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Casual
โ Sunday February 11, 2024๐ When I ask for a shopping list from my partner, invariably there is 1 โimpossibleโ ingredient. Itโs either not available in every store, itโs sold out, or it requires next level treasure hunting skills to find the right isle. Either way - one does not simply get everything on the list. ๐
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Casual
โ Saturday February 10, 2024๐ฑ I canโt believe it - I canโt close all my Activity rings because of 1 stand hour, multiple days in row ๐คฆ๐ปโโ๏ธ It will break my weekly streak and most likely itโs due to having the watch off charging here and there ๐ก
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Gaming
โ Thursday February 8, 2024๐ฎ Finished Disco Elysium as a confused superstar cop ๐ and a true blue moralist ๐คท๐ปโโ๏ธ Happy to have taken a bit different path as it was the second time I picked up the game. Surprisingly, the ZA/UM legal mess bugs me enough to affect how I feel about the game. Some sort of irrational guilt.
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Casual
โ Sunday February 4, 2024๐ It’s been a week that feels like a month. Reviewing my daily journal helped me recollect a lot, even though I felt it in my bones. One theme I’ve paid special attention to is what recharged me ๐:
- Walks, strictly not in a rush
- Deep work - thinking and “designing”
- Solid mid-day breaks
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Casual
โ Tuesday January 30, 2024๐This is quite an unshaped thought. Integrative garbage - the ugly outcome of combining too many, and often conflicting, ideas with the goal of creating an all-encompassing solution. Connected thinking is great. Generalists are great. Too much of a good thing - integrative garbage.
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Casual
โ Monday January 29, 2024๐ Wikipedia: Petrichor
Petrichor (/หpษtrษชหkษหr/) is the earthy scent produced when rain falls on dry soil.
TIL ๐ค I thought the smell of rain is the smell of ozone. Itโs a bit more complex because - life.
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Technology
โ Monday January 29, 2024๐พ Iโm using Proton VPN and Iโve noticed a lot more often sites just donโt work. And itโs not Protonโs fault. Simply everyone everywhere wants to track the cr*p out of visitors. Just today couldnโt access the city library and a movie festival sites. Come oon! ๐ก
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Gaming
โ Saturday January 27, 2024๐ฎ When I left the Xbox behind in favor of PC, I also lost a couple of games (and saves). Just had the urge to jump into Disco Elysium again but turns out I don’t have it in my PC library. I find this particularly frustrating with the Xbox/MS store as it’s supposed to be an ecosystem.
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Management
โ Friday January 26, 2024๐ป James A. Whittaker, Jason Arbon, Jeff Carollo, How Google Tests Software
“If the feedback takes more than a few minutes, add more machines. CPU hours are cheaper than developer context switches and idle time.”
Those were the times. Now we live in a culture of cost efficiency that sacrifices developer experience without batting an eye. Cloud bills are much more tangible cost than loss of productivity to the average exec. This trend also tells an unpalatable story about the amount of work without impact.
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Technology
โ Sunday January 21, 2024๐พ Once upon a time, I was interested in writing reliable and efficient shell scripts. Using shell builtins was an eye-opener. Today I remembered about parameter expansion:
mystr="$(uname -o)" # If we find "Linux", we get an empty string [ ! -n "${mystr##*Linux*}" ] && printf "We are on Linux.\n" -
Technology
โ Saturday January 20, 2024๐พ Kudos to @mikehaynes for the excellent Outpost theme! Just the refresh I was looking for, and it was so easy to customize based on my previous theme.
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Technology
โ Friday January 19, 2024๐พ How I miss Things. It’s truly a usability masterpiece. Decided to drop it for 2 reasons - not cleared at work (especially the cloud bit); too separate from my notes and writing. Imagine if they entered the editor space and integrated the tasks alongside notes seamlessly. One can dream.
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Casual
โ Sunday January 14, 2024๐๐ท Together we are safe (from the vacuum cleaner)!
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Technology
โ Sunday January 14, 2024๐พ Streaks is an amazing app. Every NY I return to it (for obvious reasons ๐ ). Its super power is simplicity. Super impressed with the team who manage to add more continuously, while keeping complexity in check. Iโve now slotted Streaks snuggly in my daily workflow.
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Casual
โ Tuesday January 9, 2024๐ After a week of temperatures closer to -20C, walking the dogs at -5C feels like spring is coming. ๐ Snapshot from the wintery city landscape in Helsinki from last weekend. ๐ท Alt text courtesy of Bing chat ๐คท๐ปโโ๏ธ
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Management
โ Sunday January 7, 2024๐ป Flow Metrics for Scrum Teams (PDF)
The dirty little secret of MCS [Monte Carlo Simulation] is that we are assuming that the future we are modeling roughly looks like the past we have data for. The beauty of using professional Scrum is that in most contexts this is a safe assumption.
