The Blog
New blog post every Wednesday! I write regularly about technology, communities and life around me. I aim to publish a new blog post each Wednesday. If you wish to get notified when new posts arrive, I have a RSS feed you can subscribe to.
I've also visited a few podcasts which you can find on my speaking page.
For my longer pieces, check out Humane Tech Guides.
In addition to these posts, I wrote a blog in Finnish about my year in San Francisco back in 2014. It lives on it's own page at https://hamatti.org/unelma.
2023
September
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How you can make conferences better
There are a few ways we all can improve the conferences we attend
- Syntax Error #7
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Pull requests are great
I’ve seen a lot of critique lately towards the pull requests in teams and wanted to share my thoughts on why I like pull requests
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My iterative approach to software development
When I build features, I’m very iterative. I start by going fast and deep to confirm I know where the goal is and that it’s achievable and then I circle back to write better code each iteration.
August
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Blaugust 2023: Lessons Learned
It’s August 31st. I’ve published a blog post on each day of the month and now it’s time to reflect on what I’ve learned throughout this experiment.
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Use pangrams to avoid mistakes in conference badge prints
If you have a name that is not just ASCII letters and you’ve participated in an event abroad, it’s likely you’ve had your name messed up in the badge. Organizers can avoid that with pangrams
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My First 100K
My blog got over 100 000 views in the last 30 day window for the first time ever.
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Custom cookie consent for video embeds
Occasionally I want to embed Youtube videos or social media posts on my blog but wanted a clean and straight-forward way to deal with cookie consent. So I built my first version for Youtube embeds.
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Compressing overlapping strings in Python
I developed a solution to a overlapping string puzzle with Python using Test-Driven Development and in this blog post, I share my thinking and development process.
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Where do my links live?
Chris wrote last week about his link saving schemes and since I’ve talked about this topic surprisingly lot recently with people, I decided to share my approach as well.
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6 months of recovery, how is life?
It’s been about six months since I last wrote about how things are going. Time for an update.
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Building Dark Mode for hamatti.org
It’s finally time to make people who can’t stand light themes happy when they visit my page by building the dark mode.
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Let’s talk about Steam Deck
I’ve now had Steam Deck for nearly a year and little by little I’ve gotten more comfortable with it and have opened up new avenues within the system.
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Website rewrite and switching to Notion as CMS
This website served me well for almost 5 years with minor improvements, tweaks and hacks. Now, it was time for a total rewrite and upgrading my stack and tools.
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Stardew Valley Mods I use
Stardew Valley is one of my all-time favorite games and I have spent so many hours building farms and making friends. These days, I’ve added so many great mods that extend the playability and story of the game and wanted to share them with you.
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Youtubers I watch
I love Youtube and especially its many great indie creators. Since Youtube’s algorithms affect so heavily what everyone sees, I wanted to share some of my favorites so you could maybe find new channels to follow.
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Bloggers I read: Saturday
I read a lot of tech blogs to learn new things and stay up to date with my industry. This week I’m sharing a few of them so you can too!
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Bloggers I read: Friday
I read a lot of tech blogs to learn new things and stay up to date with my industry. This week I’m sharing a few of them so you can too!
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Bloggers I read: Thursday
I read a lot of tech blogs to learn new things and stay up to date with my industry. This week I’m sharing a few of them so you can too!
- Syntax Error #6: Debugging CSS
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Bloggers I read: Wednesday
I read a lot of tech blogs to learn new things and stay up to date with my industry. This week I’m sharing a few of them so you can too!
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Bloggers I read: Tuesday
I read a lot of tech blogs to learn new things and stay up to date with my industry. This week I’m sharing a few of them so you can too!
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Pokemon tools updated for Obisidian Flames
With the newest Pokemon TCG set Obsidian Flames being released last Friday, I’ve updated my tools to support the new set
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Desert Island Discs
Desert Island Discs is a BBC radio show where people share 8 songs, a book and a luxury item they'd take with them on a desert island. Here are my picks!
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Future Frontend 2023 Recap
In June, we organized Future Frontend conference in Helsinki with a couple of workshop days followed by two great conference days full of amazing talks. Here's my recap and talk recommendations from the bunch.
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Projects I'm proud of: Teaching programming
This week in Blaugust is themed 'Introduce yourself' and each day, I'll share a project story that I'm particularly proud of. For Friday, my story is an overarching story of a decade of teaching programming.
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Projects I'm proud of: Potluck
This week in Blaugust is themed 'Introduce yourself' and each day, I'll share a project story that I'm particularly proud of. One of those is Potluck, my latest tabletop design project.
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Projects I'm proud of: Newsletters
This week in Blaugust is themed 'Introduce yourself' and each day, I'll share a project story that I'm particularly proud of. Today is two-for-one special as I share my work with Dev Breakfast and Syntax Error newsletters.
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Projects I'm proud of: Turku ❤️ Frontend
This week in Blaugust is themed 'Introduce yourself' and each day, I'll share a project story that I'm particularly proud of. Today, I want to tell you about Turku <3 Frontend.
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Projects I'm proud of: Boost Turku & Startup Journey
This week in Blaugust is themed 'Introduce yourself' and each day, I'll share a project story that I'm particularly proud of. Today, I'm starting with my journey at Boost Turku.
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Tools don't matter - until they do
When starting blogging or coding, it can be overwhelming to choose the right tools. In the beginning, spend your time and energy on doing and learning, not thinking about and tinkering with your tools.
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What makes a blog post a blog post?
I have a very powerful inner critic when it comes to my own blog and what kind of posts I write. But I don't have that same filter when reading other people's post. I love the variety. Which makes me think: what does make a blog post and is there some criteria to fill?
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Where to publish your blog?
A question every blogger has to go through at the beginning is where to publish their blog. I'll give you a few options that will get you blogging in no time so you can focus on writing.
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Build an idea bank and never run out of blog ideas
Often I get enough ideas throughout a week for my weekly blog posts. But sometimes I don't because I'm too busy or in a non-creative mood. That's why I have an idea bank that grows thoughts into ideas ready to be written into blog posts.
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A bunch more of small game reviews: Dredge, Dishonored, Farm Keeper
I've recently been playing horror fishing simulator Dredge, magical first-person assassin stealth adventure Dishonored and tile-laying farming puzzler Farm Keeper.
