Creativity on Og Maciel's Journal

NaNoWriMo, We Meet Again

Wed, 05 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

NaNoWriMo, We Meet Again

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

It is November, and one of the traditions this time of year is to take part in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), where people are encouraged to attempt writing a novel—or roughly 30,000 words—during the month. The idea is simple: if you write a little bit (or a lot) every day for 30 days, and you average around 1,000 words a day, you’ll end the month with a solid draft of a novel.

Murder Hornet: Chapter Four

Sun, 26 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Photo by Tatiana Tochilova on Unsplash

If you’re new here, this is part of my ongoing experiment where I’m publishing raw, completely unedited chapters of a novel I’ve been writing (and rewriting… deleting… swearing at… and rewriting again) for the past couple of years.

If you’d like to catch up first:

This week, I’m sharing Chapter 4. As always, your feedback keeps this little experiment alive—so if you’re still enjoying the story (or even if you’re just here for the chaos), drop a comment. Should I keep going? Post more frequently? Stop immediately for the sake of literature as a whole? You tell me.

Back to the Page: Finding My Way Into the ICQ Sequel

Thu, 16 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A couple of days ago, I wrote about getting back into the writing swing of things and adding a few paragraphs to a novel I want to write—a sequel to my book ICQ. It’s kind of funny because when I went to save what I’d written, I started looking for a place to put it and discovered that I had already put something together, probably earlier this year. It was a pleasant surprise to realize that I had already captured some ideas, but it also shows just how much is going on in my life lately that I couldn’t even remember starting it.

From LAMP Stacks to Large Language Models

Tue, 14 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

According to the whois command, I’ve owned the domain ogmaciel.com since January 21, 2001, and I believe it was the very first domain I ever bought. Since then, I’ve purchased multiple domains for all sorts of ideas and projects, but this one I’ve kept — and renewed faithfully — since day one.

Over the years, I’ve self-hosted (cutting my teeth on Linux by building and maintaining LAMP stacks) and used paid hosting services to run my personal blog. I used WordPress back when it was the coolest blogging platform out there, and I’ve hand-crafted HTML sites — and everything in between. I wrote prolifically about anything and everything for many years, and I’ve lost more posts than I care to admit as I switched platforms (and occasionally forgot to back things up).

Murder Hornet: Chapter Two

Sun, 12 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This post continues from the previous installment, where I shared the Prelude and Chapter 1 of Murder Hornet. If you haven’t read it yet, I’d recommend starting there to get the full story so far. As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts — let me know in the comments if you’d like me to keep posting more of the unpublished chapters.

Chapter II

“Hey, what’s up, Roddy?” I said nonchalantly, trying to hide the fact that he scared the crap out of me.

Nods, Lightbulbs, and Why I Still Love Being a Builder

Thu, 02 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Over the last month and a half, I’ve spent considerable time giving presentations at work on how AI tools can help people in their day-to-day activities. Most of these sessions focus on software engineering tasks like writing code, automated testing, setting standards, and using tools like Jira more effectively.

The Art of Presenting

Whenever I’m asked to present, I try to imagine what I’d want as an audience member. My core principle is simple: “if someone asks me to sit through a presentation, they’d better capture my attention quickly and show me what’s in it for me.”