I learn things the expensive way,
then write down what actually worked.
Nine years of running an online business from wherever the laptop happened to be. This is the archive — travel logistics, the tech stack that keeps it upright, and researched explainers. Everything here has been used in my own business before it got written up.
13 in-depth posts · 14,200+ readers · No sponsored posts, no ads, ever
The most recent, and the most read.
My AI Workflow — And the Three Places It Still Fails
The honest version. What AI genuinely saves me hours on, what it quietly makes worse, and the review step I refuse to skip after getting burned.
Read the postThe Carry-On Tech Kit I've Rebuilt 11 Times
Four years, 40-odd countries, and a bag that finally stopped annoying me. Every item, what it replaced, and the three things I stopped carrying entirely.
How Search Actually Decides What to Show You
Crawling, indexing, retrieval, ranking, and the generated answer on top. A plain-English walkthrough of the pipeline, with the parts you can influence marked.
The Permit Before the Permit: Why Your Thai TIP Depends on an FVP
You cannot get a Thai Temporary Import Permit without a Foreign Vehicle Permit first, and the FVP cannot be bought at the border. The document chain, the open crossings, the insurance small print and how far ahead to start.
Why I Still Ship Static Sites in 2026
No build server, no framework churn, no 3am deploy failures. What static actually costs you, and the exact point where I stop recommending it.
eSIM vs Local SIM vs Roaming: The Actual Math
I tracked the cost per usable gigabyte across 14 countries. The convenient option is roughly 6x the price of the annoying one — here's when that's still worth paying.
The Research Method: From Vague Question to Publishable Answer
The six-step loop I run before writing anything factual. It's slower than guessing and it's the only reason I've had to publish very few corrections.
I Built 17 Automations. Five Survived the Year.
A post-mortem on the twelve that died. The pattern behind the survivors turned out to be embarrassingly simple, and it isn't about the tooling.
Working Across Time Zones Without Wrecking Your Sleep
The scheduling rules I follow when my clients are in one hemisphere and my bed is in another. Includes the overlap-window math that made it sustainable.
Everything here fits in one of three buckets.
Not a lifestyle blog and not a news feed. Three subjects, covered properly, updated when I learn something worth the update.
Arie. Nine years, forty countries, one laptop at a time.
I started out fixing other people's websites from a spare room, and somewhere along the way it turned into a business I could run from anywhere with reliable power. That freedom cost me a lot of wasted money and a few genuinely bad decisions.
Everything I publish here has been run through my own business first. If I haven't used it, paid for it, or broken it, it doesn't get written up — and when I get something wrong, the correction goes in the open.
What readers say
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Field notes on travel logistics, the tech I actually use, and one researched explainer. No fluff, no affiliate spam, unsubscribe in a click.
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There are four courses, when a post isn't enough
Each one is the long version of something already written up for free here. If the free post solved your problem, you genuinely don't need the course — that's not modesty, it's the whole pitch.