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Blaugust 2023, here we come
Blaugust is a month-long celebration of blogging and I'm participating for the first time. I'm hoping to find new inspiration, write more, find new blogs to follow and to learn from fellow bloggers in the community. Join me on my journey through Blaugust.
July
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Blog comments via Mastodon
After half a year of pondering, I finally wrote a bit of code to add comments to my blog via Mastodon replies.
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What tech docs can learn from video game tutorials?
Video games are well known for their tutorials and how they teach increasingly complex actions to players step by step. Technical documentation and tutorials can learn quite a bit from the video game industry.
- Syntax Error #5: Python breakpoints
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Hey dev student: you should study creative writing
Communication skills are crucial in modern work life and especially in remote and/or global settings where we need to write a lot to convey our thoughts. I recommend developer students to take creative writing classes to help them succeed in work life.
June
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Give your commands consistent names
A discussion in fediverse lead me to a wonderful path to learn about different approaches people have to wrap different software development commands behind unified interface.
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Document outdated components
When your codebase evolves iteratively instead of everything at once, you end up with components or files that use outdated style and should not be used as an example for future code. Document those cases to avoid problems.
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How to network while being beneficial to oneself professionally?
Networking at best combines helping others, building connections and improving your own expertise in your industry.
May
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Writing documentation is a great tool to improve software quality
During my last journey into documentation, I once again discovered how great tool writing can be for crafting better software.
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I found new great games
Over the past month, my digital game collection has grown a lot with really good titles. Some indie, some AAA.
- Syntax Error #4: Refreshing wrong window
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I got my hands on the finished product (Potluck)
My Potluck deck finally arrived from print and it's gorgious. Jump right in to see some pictures and first impressions!
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In a beautiful world, APIs would be open
In a world where the APIs and data would be open and everyone could build their own UIs and apps on top, the digital world would be more usable and beautiful for all of us.
April
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How to document a workaround?
As developers, we sometimes run into a situation where something is wrong and its not within our reach. A bug in a library, a mishap in an integration or something else. You need a short-term workaround. It's important to document them so you can eventually get rid of them.
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A look at my on-going projects
I have a few developer community initiatives and software projects that I've been working on for a while so I decided to give an update on all of them at once.
- Syntax Error #3: Who let the ducks out?
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How to sort a Pokemon deck list?
I've started building my new hobby project, a deck builder for Pokemon TCG players. One of the first interesting avenus in that was to figure out how to write a compare function for sort.
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Potluck #3: My workflow
A behind the scenes look at Potluck, a semi-universal card deck. Final part of the series looks at the workflow and tooling that I used when designing and building the project.
March
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Organizing a mess with cherry-picking
I created a messy pull request that was too large to be nice to review and that hindered my productivity a ton. So I learned how to cherry pick in git and gained mental clarity.
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A quick life update
9 weeks ago I shared that I'm leaving Mozilla and moving back home. A lot has happened and I'm blown away by how well everything has gone since.
- Syntax Error #2: print it like a boss
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A bunch of small game reviews: Village Rails, Skulls of Sedlec, Barotrauma
Three games, three small reviews! I've recently been enjoying Village Rails, Skulls of Sedlec and Barotrauma so I decided to tell you about them.
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I combat impostor syndrome with building in public
I suffer from impostor syndrome but I've recently found an unexpected way to combat it: learning and building in public
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Potluck #2: The Deck
A behind the scenes look at Potluck, a semi-universal card deck. This second part of this three part series looks at the features and functions of the deck.
February
- Syntax Error #1: Welcome
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The imperfect mess of note taking
I like to take notes and for years attempted to find the perfect solution. Once I embraced the imperfect chaos, I started to get good at taking notes.
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In defense of Quote Toots
Three blog posts in a trenchcoat: I write about quote toots (and why I'd like to have them), the desire to have same features in all apps and the problem of monopoly over content & delivery.
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Potluck #1: Research and Design
A behind the scenes look at Potluck, a semi-universal card deck. First part of this three part series looks at the research and design of the project.
January
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Guide to landing your first dev job
Finding and landing your first developer job can be a daunting task. How to convince a company to hire you before you have job experience and how to showcase your skills? Join me for a magical journey!
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My Pokemon apps updated for Crown Zenith
Pokemon TCG's newest set Crown Zenith dropped this Friday and for me, a release date means updating my projects.
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I'm leaving Mozilla
I resigned from Mozilla. The time has come for me to take a break and make my mental and physical health a top priority. I'm also moving back home to Turku.
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Me and the elves - Advent of Code 2022 retrospective
This year's Advent of Code was fun as always – and bit less stressful than before. Maybe it's a sign that I've learned a thing or two? Time for an Advent of Code 2022 retrospective!
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Introducing: Syntax Error
I'm launching a newsletter for software developers. Syntax Error helps developers to learn debugging and turn a stressful situation into a joyful exploration.
2022
December
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Year in Review 2022
Time to take another look back and reflect on 2022. After two crappy years, this one was one to remember – even with its rough start.
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Merry Christmas
Merry Christmas friends! This week I'll spend with friends and family, away from online.
- 7 years of Turku ❤️ Frontend (via Medium.com)
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DevRelCon Prague 2022 Recap
DevRelCon in Prague was an amazing conference with a lovely community of developer community professionals. Here's my recap of the conference and my trip to Prague.
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Mastodon redirect with your domain in Netlify
I'm in mastodon.world server but it can be hard to remember. So you can now find me as @hamatti@hamatti.org as well! I share the secret to that in this post.
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Verifying identity online
Twitter and Mastodon both offer(ed) a different way to verify who you are, neither of them perfect. In this blog post I explore what and why.
November
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Python prep for Advent of Code 2022
Advent of Code is right around the corner and I decided to gather my favorite Python tips and standard library tools from my previous years' puzzle-solving.
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steamos-readonly
Since steamos-readonly command is not very well documented, adding a note to myself in this blog as I'll definitely need it again in the future.
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New Firefox extension to help Pokemon TCG players
My newest Firefox extension helps Pokemon TCG players with their online code redeem process by improving the UX, reducing errors and making it easier to keep track of codes.
