Senior software engineer and independent consultant (15+ yrs), currently based in Valencia, Spain (CET). I do primarily backend work in Python (Django/FastAPI/Flask) and PHP (Laravel/Drupal), API development and consumption, data pipeline work, and AI integration features (RAG, LangChain/LangGraph, vector DBs). Strong infra/ops chops (Docker, CI/CD, Kubernetes, Linux), comfortable owning projects end-to-end and mentoring.

Remote-first, with a reliable 4-hour daily overlap with US business hours; invoicing/tax admin handled on my side. Work authorization in US (SS/EIN) and Spain (NIE). Note: Spanish availability is limited due to DNV limitations of no more than 20% revenue sourced from Spanish companies.

Location: Valencia, Spain

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Python (FastAPI, Langchain, LangGraph, Django), PHP (Laravel, Drupal)

Résumé/CV: https://ryneandal.github.io/ryne-andal-dnv-resume.pdf

Email: ryne[.]andal@gmail[.]com

Senior software engineer and independent consultant (15+ yrs), currently based in Valencia, Spain (CET). I do primarily backend work in Python (Django/FastAPI/Flask) and PHP (Laravel/Drupal), API development and consumption, data pipeline work, and AI integration features (RAG, LangChain/LangGraph, vector DBs). Strong infra/ops chops (Docker, CI/CD, Kubernetes, Linux), comfortable owning projects end-to-end and mentoring.

Remote-first, with a reliable 4-hour daily overlap with US business hours; invoicing/tax admin handled on my side. Work authorization in US (SS/EIN) and Spain (NIE). Note: Spanish availability is limited due to DNV limitations of no more than 20% revenue sourced from Spanish companies.

Location: Valencia, Spain

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Python (FastAPI, Langchain, LangGraph, Django), PHP (Laravel, Drupal)

Résumé/CV: https://ryneandal.github.io/ryne-andal-dnv-resume.pdf

Email: ryne[.]andal@gmail[.]com

Really? In my limited experience in Europe I've often seen attendance to museums are free. When we were in Ireland and Scotland, most museum/galleries were free with suggested donations. In contrast, museums in Italy had fees for attendance.

I know here in Spain, most attractions run by Museos Estatales are free on Saturday PM and Sundays, but some are also free every day (e.g. Museum of Fine Arts here in València).

Granted, that's a very limited subset of European countries/cities, I'd be interested in the pricing structure of other European countries/cities because we are definitely planning to travel in Europe more often now that we live here.

As a sidebar, I can't recommend The Chester Beatty museum enough - https://www.chesterbeatty.ie

Remote-first, with a reliable 4-hour daily overlap with US business hours; invoicing/tax admin handled on my side. Work authorization in US (SS/EIN) and Spain (NIE). Note: Spanish availability is limited due to DNV limitations of no more than 20% revenue sourced from Spanish companies.

Location: Valencia, Spain

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Python (FastAPI, Langchain, LangGraph, Django), PHP (Laravel, Drupal)

Résumé/CV: https://ryneandal.github.io/ryne-andal-dnv-resume.pdf

Email: ryne[.]andal@gmail[.]com

Remote-first, with a reliable 4-hour daily overlap with US business hours; invoicing/tax admin handled on my side. Work authorization in US (SS/EIN) and Spain (NIE). Note: Spanish availability is limited due to DNV limitations of no more than 20% revenue sourced from Spanish companies.

Location: Valencia, Spain

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Python (FastAPI, Langchain, LangGraph, Django), PHP (Laravel, Drupal)

Résumé/CV: https://ryneandal.github.io/ryne-andal-dnv-resume.pdf

Email: ryne[.]andal@gmail[.]com

Strong infra/ops chops (Docker, CI/CD, Kubernetes, Linux), comfortable owning projects end-to-end and mentoring.

Remote-first, with a reliable 4-hour daily overlap with US business hours; invoicing/tax admin handled on my side. Work authorization in US (SS/EIN) and Spain (NIE). Note: Spanish availability is limited due to DNV limitations of no more than 20% revenue sourced from Spanish companies.

