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Quality of life improvements

Small things can make a bog difference. Even though some things can be small annoyances we tend to get uses to them and don't think much of them after we have accepted them as the norm.

The challenge is to identify auch things. There is almost always ways to fix or improve those things. Afterwards it makes me wonder how did I even tolerate those things before.

Quantum socks

Quantum physics is full of weird things. So much so that many of the esteemed scientist studying it can't even explain (or accept) all of it. For an average layperson it can be even more confusing.

The core concept of the quantum theory is the wave function. Even some quantum physicists deny it's existence in real world and think of it only as a purely mathematical concept. As Richard Feynman's quote says:

If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics.

Tragic day

Countless people die every day. Many from natural causes, but there are many who die from malnutrition, preventable diseases, accidents, disasters and acts of violence as well. News might be filled with only the biggest, most tragic cases yet still we can feel indifferent from such loss. They have become just numbers and statistics.

Modern problems

A problem I faced making my own music for my enjoyment is that it's quite hard to listen it anywhere away from computer. Everything is streamed nowadays so I don't need to worry about copying files between devices.

If only it would be that easy. Sure I can get the music files to my different devices and play them locally. But then I'm limited listening on headphones (or phone speaker). I can't play them on my home theatre system directly. It doesn't support direct audio sharing!

My new favourite music - self made

With the new generative A.I. powered tools it's super easy to create new music. Almost too easy, at least if you kust want something generic. Just give an idea of what you want the song to be about and short description of the style of the music and hit generate.

The result might not be what you are looking for. The results are usually fine and pass for the background music that you don't really want to pay attention. But if you really want to listen and enjoy the music you make you need to put a bit more effort to it.

Everyone can be an artist now

Since all the way back to sixties there has been hopeful predictions that machines would free us from all the menial tasks and allow us humans to focus more on creative activities. With the advent of generative A.I. it very much looked like the creative work is the first one the machines will take from us reversing those wishful promises.

It's about to start getting hectic

There is less than three months until our big larp event. While we have beem planning and preparing for it for well over a year there os still a lot to be done before the first players can step into our spaceship. Even though it will be a rerun of our 2019 game and we have tried to reuse aa much as possible from that run there is still a lot of new stuff to build.

Farewells

I have been with my current company for almost 12 years now. That's already above average in this industry. And even though over these years our retention rate has been quite high there has been many people joining and leaving the company during that time.

I hate (this kind of) Mondays

People often hate Mondays. It's the first day of week. Back to work after refreshing weekend, the full workweek ahead. I like my job and am often even looking forward for a new week. Today wasn't one of those mondays.

I checked my calendar yesterday evening and sow an uninterrupted streak of meetings. There were 11 meetings total with just a small lunch break in the middle of them! I know my work nowadays is mostly sitting in meetings, but even for that this was a bit too much. Must be a record of meetings per day.

Internet of Updates

Internet brought us connected devices. Mobile technologies made it not tied to the wire, but unfortunately we still don't have wireless electricity so all those connected devices need to be charged. With advancements of battery technology and the emergence of Internet of Things at least some of the devices can be powered for years while we are waiting for better batteries (or wireless energy transfer).

Watching TV in candlelight

What do we do if the power goes out?Well, then we just have to watch TV in the candlelight.

Today the world Earth hour once again encourages everyone to turn of all (non-essential) lights dor one hour. The act is a gesture to bring awareness to the climate change and encourage people to conserve energy.

Leadership conversation

Our management team has worked in the current composition almost a year now. Most of us have been there for over two years and some much longer. Even though we have had a few dedicated occasions to get together physically most of our collaboration happens online.

The get together events have been great and I've learned a lot about my colleagues during those days. With some of them we have regular meetings where we often have time to also catch up on non-work related stuff. But what has been missing is seeing (or at least hearing) how each one of us lead our teams.

Empty tank

If you are still driving an ICE car in Finland there might be an unhappy surprise waiting for you at the gas station. Due to the recent political strikes here the fuel deliveries have been suffering and in anticipation of shortages to gas people have been hoarding some reserves for themselves.

A.I. assistants

LLMs have been transforming many things how I both consume and produce content. While I still do enjoy writing these posts manually many things that I write at work are at least partially written by the help of A.I. tools. I also don't bother skimming through articles when I can just feed them to the A.I. and let it produce a summary for me. What's even better is that I can ask follow-up questions if the summary doesn't give the answer I was looking for or I need to dig deeper into the topic.

Data goes in, data comes out

I've always loved working with data. As a programmer I have done many things, but when I get to so something that manipulates data that is the best. There is just something different even though the code itself isn't that much different.

I have never veen good with the visual things so that why I probably don't like that much working with user interfaces. It also includes the user which can always be unpredictable. Data is always data. There is no surprises with it. You get what you expect, clearly defined. You don't have to quess.

Fool's spring

Fool's spring is the period of time in late winter when the weather turns warm, sun is shining and the snow starts to melt. Only to be set back by another period of wintery weather later on.

It's not common to have such periods of time here in Finland. At least not this early. We often get some odd warm days during april that do feel like spring, but everybody is expecting the winter to strike back at least until the beginning of May. There has been years when we've gotten such backwinters still in May. Still, nobody talks about fool's spring around here...

Art of writing code

Over the past several years, while I have beem climbing up the career ladder I've been coding less and less, to the point that during last two years I have hardly written any. While I have decades of experience and I'm still keeping up with the latest developments in the area I doubt I could just jump back being a day to day coder.

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