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My overengineered tooling for Pokemon TCG Card Viewer extension
Pokemon TCG Card Viewer is a Firefox extension with development tooling that's overengineered but fun. In this blog post, I'll go through how I use web-ext and make to streamline the development and build process.
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How to wait for user input from Firefox extension page before continuing
I recently explored a few ways for a Firefox extension to ask for user input via an extension page and continuing the extension execution once that has been provided.
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I joined Mastodon
As so many others, I decided to join Mastodon in preparation for the possible downfall of Twitter.
October
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Find assigned tasks from Google Drive
We use Google Docs a lot to work, to document things and to keep track of meeting notes. That enables us to be efficient and productive remote team. It's easy to get lost with tons of documents and tasks assigned to you. In this blog post I show how to find all the open assigned tasks.
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Upcoming live stream: first look at Rocket Oct 22nd
Join me as I take a look at Rocket and do my first dev livestream in a long time.
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Ad-Filtering Dev Summit 2022 Recap
October 5-6th 2022 I participated in Ad-Filtering Dev Summit in Amsterdam to learn about ad blocker industry, changes in browsers and to meet amazing extension developers. Here is my recap of the event and my favorite talks.
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React Finland 2022 Recap
In September 2022, I spent a week organizing and participating in React Finland. Here is my recap of the conference and my picks for interesting talks to check out.
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Set up a dashboard using Google Slides
I've used a one-slide Google Slides + short URL setup for years to communicate what work is being done in my nook of the organization. Here's how to set one up.
September
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kittens-everywhere – how to build a browser extension
A tutorial for building your first browser extension - kittens-everywhere - that replaces images in the web with pictures of cute kittens.
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Traveling in connected, digitalized world
I love traveling. And in a world with digital services, easy connectivity and friends everywhere, it's easier and more fun than ever for me.
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Why I do what I do?
I have two main beliefs that led me to building communities for developers: 1) technology can be used for the good of humanity and 2) technology is everywhere and you can't opt out.
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I built a Firefox extension for Pokemon TCG players
I built a Firefox extension for Pokemon TCG players who like me, want a better way to read PTCGO decklists in the web.
- Hello from the new developer advocate (via Mozilla Add-ons Community Blog)
August
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The Firehose
It's been a while since the last update on this site, either on this blog or in the weeklies. I started a new job as a Senior Developer Advocate for add-ons at Mozilla in the beginning of August and it has pretty much taken all of my energy to create anything.
July
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I wrote my first Dropzone 4 action
I recently got into two new apps: open source video player called Iina and a macos menu bar tool Dropzone. Then I wrote a Python script to connect the two. Beautiful.
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Embracing failure
When I grew up, failing or being wrong wasn't something that was encouraged. It led to me only wanting to try things I already knew I'd succeed in. It took me until my late 20s to realize that it's hindering and slowing me down a lot. Luckily, I learned to start failing.
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Unit test your Python code in Jupyter Notebooks
I used learned Jupyter Notebook for last year's Advent of Code but didn't have time in December to figure out how to test my code in that environment. Getting ready for the winter season, I took some time this summer holiday to explore the options and I'm sharing three ways in this blog post.
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Appendix A to Developer's Guide to Communities
You never know who you meet when you're active in your community. Here's one story of how few beers in Christmas-y Helsinki turned into a fun night in Berlin 7 months later.
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Developer's Guide to Communities
Dive in to learn why software developers benefit from joining developer communities locally and globally. Many of the best things in my life are a result of being active in communities and I'll share all my secrets to help you get started.
June
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Javascript's console is so much more than just console.log
I previously wrote how print statements are the best debugging tool. This time, I'll dive deeper into debugging via printing in Javascript/Typescript land. console.log is well known but there's more than meets the eye.
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A lighthouse
On top of a small hill, there's a small lighthouse. At the base of the lighthouse, there's a small house, and at the heart of it there's a fireplace that brings light and warmth to the entire house. Even on the rainy days – and there are plenty – the house stays dry and comfy.
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Goodbye, Futurice
Time for personal news. After 4+ years at Futurice, it's time for me to graduate from Ultimate Learning Platform and move on. Here's a retrospective of the good stuff.
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print is your best debugging tool
One tool to rule them all, one tool to find them (bugs). One tool to bring them all, and in the editor fix them.
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GLC Decklist Validator updated with Astral Radiance
Last week I updated my GLC Decklist Validator with the newest Pokemon TCG set Astral Radiance and wrote a short introduction to the app and how its built.
May
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Summer reading for scifi fans
Who doesn't love a good book of scifi? I collected a big pile of recommendations for quality scifi books and series from one community discussion and compiled them in an easy-to-find format.
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Learning Rust #9: A talk about rustlings
I got to host Rust Finland's meetup at Futurice on May 9th and ended up doing a lightning talk introducing the audience to rustlings project.
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A good job interview sets both sides up for success
Recently I've had many discussions in meetups, online dev communities and career events about interviews and how different people see them. I like to think that a good interview sets up both sides for success and doesn't try to trip the candidate with tricks.
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A week in life of a developer advocate
So what do I as a developer advocate actually do? What's hidden beneath the title? I wrote a journal for a week about the things I did to give you a peek into the life of an advocate.
April
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Shy introvert's (short) guide to speaking in conferences
Being a shy introvert, tech conferences and especially speaking in them can be very scary. Somehow I ended up doing that for a living so here are my tips for making a conference trip easier to enjoy.
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Documentation: man pages vs tldr
How do reference and recipe documentation approaches differ and where they shine? Let's take a look by comparing man pages to tldr pages.
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My trip to Django Day Copenhagen 2022 and Stockholm
Django Day Copenhagen 2022 was a wonderful event full of great talks and amazing people. Here's my recap of my trip to the event.
March
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Listen to everyone, listen to no one
There's a lot of advice available for those who seek it. How to best approach to different advice from different people? My advice is: listen to everyone, listen to no one.
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Last two years have been awful
CW: burnout, depression, stress. These past two years have been incredibly tough and I've been struggling more than I ever have. And I want to share it so that if you're going through something similar, you can know you're not the only one.
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I'm speaking in Django Day Copenhagen 2022 in April
I'll be speaking in Django Day Copenhagen this year, on April 8th about Debugging Django. If you're around, join the conference and let's meet!
