Hi, I'm Alex.
Online I go by theWebCrawler. Arachnida is the umbrella I publish under — the writing, the tools, the side projects, and the occasional game. One person, working in public, holding things loosely.
What I actually do.
I came to software the way most people come to it — incrementally, obsessively, late into the night. Between fourteen and seventeen I learned to read and write code the way you learn a language: through repetition, through failure, through the specific pleasure of making a thing behave exactly as you intended.
What changed over time was not the interest but the leverage. The part of the work that has always held my attention — deciding what to build, how it should feel, whether it is worth building at all — turns out to be the part that scales. I operate now as a software architect: the diagram, the decisions, the judgment about when to stop. Arachnida is the clearest expression of that.
Everything here — the journal, the tools, the games — was built by one person, working through questions that refused to stay theoretical.
The code is the easiest part to describe.
I am a generalist by temperament — the kind of mind that wanders between philosophy, psychology, politics, and systems, and finds the wandering itself instructive. I read widely, hold my views loosely, and would rather arrive somewhere accurate than somewhere quickly.
The place to find that in detail is the journal. It is a more complete account of who I am than this page can offer — the first entry, in particular, lays out the epistemic ground rules that run under everything else here.
A few public surfaces, kept deliberately separate.
Each exists for a different reason and reaches a different audience. I have found it easier — and more honest — to let them stay that way rather than collapse them into a single presence.
- Nº 01X@the_web_crawlerThe microblog — shorter observations that belong in the open air rather than a journal entry. The thinking in progress.
- Nº 02GitHubthe-web-crawlerThe code — projects that started as questions and became things. Arachnida lives here, among others.
- Nº 03HandshakeThe professional recordRésumé, transcripts, and the formal account of how I spend my time. Open to the right conversation.
- Nº 04Duolingo1000+ day German streakA daily discipline in the mechanics of another mind. German, because it rewards the patient.
- Nº 05Emailtwc@arachnida-apps.comThe slow channel. Long letters welcome; cold pitches less so.
- Nº 06The JournalEssays and public thinkingThe most complete account of who I am. Everything else on this page is a surface; this is where the thinking actually lives.