I saw this aircraft with a flight number 'TEST' a couple of days ago. It didn't go anywhere, it was probably technicians who were performing some routine checks on the ground. Still, I haven't posted here in a while, so I decided to share 😄
I normally don't do advertising here, whether paid or as a favor. But my cat just got a website, and I couldn't say no: meowsiris.eu
It's a humble beginning - he doesn't know much HTML or CSS, but we all start somewhere. Check it out if you have time, there are some 🔥 photos!
I got myself a new mug!
I saw a meme on reddit with a mug like this and found it hilarious, because:
So, I ordered one from kingitare.ee. They have an online editor where you can upload an image (including an svg!), choose a font, and preview how the product will look like - super convenient. The mug arrived three days after I placed the order.
I'm satisfied with the overall quality, though I haven't tested it in a dishwasher yet. I had a bad experience with an expensive mug from the official Arsenal store - it lost its print after a few cycles.
Happy vibing everyone!
The universe giveth and the universe taketh away.
I created this pull-request today. I guess that's it: the best pull-request of my life. I'll never be able to top it.
(no functionality has been lost in the process)
I'd never attempted to refund a digital product. Most services explicitly state that they don't do refunds, so I just accepted that reality. There are exceptions, of course, like Steam and you-know-what-VPN. But I think Steam was forced to add a refund feature by law, while for you-know-what-VPN it's probably a marketing strategy: only a small number of users actually invoke their money-back guarantee.
At some point, I learned that people sometimes get refunds through customer support. Today I had the chance to try it myself - and it worked!
I added a few more options for those who might want to contact me, so check out this new contact me page! Previously, there was only my email, and a few people even wrote me (not all of theme were spammers btw).
I included a few other channels, such as:
I thought about IRC and LinkedIn. I might still add IRC (placebo @ LiberaChat), but LinkedIn isn't the place for daily communications for me. It's rather a site I feel obligated to check out from time to time because how relevant it is (was?) for IT jobs in Estonia.
In any case, thanks for your attention to this matter!
Today I received a scary looking letter from abuse@hetzner.de, which is my German hosting provider. The text started as follows:
We have received a notification from the German Federal Office for Information Security...
Knowing how notorious German laws are when it comes to intellectual property, I immediately thought: "What did I do?" and "How big is the fine?" To my best knowledge, my blog doesn't violate any rules, yet I didn't expect a message from a Federal Office without any wrongdoing.
I found myself in a rather silly situation, where I had to replace my perfectly capable smartphone. Even though its battery wasn't good after eight years - once I'd finished a carsharing trip two minutes before it died - the device was more than sufficient for all my use cases. I could take pictures, chat in instant messengers, browse websites, read emails, use an online bank, and so on. From that perspective, it totally satisfied my needs.
Last year, I created a tool for rFactor 2 to visualize racing stints. Here's what it produces:
Since then, I'd moved away from GitHub and made all my repositories private just to avoid confusion caused by having the same projects hosted in various places with different code. This led to GitHub Pages restricting access to the visualizer, which I had previously hosted there.
Yesterday I brought it back online. You can now find it here: rf2sv.fakeplastictrees.ee. For anyone unfamiliar with the tool, please refer to my original post, where I spoke about its purpose and limitations.
I decided that if this is my blog, then I should be able to post anything, including silly memes!
Was 2023 the year of the personal website? And what about 2024?
I'm not sure about 2024, but on the last day of 2023, I'd like to respond to the first question posed by Matthias Ott. His Own Your Web newsletter was one of my motivations to keep working on this blog. Seeing others and their website designs reminds me of the days before social media, which had more room for personal expression.
I don’t mean everything is bad today. However, I like being able to personalize my blog with snowflakes, a Christmas tree at the bottom of the page, and altering the mood of my visitors. We can't do that on Facebook or Twitter, which I find odd. Many would enjoy and even pay for such personalization. The only example I can think of is Steam, where gamers can purchase various avatar borders, profile backgrounds, and other visual elements.
This year wasn't just about starting my website.
It can be hard to decide how to spend our free time. We may have some ideas about activities to engage in, but our brains prefer not to invest effort in something deemed unrewarding. Alas, among such things we can find work on quite useful tasks. Usually these activities don't yield immediate tangible output, and it takes months and years to achieve our goals. Say, learning a new language or obtaining any other comprehensive skill. Consequently, our motivation tends to fade off over time. Faced with a choice between difficult or boring tasks and something easy, we often succumb to the temptation, and turn to social media or TV shows.
This summary is based on two books I've recently read: "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman and "Willpower and self-control: How genes and the brain hinder our struggle against temptations" by Irina Yakutenko. The former explores how our brains trick us from a psychologist's perspective, the latter is focused on biochemical processes.
To mitigate this problem, I started creating to-do lists. Having a clear path to follow makes it much easier to stay on the course. No doubt, there are various causes of procrastination, and what works for one individual may not work for another. But to-do lists can be a valuable ally for many people.
I'd like to share my experience on how I've managed to organize my time better.