You call it a “dirty little secret”, I call it a major stink ๐คท๐ปโโ๏ธ Anyway, still keeping an open mind, this book is a very good resource if you find yourself in the midst of an agile transformation (especially one that puts emphasis on estimates). Like we all do every few years. Ha. ha. ha. ๐ฅ
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Casual
โ Sunday January 7, 2024๐ Home-made chai latte, incense stick, headphones on - it’s going to be a particularly zen weekly review. ๐งโโ๏ธ
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โ Thursday December 28, 2023
๐ฟ The Boy and the Heron (2023) - โ โ โ โ โ
Oh wow, what an adventure! And so many layers to it.
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Technology
โ Thursday December 28, 2023๐พ Micro.bloggers (Cc: @help), what is your workflow for testing Micro.blog theme changes with a test blog and a Github repo? I thought of playing with the test blog on a branch and using main for “production”. But I don’t think I can point the test blog to a repo branch via the Micro.blog UI ๐ค
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Casual
,Management
2023: an assorted list of personal takeaways
โ Wednesday December 27, 2023๐ Reviewed my weekly takeaways in 2023. Unsurprizingly to me, the themes that emerged are wellbeing, work and career, and productivity. It is also clearly apparent how intertwined they all are. There is enough here to repeat and work on for many years ahead. Here goes.
๐ชด Wellbeing
- Burnout symptoms - exhaustion, cynicism, ineffectiveness
- Hobbies and pursuing interests are effective recovery mechanisms
- Messy flat - messy mind
- Never too late in the day or week to write a journal entry
- Take care of yourself so you can take care of others
- At your limits, it is OK to say no and focus on recovery
- Poor short-term memory is a symptom of too much stress
- Ominous meetings and days are often better than anticipated
- Resilience is showing up every day
๐จโ๐ป Work and career
- Managing enthusiasm is essential to keeping things simple
- Career growth requires crossing the boundaries of your role description
- Challenging situations are an opportunity to build skill and improve the status quo
- No one is going to remember your work achievements in a year
- Know your โchase the funโ and โa place to call homeโ activities at work for effective recovery
- There is no place for guilt in have to take a sick leave
- Do not exhaust your “complaint budget”, i.e. pick your battles
- Trust the fundamentals especially when feeling overwhelmed
- The role of leadership is to maintain the necessary tensions and the constructive interaction stemming from them
๐คน Productivity
- Scrying your list is useful - โneeds to be done todayโ or โmakes tomorrow easierโ
- Even a single daily journal entry makes it easier to reflect during the weekly review
- Returning from vacation in the middle of the work week is a neat recovery trick
- Book time for focused work, delegate, work on unique leverage, be kind to yourself
- Preparation pays off, think and write, write and think
๐ Misc
- Making bread requires experimentation - try, learn, improve
- I think I have a harder skin then I actually do
- โJos kukaan ei suutu, mikรครคn ei muutuโ
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Casual
โ Monday December 25, 2023๐ Iterating over my annual retrospective. Work seems to have a too big effect on how I feel about life. There is a lot to love about 2023, but itโs muted by work at each step. I am proud of how Iโve coped and grown. Still, I could appreciate the good things in life more and in full color. ๐๐ป
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Management
โ Friday December 22, 2023๐ป It’s hard to get company’s year-end messages right this year. Especially when many people lost their jobs and colleagues to layoffs. My LinkedIn feed is a mixture of #opentowork posts and “profound” reflections of great achievements… coming from the same companies. It stings. While life goes on and we should celebrate another trip around the Sun, I think we can benefit from more humility.
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Gaming
โ Monday December 18, 2023๐ฎ I am on a trip for 10 days which means I left my PC behind. Figured Iโd try GeForce Now on a Samsung TV. Itโs running Alan Wake II better than my home setup. ๐ Sure, the underlying cloud rig is better than what I have, 4080 vs 4070, but the quality still leaves me stunned.
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Casual
โ Saturday December 16, 2023๐ One of the nine hells is perpetual flight travel with connecting flights ๐ซ And most importantly - filled with people flying for the first time.
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Management
โ Wednesday December 13, 2023๐ป Esko Kilpi: Why Should I Work with You
A creative organization thrives on the tension that arises from widely different but complementary abilities and views working with one another in enriching interaction.
Iโve been thinking about the concept of having a healthy tension between conflicting ideas. And remembered Esko Kilpi wrote about something very similar.