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Added custom highlight function for nhl-235
235 now supports highlights of your favorite players so it's even easier to check if your favorites are doing well in the league.
January
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Rant: Please stop ruining the search
If I want to watch a Nicolas Cage movie in Netflix on a Friday night, I'd search for Nicolas Cage and expect to get movies starring him as a result. I don't and it sucks.
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I started writing Weeklies
Last year I experimented with a very personal newsletter and one thing I really liked was that by doing it, I started building a collection of articles and other stuff from others. This year, I'm pivoting it into Weeklies.
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My least favorite board game genre: co-op games
In general I really like working together as a team but when it comes to board games, pretty much every co-op game has problems that makes me choose a different genre of game altogether.
2021
December
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45 stars, Christmas was almost saved - Advent of Code retrospective
Advent of Code for this year is done and for the first time in my life, I got almost to completion with 45 stars and saving the Christmas! Here's my Advent of Code 2021 retrospective of the things I learned and experienced during this month.
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Year in Review 2021
For the sixth year in the row, I'm taking a look back to my year to document what 2021 was all about, to remember the good and the bad and maybe set some goals for 2022.
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Merry Christmas!
Merry Christmas everyone!
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Tips for Advent of Code
Solving Advent of Code puzzles is a fun way to spend December. Over the years I've participated, I've picked up a habit or two that makes debugging broken solutions easier.
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Advent of Code 2021
This year I'm once again solving Advent of Code puzzles to help the elves save the Christmas. This year, my trusty tools are Python and Jupyter Notebook and I'm focusing on writing my thoughts and insights for other humans within my notebooks.
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Customizing liiga.fi experience
When I visit a sports website, I want to see scores, standings and how the league/tournament is run. Usually you see ads, news, content pieces and all the good info is hidden somewhere. With custom CSS, that's not a concern anymore.
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Minimal Travel Table Top Game Collection 3: Project 108
My third table top collection design is a semi-universal deck that is designed to play 9 different board games + anything that can be played with standard playing cards.
November
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Hello code, my old friend
It's been a while since had time and energy to code but when I got into the flow, I ended up doing a major rewrite of an application I had built earlier in the fall.
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Reaction GIF board with Stream Deck
Stream Deck is not only a great tool for streamers but can also make you the coolest coworker in your company. Build your own reaction GIF board and always have the right response to every situation in Slack or Discord.
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The most social and loneliest job: being a solo developer advocate
Being a solo developer advocate can be the most social and yet the loneliest job at the same time. In this blog post I share why I came to that conclusion during my journey as the solo dev advocate at Futurice.
October
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Tiny handy tools: Community Edition
Last week I shared my favorite tiny tools for Mac. Then I asked people in my dev communities what they like and compiled a follow up list of the best recommendations.
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Tiny handy tools
I love tiny tools: things that do one thing and do it well and for the rest of the time, you don't even remember they exist. I compiled a list of the ones I use every day and couldn't live without anymore.
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Over a year of weekly blogging
A retrospective on my past year of publishing a blog post in my blog every single week. I discuss in depth what I've done, experienced and learned during this experiment and journey.
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Python 3.10 is out and I'm excited
A long-awaited release of Python 3.10 is finally here. Its two major new things are the introduction of pattern matching and the improved error messages.
September
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How would you compare two version numbers?
Comparing two software version numbers may sound simple and straightforward. I ran into a discussion about it in Twitter and explored further.
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Where do you see yourself in five years?
I was recently asked where I see myself in 5 years and it sparked the need in me to write about why I think it's a horrible interview question but a great topic to reflect on.
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Roll and Write board games are awesome
or how I learned to love the genre I didn't find enjoyable in the past. Roll and Write board games have found their way into my favorite tabletop genres and in this blog post, I explore some of my favorites.
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React Finland 2021 Recap
I spent the previous week at React Finland 2021 conference that was full of very interesting sessions. Here's my thoughts about the conference and recommendations for talks to watch from the event.
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Learning Rust #8: What's next?
As the NHL season came to an end in early summer and the 235 app only needs a few adjustments before the next season, it's time for me to plan for a new project. I want to work on something that allows me to go deeper into more advanced functionality with Rust.
August
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Syntax highlight all the things
Prism.js is a popular Javascript library that enables syntax highlighting for code examples on a website. I created syntax parser for PTCGO deck lists to give them a bit of more life.
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Blogging is my new favourite refactoring tool
Writing blog posts about my technical projects has been a great way to improve my code. By explaining my code, I expose it to a fresh set of eyes and often find improvement opportunities.
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Your blog should have an RSS feed
Your blog should have an RSS feed so people can subscribe to it and find your new posts without all the noise of social media and being on the mercy of the algorithm.
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Learning Rust #7: Learn from the community
Rust community is wonderful and people are very helpful and open for sharing. In this post of Learning Rust series, I share my community resources for learning more.
July
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Blog post filter with Netlify Functions
I built my first ever serverless feature to add tag filtering to my blog listing. Here's how I integrated that to my Ghost & Eleventy setup with Netlify Functions.
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Javascript Basics: Scope
One abstract concept Javascript developers need to learn quite early on is the concept of scope. In this blog post, I'll walk you through what scope is and how it works in Javascript.
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codebase ep. 4: Web Components with Matias
Web Components provide an API that allows you to write custom HTML tags with custom functionality. Matias Huhta joined me in codebase to talk about them and live code examples for how to get started with Web Components.
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Learning Rust #6: Understanding ownership in Rust
One of my biggest challenges with Rust has been understanding its ownership model and how borrows and references operate. Let's take a look.
June
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My travel setup for Nintendo Switch
Nintendo Switch is a beautiful hybrid of home console and a hand-held. But when I travel for a long time, I want home console experience on the road. I'll tell you how I've done it while maintaining the mobility of the system.
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Why scheduling Slack messages and emails is so valuable for community builders
For community builders, there's a huge gap between when we have the info and when we announce it. Scheduling Slack messages and emails gives us a huge power in getting work done more efficiently.
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My (career) story in tech and developer relations
Everyone's career story and progression is different. Since in social media stories about fast learning and advancement pick up a lot of attention, I wanted to share my slower path.
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codebase ep. 3: PHP with Larry
In the third episode of codebase, I sat down with Larry Garfield who has over 20 years of experience with PHP. We discussed the history and the future of the language and learned so much about how PHP has evolved.
