What's Caleb Doing Now?

This is a Now page. It's where people put what they've been up to the last year. A now page is:

an overview of what’s going on with you — what you’d tell a friend you hadn’t seen in a year

-- Derek Sivers

Overview

I live in Taiwan, because I believe it's the best place to live on Earth for most people. Things I like to do here include going to g0v hackathons, taking pictures, riding motorcycles in the mountains, recording ambient sounds, contributing to open source streetviews with Mapillary, riding ubikes on the riverside, coworking at cafes with people, and many other things.

I've recently left my position as a frontend engineer at Reactwise, and this year my focus is on growing my contracting and consultancy firm 508.dev, as well as finding a way to generate revenue outside of selling my labor. I also hope to make many FOSS contributions this year.

Family

I'm engaged to be married, in October. My parents left Taiwan in November and are planning on returning as soon as they can. I have several fish tanks, mostly filled with shrimp.

Career

I've just finished working as a software engineer at the YC startup Reactwise. We had to part ways after a grant required all employees to be UK resident, and I didn't want to move there. For the next month, I'm taking a break, focusing on Mandarin and finally picking up some of the programming languages I've wanted to for years. I'm growing a software engineering contracting and consultancy firm called 508.dev. We're always open to new members joining, and also have plenty of time available across our engineers for more contracting work. I'm also hosting coworking events and hackathons, as well as trying out some content creation, with subjects such as ambient coworking videos, and life in Taiwan.

Travel

In the last year, I've had the following trips:

• A trip to Japan for Colive Fukuoka, followed up by Japan Burn.
• Another trip to the UK to hang with Reactwise, with a wedding in London followed with a train ride across Europe, stopping for several nights in Brussels, Amsterdam, Hamburg, then Copenhagen, then popping over to Lundt in Sweden to visit some friends.
• Japan with my fiance
• Japan with the bois
• Huandao with my family
• A motorcycle trip to, and attempted (failed) hike of Qilai
• A trip to the UK to hang with the Reactwise team, and after a short trip to Paris and Barcelona

My upcoming trips are:

• Vaguely, a motorcycle trip across Japan in 2026.

Hobbies

Since I have ADHD, I will always have too many hobbies I'm persuing at once, and the hobbies will always change. Right now:

• Motorcycling
• Drumming
• Reading
  • "How to Take Smart Notes" by Sönke Ahrens
  • "Book of the New Sun", by Gene Wolfe
• Photography
• Self Hosting
• Fishkeeping
• Contributing to open data about music,
• Gaming, retro gaming, homebrewing
  • Fantasy Life
  • Crab Champions
  • Beat Doctor
  • Palworld
• FOSS programming
• Documenting car-driver law breaking and getting hit by cars

Philosophy, Ethics, Politics

I'm definitely even more obnoxiously leftist than the last time you talked to me.

Recent protests:

• Taipei Climate Walk
• Vision Zero Taiwan: Pedestrian Rights (2x)
• Ride of Silence
• General protest against "black box legislation" by the KMT and TPP ("Bluebird Protests")
• End Genocide of the Palestinians (multiple)