Parimal Satyal

Salut. I'm Parimal, a designer, writer and occasional musician living in Berlin.

I also go by Félix. I'm interested in communication, languages, good food and wine, aviation, information systems and the European Union.

Neustadt.fr is my personal website, a tribute to the creative web of the 90s.

New music

Listen to the new Snow Circuit single Survival Protocol, an ambient, cinematic retrowave anthem featuring Liliia Kysil on vocals.

Currently

I work as a UX/UI Designer at OpenProject, a secure, open-source project management software that respects your data and your privacy.

Snow Circuit is my retro synthwave project. I was previously a student pilot and host of the Ground Effect aviation podcast.

Writing

This is a selection of essays I've written over the years:

• In Praise of Dive Watches, an eloge to the humble dive watch and why the timing bezel makes them a particularly useful everyday tool even now, in 2024
• Rediscovering the Small Web, about how, despite the dominance of the commercial web, a fun, creative and informative small web designed by regular people still exists and is worth exploring, 2020. This essay was featured on the front page of Hacker News and has been cited elsewhere. It seems to also have played a role in the development of Kagi's small web lens.
• Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web, about how not to replace an open web that connects and empowers with one that restricts and commoditises people, 2017. This essay was on the front page of Hacker News twice, in 2017 and in 2020, quoted in a Swedish book by privacy experts (page 174), recommended reading in a Berkeley course and cited elsewhere.
• A Beginner's Guide to Crafting a Blog with Metalsmith, a hands-on tutorial on creating a blog using a node.js-based static site generator, 2016
• Teaching Myself German, a guide to self-learning Deutsch, 2016
• 32c3 - Chaos Communication Congress, highlights from the 32nd edition of the biggest community-run hacker meet-up, 2016
• Physics in Metal, a scientific lyrical analysis of metal songs that deal with concepts in theoretical physics and cosmology, 2015
• Island (At Long Last), a poem about murderous sea-dwelling nymphs, 2015
• China: One Nation, How Many Languages?, an academic paper about the development of the Chinese language, also somehow one of the primary sources for the Wikipedia article on the Beijing dialect, 2010

Music

I makec cinematic dark synthwave music as Snow Circuit.

Melancholic, atmospheric and narrative-driven, Snow Circuit explores themes of survival, sentience, and hope in post-human worlds. 80s-inspired synths meet progressive structures and haunting vocals.

Other music

I mostly listen to progressive metal, powermetal and old school heavy metal, but also enjoy synthwave and pop music.

Some of my more experimental musical creations:

• L'appel du vide, an attempt at creating a soundtrack for a horror film, inspired by what Italian metal band Goblin did for Susperia, 2023
• Terminate, a cover of the legendary Terminator 2 movie soundtrack created entirely on a PO-133 Pocket Operator, 2022
• Déconfinement, retro synth track based on an old composition, 2020
• Einstein-Rosen Bridge, instrumental electro-metal, 2016
• To Hell with Heaven, instrumental old-school metal, 2015
• Navigate the Seas of the Sun, Bruce Dickinson cover, 2015
• The Machine Stops, based on the short story by E. M. Forster, 2012
• Il était une fois, inspired by Yann Tiersen, 2012
• Vita, morte, miracoli, meant to be a morning wake-up alarm, 2012
• In My Life, Beatles cover with my brother Parag on the guitar, 2012
• Return of the Ghost, with two guitar- and one keyboard solos, 2012
• Dreams to Illusions, once described as "power game music", 2008
• Threads of Time, dark introspective rock, 2007
• Age of Mist, mid-tempo instrumental about not knowing, accepting, 2007
• Fallen, 4-chord song about valiant (but incompetent) warriors, 2007

Retro Stuff

I grew up with the internet of the 90s and early 2000s. It was chaotic, irregular, flashy, gaudy, peppered with animated GIFs, but most websites were made by people like you and me who wanted to share their interests and hobbies.

Luckily, I'm not the only one nostalgic about the Geocities era. There's a lot of us! Click the icon below to enter my Retro Collection page full of links to websites, tools, Winamp skins and other cool stuff from the past.

Guestbook

Don't be a stranger. If you have a comment, suggestion or simply want to say hello, you can sign my guestbook. Or read what others have written.

Contact

You can also get in touch with me via email (felix@neustadt.fr).

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• This website is under construction. Last updated: 30 December 2025.
• All original text and music are free and available under the CC Attribution 4.0 International license. Copy and remix as you please, but attribution is required (since December 2024).
• Made in Paris/Berlin. All pages hand-coded, like in the old days.
• Hosted on Neocities. View website source code on GitHub. RSS feed available.
• Best viewed in any browser, including Netscape Navigator, Firefox and lynx.
• Part of the Hotline Webring. You can go to Previous or to Next.
• The main font is Barlow by Jeremy Tribby.