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Learning Rust #5: Rustlings
One way to learn a language is to start from compiler's error messages and fix things. Rustlings is a great project built to do exactly that and the best approach I've seen towards it in the programming world.
May
- My Employer Supports My Open Source Contributions (via honeypot.io)
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Does it make sense to finish what you started?
As a university dropout, a discussion about finishing your degree or thesis comes up regularly, often accompanied by a 'you should finish what you start' comment. I'd argue it's not a virtue to finish what you start if it's not the best thing you can do at the moment.
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Scheduling operations in Python
Do you have a need to run a Python function on regular intervals, like every hour or on 12.00 each Monday? Python package schedule makes it easy and its API is beautiful and easy to understand.
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codebase ep. 2: Clojure with Ykä
In the second episode of codebase, I sat down with Ykä to talk about and live code a bit of web backend with Clojure. Here's a recap of what we discussed.
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Learning Rust #4: Parsing JSON with strong types
By definining type definitions as structs, you can give all the heavy lifting to the language and library when parsing JSON and make your logic code much much cleaner. In this post, I talk about writing those structs as well as dynamic and optional keys.
April
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Falling forward
As a kid, I hated failing and would do anything I could to avoid it – including avoiding risks. Since my mid-20s, I've adopted more of a growth mindset and also learned to embrace failing to find out things that work.
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Documentation-driven command line tools in Python with docopt
One way to power your Python command line tool's argument parsing is to use documentation-driven approach and use docopt library.
- How Spice Program supported my creation of 235 (via Futurice.com)
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Introducing developer community show codebase
codebase is a new developer community show on Youtube. It's a celebration of the variety of different technologies and developers working with them. In the first episode, I sat down with Fotis to talk about accessibility in web.
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Learning Rust #3: crates.io & publishing your package
When I was young, computer software was bought in boxes from store. Later, we moved into using software online and I spent 15 years falling in love with web as a medium. With my Rust project, I'm back in the mode of sharing executable binaries and distributing new versions is bit more complicated.
March
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My pockets are full of games
I love board games and especially making them so small they fit my pockets. But now I've made so many of them, my pockets are full. Let's take a look at my collection.
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5 minutes that changed my life
Sometimes inspiration comes from small things: interactions, kind words and examples. In 2011, I watched Hilary Mason's talk from IgniteNYC and looking back at the past 10 years, it's shaped my life a lot.
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How to parse command line arguments in Python
Python is a great language for writing command line applications. Its built-in tool for parsing arguments is powerful and I gathered together some of the most used cases.
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I gamified my own blog
Many platforms these days have some gamification features. One of the common features is awarding users/members/players different badges to reward their loyalty and activity in the platform. I decided to award some to myself since I self-host my blog and have no one else to give me badges.
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Learning Rust #2: Option & Result
One big challenge I had when I started learning Rust (and still do) is that so often things are wrapped in Option or Result types and it feels like such a hurdle to always unwrap things. Let's talk about it!
February
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Learning in public
It's a great feeling when you write a blog post or give a talk about something you're doing and learning and people participate in the discussion, allowing you to learn more. Join me to read how you can get into the mindset of learning in public.
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Pattern matching is coming to Python
Pattern matching is coming to Python this year and I'm so excited for it! I'll walk you through what is pattern matching and how it's gonna work in Python.
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My home office setup
During the pandemic, I've made some additions to my normal laptop-only setup as I end up spending all my days sitting at my desk. Macbook, alpacas and Nintendo Switch – and a tiny bit more.
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Learning Rust: Pattern Matching
Pattern matching in Rust is one of my favorite features. This blog post is the first in series where I'll write about things I learn while building my first Rust applications.
January
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Introducing: 235
There's nothing that brings hockey fans in Finland together better than the iconic 235. Originally from YLE teletext, it's now available on command line.
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Project: card-print-css
The smallest CSS library I've ever written: card-print-css resizes images for printing, cutting and sleeving so you can play test and prototype faster.
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Thoughts on debugging
Debugging is a way to figure out what's wrong with your application and code. It's one of those skills that is very much worth investing your time and effort into as it will help you become a better developer.
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You should start a blog today
I think everyone should have a blog. First of all, for themselves but it also has benefits in the professional career that take time to build.
2020
December
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Year in Review 2020
2020 is finally over and I look back into the year and what my life looked like. Spoilers: it was not the best I've ever had.
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Merry Christmas my friends
Merry Christmas! This week I just want to take a moment to wish you all happy holidays.
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Advent of Code #3: Slowing down
Around day 10, things started to slow down and I lost momentum with Advent of Code as so easily happens. What has made me very happy meanwhile has been the sense of community and encouraging others to join the challenge and work together to help Santa.
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Advent of Code #2: Borrows, unwraps and lots of compiler errors
Days 2 to 8 of Advent of Code and my journey with Rust was like 2020 on a very small scale: a rollercoaster of emotions. Some days I felt really good and enjoyed learning and coding and some other days I felt like I knew nothing about Rust and couldn't figure out the problems at all.
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Advent of Code #1: Getting Started
Advent of Code is an annual programming challenge that contains multiple small code puzzles each day leading up to Christmas. For me, they are a way to brush up old tech or learn something new. This year, I'm learning Rust for the first time.
November
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Customize your Internet experience
Sometimes websites and web apps need a bit of customization to make them fit your personal workflow (or to hide things that distract you). Bookmarklets, browser extensions and user scripts are tools that you can use to customize the experience to your liking.
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Added keyboard support to ON24 with bookmarklet
ON24 webinar platform didn't support keyboard usage for changing slides so I wrote a bookmarklet for me and my colleague to get through an online meetup.
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Functions 101
There is a brief moment in new software developer's life when the concept of functions (or subroutines or methods as they are called in some languages) is bit fuzzy. This post aims to be a good starting point on your journey to understand functions, how they are built and how they are used.
- Coaching at codebar has given me a lot (via codebar blog)
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Validating dynamic data conditionally with Joi
How to validate dynamic data using conditional validations using Joi library? In this post, I explore a use case from last week to see how we can check that all numeric values are positive values.
October
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How to ask help for technical problems?
