-
Gaming
๐ฎ Giving Starfield another go and itโs been growing on me. There is something about letting me ease in all its systems at my own pace. It has issues but at this point I canโt accept blatant thrashing of the game or Bethesda. Starfield gives you space to get into it and enjoy it. Pun intended. ๐
-
Technology
๐พ While there is disappointment about platforms striking training data deals with AI vendors, I think we see the writing on the wall. If companies donโt make such agreements, AI will be trained on public data anyway as itโs been so far. At least formal deals work against the fair use defense.
-
Casual
๐๐ฌ A quote often attributed to Niels Bohr or Yogi Berra:
It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.
-
Casual
๐ For a while now, the cringy face thumbnails on Youtube โถ๏ธ have the opposite effect on me to what the authors aim for - views. Even when creators that I like and follow do it. Itโs so infantilizingโฆ like a mass game of peekaboo. Ugh. ๐
-
Casual
๐ I value The Economist as a publication but their subscription cancellation process uses several dark patterns. ๐ ๐ปโโ๏ธ For example, they offer you a discount for renewal (could be nice but still) and just now I had to chat with a person to cancel (who tried to offer me discounts).
-
Technology
๐พ Conversed a bit with ChatGPT about GPU rendering pipelines. Now that I’m testing Pro, figured I’d ask it to generate a diagram as well. DALL-E has a different “brain”. Welp, I guess it makes for a nice T-shirt design… from afar.
-
Casual
๐ฟ Bullet Train ๐ is the right kind of silly I needed today.
-
Casual
๐ 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
-
Casual
๐ฑ 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
-
Gaming
๐ฎ 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.
-
Casual
๐ 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
-
Casual
๐This 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.
-
Casual
๐ 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.
-
Technology
๐พ 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
-
Gaming
๐ฎ 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.
-
Management
๐ป 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.
-
Technology
๐พ 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
๐พ 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.
-
Technology
๐พ 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.
-
Casual
๐๐ท Together we are safe (from the vacuum cleaner)!
-
Technology
๐พ 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.
-
Casual
๐ 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
-
Management
๐ป 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
-
Casual
๐ Home-made chai latte, incense stick, headphones on - it’s going to be a particularly zen weekly review. ๐งโโ๏ธ
-
๐ฟ The Boy and the Heron (2023) - โ โ โ โ โ
Oh wow, what an adventure! And so many layers to it.