A little bit about me

Hi, I'm Matheus

(mɐˈtews)

Listen

My name is incredibly common in Brazil, so it was a bit of a shock when I found out that English speakers have no idea how to pronounce it. I figured I'd take advantage of the fact that my name has a translation in almost every language. So feel free to call me Matheus, Matthew, Matt, Matteo, whatever it is in your own language!

I was born and raised in Caxias do Sul, Brazil and time has taught me to love that city and the area around it. Somewhat counter-intuitively, though, I moved to Lecco, Italy in September 2025 with my wife and dog, just to see what life over here looks like.

What I do

I got a computer when I was 4, and it's been my obsession since then — though coding came muuuuch later. I built my first website¹ at 9 using Microsoft FrontPage. It had a visual page builder, but also an HTML tab with the generated code. I remember thinking "what kind of weird person understands this?". After 13 years writing code, I still ask myself the same question.

By day, I work as a Web Developer at Useful Group alongside the coolest people. By night, I'm usually playing video games, watching TV or working on this very website you're looking at.

Speaking of this website, there's a lot that I do here:

• Blog Posts that I write every couple months. It all started as a place to dump things I learned, then evolved into a more personal thing.
• Quick Reviews that I write about the things I watch or play.
• Cool Links that I curate and comment about. The initial idea was to just post a link every once in a while and comment on it as a way to practice my writing, but it evolved into its own site section and monthly digest.

I also built and maintain a couple things that you can check out in the Projects page.

Things I like

• Gaming: my favorite games are Bloodborne, Disco Elysium, and Zelda (Zelda is my favorite franchise, and it's hard to pick a favorite). I have played countless hours of World of Warcraft too, and still visit that world every once in a while.
• Football (⚽): since I was a little kid I've been going to Juventude games every week with my family. I've seen that club go from metaphorical heaven to metaphorical hell and then rise up from the metaphorical ashes, and while the passion had its ups and downs, it's always been there.
• Music: I have a pretty varied taste in music nowadays², but Iron Maiden is a band that has been through me since I was a kid, too. I've seen them live 3 times (with a 4th on the way), know every single song, and can sing most of them from memory.
• Coding: even though that's what I do for a living, I am also still enamored with coding and have a genuine good time doing it.

Some curiosities, I guess

• I have dual citizenship (🇧🇷🇮🇹), due to being descended from Italian immigrants. This certainly helped with the decision to move to Italy for a bit.
• I speak Brazilian Portuguese, English and am learning Italian (it's good enough to get by). I also understand Spanish and even a bit of French (due to Latin roots), but can't speak those. I even studied German in the past, but already forgot most of it.
• I had a long-distance relationship between 2013 and 2018. We have since then moved together and got married!
• We have a dog named Paçoquinha (named after the Brazilian sweet treat). She's somewhere between 12–14 years old and we adopted her in 2018. She's traveled with us across the Atlantic ocean 3 times already!

1 - sadly that website has now become lost media. The hosting provider went kaput and it was never archived anywhere.

2 - it's varied but I have a really hard time listening to anything new to me. I only ever listen to stuff I already know except in some very specific pockets of time in which I'm weirdly open to new music.