Asking for help in technical problems can end up in a lot of back and forth before even getting to the bottom of the issue. Here are some tips how to effectively ask for help.
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It's time for a remote work retrospective
Lot of us has ended up in a forced remote work experiment due to the pandemic. 6+ months into it, now is a good time to do a remote work retrospective.
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Dev Diary #2: Working prototype
Today, I finally have a working prototype! I didn't make big changes to the technical approach compared to my failed attempts but maybe my subconscious had been working on the problem over the summer since this time it clicked.
August
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The many designs of on-screen inputs
Inputting text with a game controller is most of the time a bad experience. I looked into some designs of text inputs with controllers and joysticks and felt bad about the current state of design of them.
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Arts, crafts and software: enhancing Flamme Rouge
Flamme Rouge is a great board game but it has lots of components and solo play is bit cumbersome. I did some arts, crafts and software development to make life better.
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Adding keyboard shortcuts to Viaplay
Viaplay's video player was lacking some shortcuts that I had gotten used to with other streaming sites. I built a Chrome Extension to add support for mute and fullscreen shortcuts to make my life a bit nicer during the NHL playoff season.
- Secret Santa PnP – Designer Diary #1: I made some cards! (via BoardGameGeek)
July
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Recreational Mathematics
Today we'll talk about a guilty pleasure of mine: recreational mathematics. When I was younger, I was very into math but as I grew up, I forgot how to do it. I still enjoy recreational math so I decided to introduce you to it as well.
June
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Hidden Identity in Table Top Games
One of my favorite table top gaming genres is hidden identity games. This is mainly because I like the idea of co-op games (where all players are on the same side) but hate the actual way those end up being played.
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I built a digital version of Black Hole game
I practice my programming skills by implementing physical table top games into digital format. This time, I built Black Hole - a two player fun challenge game.
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Different approaches to learning programming
You can teach and learn programming many different ways. In this post I compare the hands-on approach to the ground-up approach.
- Building Hobby Projects to Help Get Your First Programming Job (via honeypot.io)
May
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How to scrape a website with Python & BeautifulSoup
Learn how to scrape data from websites using Python and BeautifulSoup so that you can use it in your scripts and applications.
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Minimal Travel Table Top Game Collection 2: Social Distancing Edition
When life gives you social distancing, play solo table top games! I created Minimal Travel Table Top Game Collection: Social Distancing edition for that.
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Tips for giving talks online
Do you feel like doing presentations remotely from home is uncomfortable or challenging? Check out these tips for improving your speaker experience and the way you are perceived when giving talks.
- How to Get Overwhelmed in Tech (via honeypot.io)
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Dev Diary #1: Pokemon TCG Cube Draft
I started building an online cube draft tool for Pokemon TCG players and wanted to share my progress in this dev diary.
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<code>blocks
Writing blog posts in Ghost is a great experience but adding code snippets is not so I built a tool to make it easier.
April
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True, True, True == (True, True, True) in Python
A friend shared this interesting piece of Python code in our Telegram chat today and I wanted to walk you through it.
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Morning Coffee Projects: Youtube extension
Youtube constantly recommends me old videos that I've already seen or are not relevant anymore. So I built a Chrome extension for myself to alleviate the issue.
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8 tech podcasts I listen
Podcasts are a great source of learning and staying up to date on what's happening in tech. I listen to a bunch of them during my commute or when taking a walk. Here are the podcasts aimed towards software developers that I listen to.
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Testing lifehack: testlab repositories
Sometimes it's hard to set up tests in a legacy project so I built testlab repositories so I can do TDD when I develop new functionality.
March
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Building a website with a static site generator, part 3: Domain, Analytics and Forms
Once your website is up and running, it's time to get a professional looking domain, think about analytics and collect data with forms.
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Building a website with a static site generator, part 2: Eleventy
In this post, we're gonna take a deeper look into Eleventy which takes care of building the website by combining layout templates with blog post data from Markdown files.
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Building a website with a static site generator, part 1: Setup
In this blog series, we will build a static website using Eleventy, NetlifyCMS, GitHub and Netlify. In the first post, we set everything up and deploy a template page to make sure everything works.
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How my site is built with Eleventy + Ghost
This website is run with Eleventy, using Markdown and Ghost CMS for blog posts. I've iterated in a couple of ways to build the CMS integration.
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New Guide - Humane Guide to Debugging Web Apps
Humane Guide to Debugging Web Apps walks the reader through the fundamentals of the mindset and process, provides practical tools and tips for debugging Javascript and CSS code and finally talks about some of my favorite non-technical approaches.
February
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Minimal Travel Table Top Game Collection
I love board games but also I travel a lot and want to fit my games into a backpack when I'm on the road. So I built a collection of 6 great games that fits into a deck box.
January
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Helsinki Dev Lunch
Helsinki Dev Lunch is a monthly casual lunch gathering of software developers in Helsinki area.
2019
December
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Year in review 2019
Another year is coming to its end. Last few years I have done some reflection on the past year, mainly to document to myself what I have been working on, how I feel about the year and to fight my impostor syndrome by writing down and quantifying my accomplishments.
August
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My journey in diversity and inclusion in tech
I'm very passionate about diversity and inclusion in tech because I used to be a bad actor and the best thing that happened in my life was when I was called out on that.
July
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Why I love using command line interface?
Command Line Interface (CLI) can seem ancient way of interacting with computers but it has many great benefits.
June
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I love writing scripts to solve small problems
Building software is nice but I'm a big fan of solving my small problems with quick Python scripts
May
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Simple backend system for frontend workshops in Javascript
When teaching Javascript with or without React or Vue, it's hard to figure out what to do with backend. I built a simple system that can be plugged into any of them to act as backend, storage and API.
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Make your function calls more readable
Default arguments in Javascript cannot be named when calling the function. This post takes a look at different approaches to make the code more readable.
February
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How to enable SSL in Netlify with custom domain
I went through the hoops of using custom domain with Netlify and learned about DNS
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PHP needs its own ES6
Javascript has been evolving amazingly but I feel PHP is lagging behind itself
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“Event is over and it was a failure. What happened?” — Pre-mortem can help you avoid pitfalls
In modern day and age, many organizations are adopting retrospectives (a session where you look back and talk about what went well, what went wrong and how we can improve) and post-mortems (how did the project go and where did we go wrong) as part of their day-to-day work.
