About Mabrikado
Hi there,
Thank you for taking the time to explore my digital garden.
What is a digital garden?
Consider this website my personal space on the internet.
This is where I share things I am learning, things I am interested in, questions I am curious about, ideas I am thinking through, and lessons I pick up from my profession.
Unlike a traditional website where everything is expected to look finished, this garden is allowed to grow.
Some notes may be short. Some may be incomplete. Some ideas may change as I learn more, gain experience, or discover that something I previously understood was wrong.
That is part of the purpose of this space.
What is my profession?
I am a Software Developer / Engineer.
I plan, design, build, and maintain software and systems.
I chose this path because I enjoy solving problems. Software development gives me an environment where I constantly encounter new problems, think through different approaches, make mistakes, improve my solutions, and learn from the process.
Programming is important to me, but I am also interested in what happens beyond simply writing code.
I enjoy thinking about software architecture, databases, security, system design, engineering principles, technical decisions, and the reasoning behind why systems are designed in certain ways.
Developing software has also influenced how I think outside of programming.
It has encouraged me to break large problems into smaller ones, question assumptions, look for patterns, consider trade-offs, and become more comfortable with not immediately knowing the answer.
There is always something new to learn.
Why did I build this garden?
The main purpose of Mabrikado is to share my ideas, thoughts, experiences, and things I learn with anyone who may find them interesting or useful.
It is also a way for me to preserve what I learn.
It is easy to read something, understand it for a moment, and then slowly forget it.
Writing forces me to spend more time with an idea and try to explain it in my own words.
Sometimes I may write about something I have been studying seriously.
Other times it may simply be something I encountered casually and found interesting enough to explore further.
I may write about something I enjoyed, something I disagree with, something that concerns me, or even something that I do not fully understand yet.
The garden gives those thoughts somewhere to live.
What will I write about?
Software will naturally appear often because it is my profession and one of my biggest interests.
But Mabrikado is not only a software engineering website.
My interests extend beyond technology.
You may eventually find me writing about subjects such as:
- software engineering
- backend development
- architecture and system design
- databases
- security
- mathematics
- logic
- linguistics
- science
- technology
- problem solving
- learning
- ideas that I simply find interesting
I do not want to create strict boundaries around what belongs here.
If I become curious about something and spend enough time learning or thinking about it, there is a good chance it may eventually find its way into the garden.
How I use this garden
Different types of writing serve different purposes.
Notes
Notes are usually focused on a particular idea, concept, question, or something I want to remember.
They may be very small or grow over time.
Journal
Journal entries are more connected to a particular moment in my learning.
They may capture something I discovered, something I was thinking about that day, a question I encountered, or how my understanding of something was changing.
They are generally lighter and less developed than articles.
Articles
Articles are where I spend more time exploring something.
They may be technical, informal, explanatory, reflective, opinionated, or a mixture of several styles.
I may write an article because I learned something interesting, because something concerns me, because I strongly enjoyed something, or simply because I want to explore an idea in more detail.
I do not expect every article to sound academic or formal.
This is still my personal garden.
Collections
Collections are curated paths through related material.
They help group together notes, articles, and ideas that belong to the same broader theme without forcing everything into a rigid hierarchy.
Projects
Projects are where I may document things I build, experiment with, or investigate when I think the process itself is worth sharing.
A sense of scale
One thing that keeps me humble is remembering how small my understanding really is.
The more I learn, the more I realise how much I do not know.
Whether it is software, mathematics, language, science, or the universe itself, my understanding is only a drop in a much larger ocean.
There are entire fields of knowledge that I know almost nothing about.
Even within subjects I understand reasonably well, there is always another layer, another question, another perspective, or another thing I have not encountered yet.
I do not find that discouraging.
I think that is part of what makes learning interesting.
There is something beautiful about knowing that reality is much larger than my current understanding of it.
Mabrikado is simply one small place where I try to record my journey through some of it.
A note about authority
Something important to understand about Mabrikado is that I am not presenting myself as an authority on everything I write about.
I am a regular person with a strong interest in learning.
If I write about a technology, an industry, mathematics, linguistics, science, or another subject, it does not automatically mean I am an expert in that area.
A lot of what I write will come from things I have read, studied, built, tested, experienced, discussed, or tried to understand myself.
Where appropriate, I will include references and sources that influenced what I wrote.
However, mistakes are still possible.
I may misunderstand something.
I may explain something poorly.
I may discover later that something I believed was incomplete or incorrect.
My understanding should improve as I continue learning, and I expect this garden to change along with it.
If I discover that something I wrote is wrong, I would rather correct it than pretend I always understood it perfectly.
This garden represents my understanding at different points in time, not unquestionable truth.
It is not a monument to expertise.
It is a record of curiosity, effort, learning, and growth.
How the garden grows
Not everything here needs to start as a finished piece of writing.
I use a small maturity system to show roughly where an idea currently stands.
🌱 Seedling
An early idea, question, or understanding that I have only started exploring.
🌿 Growing
Something I understand better but am still developing or refining.
🌳 Evergreen
A mature piece that I am reasonably comfortable with, while still remaining open to future improvements.
🪨 Archived
Something I want to preserve, but which may no longer represent my current understanding.
The point is not to make everything perfect.
The point is to allow knowledge to grow.
Privacy
Mabrikado is public, but not everything in my life belongs on the internet.
This is not intended to be my private diary.
Personal matters that I want to keep private will remain elsewhere.
About the website itself
I built this website myself.
The website is also part of the experiment.
I am a developer, so you will probably notice some of that personality in the way the garden looks and behaves.
I am not trying to make Mabrikado look like a corporate product.
I would rather it feel personal, useful, slightly imperfect, and recognisably mine.
The design will probably change.
The structure will probably change.
New sections may appear and others may disappear.
I want the website to grow in the same way the content grows.
How to explore
There is no required order.
You can browse the Garden, explore Topics, search for something specific, follow links between notes, read articles, or simply wander until something catches your attention.
That is one of the things I like about the idea of a digital garden.
You do not always need to know exactly what you are looking for before you start exploring.
A final thought
Mabrikado does not have a final destination.
As long as I continue learning, questioning things, changing my mind, building, reading, experimenting, and becoming curious about new subjects, there will probably be something new to add here.
Some ideas will grow. Some will change completely. Others may be left behind as a record of what I understood at a particular point in time.
If something you find here helps you understand an idea, makes you think about something differently, introduces you to a subject you had never considered, or simply gives you another question to explore, then I think this garden has served a useful purpose.
You do not have to agree with everything I write.
In fact, I hope some things encourage you to question them.
Learning would be rather boring if we all arrived at exactly the same thoughts.
Find me elsewhere
You can also find me on:
Thanks again for visiting.
The garden is still growing.
Thank you for spending some of your time here.
Feel free to wander around, follow whatever catches your curiosity, and come back sometime.
There will probably be something different growing here when you do.
— Mabrikado