Location: Valencia, Spain

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Python (FastAPI, Langchain, LangGraph, Django), PHP (Laravel, Drupal)

Résumé/CV: https://ryneandal.github.io/ryne-andal-dnv-resume.pdf

Email: ryne[.]andal@gmail[.]com

Currently have part-time/fractional availability for independent consulting/contract work. Recent work has involved AI integrations (LangChain, LangGraph, FastMCP), data pipelines, CI/CD workflow automations, etc. 15+ years of experience in software development.

- JinaAI (https://jina.ai/embeddings/) v3 and v4 performed well in my testing. - Google's Gemini-001 model (https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/models#gemini-embeddin...).

Overall, both were surpassed by Qwen3-8b (https://huggingface.co/Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-8B).

Note, this was specifically regarding English and Code embedding generation/retrieval, with reranking.

A classifier for handwritten digits in the MNIST dataset is generally considered the "Hello World" of neural networks. I went over it in a course, but there are countless tutorials to be found online, i.e. https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/introductio...

Once you begin to understand how to handle data and how to define layers, you can start playing around with whatever your heart desires. The rabbit hole is vast and endless :)

I highly recommend spending a few hours wandering the site, it is an absolute wonder.

1: https://www.icloud.com/photos/#08dJAA5eM9jpbhlEa3fzkl5ng 2: https://www.icloud.com/photos/#076Pof4FziA7WgcI8hZrGZmzg

Your latter assessment is why even arbitrary limitations commonly inspire interesting gameplay and art style IMO. I quickly grew tired of Assassin's Creed and similar open world games; in contrast, games like The Messenger can pull me in immediately.

The (admittedly few) game jams I've actually completed had limiting restrictions (i.e. 8/16-bit art/gameplay). Two things make me more productive/creative than normal: looming deadlines and limitations.

Also Fabien Sanglard's Game Engine Black Books (https://fabiensanglard.net/gebb/) are fascinating reads. Both Doom and Wolfenstein 3D sit on my living room coffee table.

While I've only adopted about half of the methods outlined in Tiago Forte's book, Building a Second Brain [1], it's been very effective for me. I prefer hierarchical folder structure for organization, but I do use his overall PARA structure.

I also use an "inbox" or intake folder inspired by Zettelkasten for newly created notes. I really believe significant cognitive overhead of sorting/tagging/organizing gets in the way of getting your thoughts/notes written down. I generally spend ~10-15 minutes after getting the kids to bed to organize any notes created throughout the day. This is part of my wind-down routine, involving quickly journaling an overall summary of the day on my daily notes and migrating any outstanding TODO's to the next day.

IMO though, the most important thing is to use whatever method of structure/routine/organization works for you. Approach it as an iterative process and play with interesting ideas or methodologies.

One thing in Tiago Forte's BASB that I _strongly_ agree with is that regardless of how much organization you put into your digital notes, search is often the fastest way to find something you're looking for, so spending immense time on organization is counter-intuitive to the reason to take notes. Spending some time to organize your thoughts can inspire connections between notes that you hadn't initially thought of, but it is a slippery slope: it is easy to get lost in the process of structuring your notes and end up with that as your sole purpose of your documented thoughts.

1: https://www.buildingasecondbrain.com/book

Thankfully most of the reference documentation I have to look up are the popular data science libraries like pandas. Their documentation[2] is so much cleaner than core Python.

1: https://devdocs.io/python~3.11/ 2: https://pandas.pydata.org/docs/reference/index.html#api

> At times, she said, bright sunshine has felt “like an oppression, a weight leaning on me”; she often retreats to a darkened room. In the late two-thousands, when her illness was at its worst, she was unable to get out of bed, experiencing depression, social anxiety, and agoraphobia.

Thanks for sharing the article, it resonates with me immensely. I went through similar hypersensitivity issues due to a car accident and brain injury, and still deal with some of that fallout. Knowing this background about Clarke makes the protagonist's perspective at the end even more meaningful to me.

I am fully expecting that I'll have to go back to zsh-autosuggestions once the current iteration is fully wound down.