January
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Event organizer - automate what you can, focus on people with all you’ve got
I have learned to build and automate things. This is a story of how you can do it too.
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Better bash history search with McFly
McFly is a library that will make your life so much easier when navigating through your bash history
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Post a message from Slack to Twitter with Zapier
If you want to auto-post something from Slack to Twitter, Zapier is your friend.
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Learning programming has never been more accessible in Helsinki
If you're interested in learning programming, the scene in Helsinki is blooming right now. There are long-term options as well as weekend workshops, evening workshops and support groups so everyone should be able to find their place in the community.
2018
December
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Year in Review 2018
I love reflecting and looking back to the past year: to celebrate accomplishments, to acknowledge failures and to recognize the progress.
November
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Internet = People = ❤️
I love Internet. And I have ever since I gained access to it in my pre-teens at the turn of the millennium. There has been so many different steps in my path through the Internet forest but almost all of them are about people.
July
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Developers do design — but we’re not taught it
In many companies, most of the days we developers end up doing design choices. Whether it’s graphic or service design, by the virtue of building things we make design decisions. But most developers are not taught design, not even the very basics.
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City Bound Nomadic
In the near future (say, within the next 5 years), I want to explore the possibilities of a digital nomad lifestyle. Working independently of location and time is a compelling idea and having followed digital nomads in blogs and Youtube and Instagram for quite a while, I’d definitely love to give it a try. Seeing the world, learning about new cultures and being able to experience the wonders that the world has to offer — sounds good, right?
June
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The Reset Button
Look around you. Of all your things, how many of them were a result of a thought-out process? And how many are just a result of an accumulation that started when you were a teenager?
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The Cost of a Purchase
Last week I had an interesting conversation with a friend. We started talking about minimalism and getting rid of excess stuff as she was moving to a new apartment. The long-winding discussion led to a topic of how I have changed my perception of the cost of things. Back in the day I was mostly measuring everything by their monetary value - do I have enough euros or dollars in my bank account to make this purchase.
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Space has a Tendency to Fill Itself
An average US household has 300,000 items. I would argue that it’s a lot. But looking at my own childhood in Finland, it’s actually not surprising. We tend to gather a lot of stuff. And there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for it - space has a tendency to fill itself.
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My love-hate relationship with PHP Arrays
I’ve been programming PHP for most of my life, almost 20 years now. While PHP has many downsides, horrible history, and terrible reputation, it has improved a lot with PHP 7 and modern frameworks like Laravel that make it really enjoyable to develop.
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Beginning of a Journey
My journey as a minimalist started a year ago. For quite a while I had been a fan of the Tiny House movement and sometime last summer I ended up watching Youtube videos about minimalism and quickly found out about The Minimalists.
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What living a minimalistic life has taught me
About a year ago I learned about minimalism from Youtube videos and the two dudes who call themselves the minimalists. In the end of June last year, I wrote a blog post about the first steps in my journey. After having a fruitful discussion about the topic with a friend on Wednesday, I decided to write a follow-up based on my experience and learnings from the past year.
May
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Do you want to learn new stuff?
Continuous improvement, life-long learning, staying on top of your game are all things very close to my heart. It's not always easy though. Sometimes your life (personal and professional) takes a detour and you end up in a situation where your skills get rusty.
March
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Help your customers become better
Engagement and churn are topics that companies have to think about all the time. How to optimize the on-boarding to keep your users in the platform, how to make your product either addictive enough or providing enough value to get them return.
February
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Food Connects People - How to Hack Your Community with Food
One of the things I learned early on was that everybody has to eat. Most people eat lunch and it means taking a “mandatory” break from work and the busy-ness of business life. I’ve used that knowledge to my advantage by making a lot of connections by asking people for lunch. They don’t have to make room for meeting me and people are often happier when they eat.
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Communities in Marketing
Communities are fantastic, I love them. We have had communities for as long as humans has been in existence but in the past few years, it has become a buzz word. With the Internet and tools like Facebook, Twitter, Discord and Slack providing access to everyone globally, it’s no wonder these communities have started to pop up.
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How I convinced 15+ companies to contribute to OSS
Story time! On January 2nd I launched Turku Gives Back, a non-profit project to encourage local software companies to give back to open source. Last Friday, February 2nd 16 companies and bunch of individuals joined together, we made 20+ contributions to various open source projects.
January
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5 Reasons to Contribute to Open Source
Open source software has had an immeasurable impact on the modern software business. If you’re building anything for the web, you are most likely heavily relying on infrastructure, software and frameworks built on the open source model — allowing you to get productive with small overhead and benefiting from the efforts of the community.
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How to build a kickass developer community
I was asked by a friend to share some tips and best practices from our two years of running the meetup so that others could replicate and prosper. While we can’t really give a silver bullet nor pinpoint exactly where we got it right, I wanted to share a few things I’ve learned while running Turku ❤ Frontend and growing it from 0 to 350+ members with fantastic partners and constant stream of amazing speakers.
2017
December
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Year in Review 2017
My reflections of the year 2017.
September
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5 Reasons to Attend a Meetup
Meetups are fun and we are happy to see the culture is spreading all around the world making them more accessible to people. We started Turku ❤ Frontend a couple of years ago with the aim to help people learn new skills, meet fellow developers and make it easier for professional developers and students to find jobs and thus, making it easier for companies to find local talent.
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Improve the world — help someone learn
We all have skills that other people lack. Whether it’s programming, knitting, writing, fixing bikes or cooking delicious food, you are better doing it than someone else. And while everyone of us is good at something, we also crave to learn new skills to improve our lives.
June
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Intentional and multifunctional - How I got rid of most of my belongings
I have a background as a hoarder. I lived my childhood in a big suburban home and we threw away almost nothing. As I moved to smaller and smaller apartments, I started seeing the problems with the amount of my stuff. First, I imagined the problem was just bad organizing or dull and stupid floor plans. But eventually I realized the problem was my huge piles of junk.
May
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Code in the Dark Turku
What happens when you put 20 developers behind computers, give them nothing but an editor and a reference screenshot? Together with Valohai and Hub Turku and supported by Reaktor we organized the first Code in the Dark event in Turku last night and it was a blast.
