball. same meditation as the empty road, just sweatier.

i type on a split crkbd with kailh jade switches. the click is non-negotiable. loud, clicky, tactile. the split matters too. once you go split you can't go back, your shoulders just refuse to scrunch up again. the asmr of typing on these things is blissful, especially when i pretty much type for a living. i've customized the qmk firmware beyond recognition in c, because of course i would. i can't help but tinker with anything i get my hands on.

free bird has the greatest guitar solo ever recorded. i listen to gnr, van halen, eric clapton (layla is heavenly), metallica, iron maiden, nirvana, the stones, lynyrd skynyrd, ram jam. also tupac, biggie, ice cube, nwa, kanye, wayne, esdeekid. also unchained melody and fly me to the moon. also alphaville. also the weeknd. heck, sometimes even katy perry's firework when i need to hype myself up. high tempo over everything. genre doesn't matter, energy does. i don't really do playlists either, i do phases. one artist on repeat for weeks until the phase is done with me. i have a deep appreciation for how music used to be made. no computers, just instruments and a singer all in cohesion making something real. but i also have a deep appreciation for kanye chopping up soul samples or flipping choli ke peeche kya hai into something new. biggie's hypnotically smooth flow, tupac's poetry. rap is today's poetry. a century from now kids might be breaking down rap the same way i broke down shakespeare in icse.

ferris bueller's day off is my favorite movie. "life moves pretty fast. if you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it." iron man and cars are core memories. the godfather, kill bill, lock stock and two smoking barrels, baby driver, scott pilgrim vs the world, oppenheimer, boogie nights, dune, anora, marty supreme. the craig bond trilogy is perfect, everything after skyfall doesn't exist to me. i thought the f1 movie was a disgrace to actual f1 fans. i love deep dives into fantasy lore. star wars, game of thrones (the show only till season 4. why tf is euron a horny jack sparrow and not the maniac who wants to unleash the darkest shit in the world?). i could write a 10 page essay about movies and shows and still not be done.

community is the show i relate to most. the outcast of all sitcoms, too weird for network tv. i see myself in jeff and abed and honestly everyone from the study group. even pelton. succession was too good. you can't make a tomlette without breaking some greggs.

i've had the same haircut for a decade. went blonde once, big mistake. i still play with lego, mostly build the cars. and have 200+ hot wheels. i tracked down two wiis to replace the one i lost as a kid. the wii is the greatest console ever made. my friends and i have died laughing over mario kart, wii party, mario party 9, and wii sports more times than i can count. no other console brings that much chaos to a living room, especially when everyone's drunk. i feel jealous of kids these days, the toys they have are way too cool, and yet somehow these idiots are ipad kids. this site's toybox theme is from a box of lego i had as a child.

i have two dogs now. vader lives with my parents. technically my brother, youngest most spoilt kid at home, way too cute and cuddly. senna is mine. six month old rescue, adopted this july, sleeps in my bed like he pays rent, named after the greatest to ever do it. yes, everything i love gets a name. the thar is jessica, the enfield is mia, the dogs are a sith lord and an f1 driver. even the dead startups had names. i love dogs. they're so pure. so fucking innocent. they love you unconditionally and you love them unconditionally. it's simple. i wrote here once that i hope to have 2-3 or maybe 15 dogs. one down. the breed doesn't matter. all dogs are cute. no matter what.

i love jungle safaris. my family are maniacs who go in summer because that's when the tigers come out. tigers are so cool. not the ones in zoos, ew, that's bad. the ones in the jungle. so free. the way they walk exudes like they own the damn place and they literally give zero fucks about us. the jungle is theirs. hope to spot a snow leopard one day, those shy bastards.

i write code in typescript. typesafe or don't bother. mostly next.js and react with bun. i like rust a lot and use it for side projects, but iteration speed, ergonomics, and the fact that other people need to read my code make typescript the better option for what i actually ship. i hate python. i keep my code functional, and if a file crosses 300 lines it's already too long. i love coding because it's the fastest feedback loop between building something and seeing it exist in the world. the joy from solving a problem, mine or someone else's, is insane. when something has my whole attention i disappear into it for days. everyone in my life knows this. i resurface with the thing built and a phone full of texts. nobody takes it personally anymore.

i use zed or neovim when i need an editor, which is less and less. i mostly live in my harness now. i forked opencode to tweak it and customize it to my workflow, daily iterations on context engineering to get the most out of today's models.

i'm obsessed with ai. not in the "agi god is coming to rule over us" way. but ai changes everything. doomers are the same luddites we see at every turn of technology. there were people who were against computers. most people don't love the work they do. ai changes that. not gently. people will lose livelihoods, entire industries died when cars replaced horses. that's the world. it's happened before. i know that's easy for me to say. but as a builder, this is the most exciting shit i've ever gotten my hands on. i also have an ai teammate. her name is iris. she has her own email, her own github, her own sim card. she runs half my house and remembers everything. she will absolutely read this page.

i want the kid who sat on that newspaper reading about cars to look at this life and think yeah, this is what we wanted.

maybe i'm wrong about a lot of things. those are my mistakes to learn from. but if i don't believe in myself, i can't expect anyone else to.

most of this page got written between midnight and 5am. that's when my brain actually turns on.

i'm just weird and i like it that way. i tried not being weird once. didn't like it very much.

oh btw i'm 27 and my name is rohan shiralkar. this is some of me. i say i don't care what people think but i did just write all of this, so maybe i do care a little.