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If you are not doing code reviews, start now!
I was introduced to code reviews few years back in my first startup job and as a junior developer I immediately felt their impact. Having my code reviewed by seniors and reviewing code myself taught me a ton. After that job, I switched to another startup and we had a great code review process in place as well. I thought world was a good place.
April
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Why do good communities thrive?
Recently I’ve been talking a lot with different people about communities, community management and different aspects related to it. One of the key differences in how people view communities is what I call professional-leisure divide. (I hope one day I’ll have a better word for it.)
2016
December
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Build your community like a garden
I have recently found interesting parallels in building and managing communities and gardening. Understanding those parallels and learning from the ancient art of gardening can provide tools for effective community management.
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What Rails Girls taught me about non-organizations
Finland is the promised land of organizations. Almost every citizen is or has been part of a non-profit organization during their life and most of us have been a board member in one or two or … well, let’s just say some of us do it a lot.
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Building a developer community calls for strong support
Almost everyone who’s been in touch with crowdfunding in a form or another or has seen a talk about it, knows the classic 4 F’s. Friends, Family, Fools and Fans. I’ve learned that in some sense, it applies to so much more than just crowdfunding.
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Year in Review 2016
My reflections of the year 2016
August
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8 hours later + Turku <3 Frontend Hackathon
Turku ❤ Frontend is a community of (mostly frontend) developers in Turku region that was started in December 2015. Between September and May, we organize meetups at local companies’ offices with talks and beers and during the summer break we just finished our first hackathon.
2015
December
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Why I love hackathons
I’m a huge fan of hackathons. Last weekend, I had the privilege to organize one for the first time after attending a few. Even though being super tired on Sunday evening after a long weekend of very little sleep on a couch, I was so happy being able to organize a successful event.
April
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What's with all these sorts, PHP?
A few days back I was ranting to my friends about PHP arrays. I’m not as much of a PHP hater as many but there’s still some things that really bug me. Everything to do with arrays is one of them. Let’s have a look. I use the phrase normal array to mean a non-associative array (like Python’s list or Java’s array).
2014
September
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Beauty of the Pipe
The Unix Pipeline is a powerful and beautiful piece of software that is sometimes difficult to grasp for a command line beginner. We are used to use graphical interface apps that mostly only interact with each other by writing and reading files if at all. The concept of standard out (stdout) and standard in (stdin) are something that takes some time to learn and understand when one is learning programming and/or data tools in command line.
August
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Case study - DataMonkey as educational platform
A coworker of mine shared a link to DataMonkey, a platform/website to learn basics of data manipulation, Excel spreadsheets and SQL, the language used for database queries in relational databases like MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQLite. During my studies and personal exploration for the best practices in educational systems, I have encountered many that have been quite horrible (like TRAKLA2 which is used for teaching algorithms and data structures) and many that have a bit better approach (like Codecademy and and ViLLE system for teaching programming).
July
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Adventures of a Junior Developer
I had never had any real problems in starting a new summer job regardless of the field. I have been building elements for buildings, assembling phones, guiding kids in sport camps, selling home electronics and video recording sport events to name a few. But when it started to be a time to turn my education into a developer job in a real company, I had these weird feelings of fear and anxiety. It seemed that there were many processes and practices that everybody else just knew about and I had no idea.
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The Beautiful Game
Regardless of if you call it football or soccer, fans of the the Beautiful Game were in for a treat for the past month. After a 4-year long wait, FIFA World Cup filled the days of sports lovers all around the world. I love soccer and statistics so I collected some of the most interesting stories of this year’s cup.
June
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Becoming a better programming teacher
About a week ago I got an email through San Francisco Ruby Meetup Group about a workshop on becoming a better programming teacher and given my background and passion for education, it was a no-brainer to jump in. A four hour workshop was organized by General Assembly, a company that provides bootcamp like programs, part time courses, classes and workshops for everyone who wants to become a better developer or change their career into development.
January
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Rails Girls San Francisco
After coaching at Rails Girls Helsinki last November and getting a job in San Francisco, one of the first things I did was checking out if there would be a Rails Girls event here too. And how lucky was I. Last weekend, almost 100 enthusiastic girls and women took their laptops and came to Engine Yard for two-day workshop to learn about web development with Ruby on Rails. Since I already wrote about Rails Girls after the last event, I won’t dig too deep into what it is.
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Command line magic with git and bash history
So, in the beginning of January I started as an engineering intern in Chartio and since that my workflow has really improved a lot and I’ve learned and discovered some tricks.
2013
November
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Difficulties with teaching and learning programming
It’s no secret that learning programming is – at least for some of us – an obstacle course. Personally, it took me years to grasp the skills to be a some-what good programmer. For the last 3 or 4 years I’ve been involved in teaching programming basics for freshmen in my university. I started with helping fellow students, then started as a mentor for department and nowadays in addition to previous, I work as a part-time teacher on our courses.
October
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Computer illiterate generations – what should we do?
There has been a lot of discussions during the last years about the IT education of young people. Today, the topic once again popped out in Finnish news when Finnish Broadcasting Company wrote a news piece about the level of IT education in Finnish elementary schools.
September
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Rails Girls – building the future
Today was my first ever Rails Girls event in Helsinki. I ain’t much of a Rails or even a Ruby, I tend to choose Python as my weapon of choice. However, I’ve been long interested in Rails, done some hobby projects with it and even more than that, I’ve been into teaching new people to programming for couple of years now at the university. So coaching a Rails Girls event was super exciting new experience.
June
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69 Lines of SQL
Sometimes I wonder what programming really is and why we hackers find it so compelling. Most of the time we – or atleast I – bang our heads to wall for hours while trying to conquer the challenge. After all those hearth-breaking moments we finally succeed to get the code running and it solves the problem. All the dark clouds disappear, flowers start to bloom and happy squirrels are jumping everywhere. I had one of these moments today while trying to do some SQL magic.
April
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TDD Pair Programming at University
Today was surprising day at the university. I’m taking a class called Designing Object-Oriented Software which has before been somewhat boring 7 x 90 min lectures and an exam but this year our professor hired a guy called Aki Salmi to organise 4 workshops á 4 hours. Beforehand I knew Aki is a guru and an excellent guy but I was still surprised to see how much fun studying at best could be.