Hello from my home in Helsinki! This is NordLetter #104, a weekly newsletter on living and walking in Finland. Each week I share some of the interesting things I found on the web.
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I spent most of last week coughing into my elbow (when outside) and just coughing (while at home).
I don’t want to say Savya got this from his päiväkoti and passed it on to me. But I am not not saying it either.
What I do hope for is that this would be the last sickness of the season. I am really done with this. And in the immortal words of a fellow parent - it’s summer now!
Speaking of, on Friday, at his päiväkoti, the teachers, Prerna and other fellow moms celebrated Mother’s Day. There was coffee, a burger, some art and a couple of cards made by Savya.
Not by design, but we managed to celebrate Mother’s day over the past couple of days, with some Samosa Chat at Indian Street Food Corner, Samosa and Handi-Paneer at Mango Palace and finally, Soya Chunk Kebab by your’s truly.
Tomorrow, we will be visiting Fazer thanks to the tenant committee of our building. There were some tickets made available via a online form they had set up. Sometimes I wonder if there could be a better way to do this. Because, all that you have time for in these things, is fill out your details. And then the form is closed.
Incidentally, at Savya’s last päiväkoti, one of the last things we did was celebrate Father’s Day. There was supposed to be coffee and snacks, but I did not get any.
I was happy sitting with Savya and seeing how he plays. I got to play with him inside his päiväkoti. Prerna had been with him during the beginning-getting-to-know-the-päiväkoti phase. So I did not know the insides of the place.
I had sat with Savya while he drew with some crayons inside a father-son caricature. And then he ran around in the gym/sleeping room with other kids.
This week was momentous in terms of work adjacent things. I rediscovered my earlier post on be a hybrid and thought, that’s a nice way to introduce myself in meetups and otherwise.
I also went through my first learning module at herizon. I had registered with them some time back, but did not do anything after that. The module was full of practical instructions, including things like - having a plan for the meetups (meet 3 new people), on what it means to network, how hiring happens in Finland, how to Linkedin and so on.
Most of these things were things I had heard from others in the past. But reading it here, in order, in one place, did something that getting this information in a disjointed way did not.
I finished reading Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut this week. This, surprising to me at least, was only the second book I’ve read of the man. Surprising because I know Kurt Vonnegut, and love his writing.
In addition to whatever I have written in my review, I loved the fact that he had named all the chapters in the book. And such funny names they were.
This is a funny and fantastical book. Read it.
I also gave a book-talk on Children of Time at work.
I have recently discovered a bibliography group at TCS. I thought they were new, but turns out they have been at it for the past 20 years - mostly based out of Mumbai - which explains why I hadn’t heard of them.
I had loved reading Children of Time and wanted to discuss it’s salient themes - around gender, intelligence, it’s answer to Fermi’s paradox and so on.
I had prepared the slides last week. My original plan was to keep it super minimal, with just the text on a white background. But then, at the last Vibe-Coding Meetup, I saw someone present these beautiful bold text on top of beautiful pictures slides, and I thought, this would be perfect for my talk.
So I went ahead and downloaded some images from Nasa Images and put some text on those.
I had fun with the talk. The goal was the discussions - and they were fun and insightful.
I am hoping to do this again, this time with Outlive.
And finally, two AI things that interested me this week.
- Thanks to RAMaggedon, Apple raised the Mac Mini’s starting price. They ended up shelving some configurations. I would not have cared as much about it, but my Mac is showing it’s age now. I got a message some time ago about lack of free space. Not once - twice. So, that.
- I came across this post about using HTML as the output format for Claude Code. I have had similar experiences in the past. Once when trying to come up with alternative UIs for something. Once while trying to learn something. And once today, when I wanted to build something and needed step-by-step instructions on how to do it. HTML is great for that!
Have a happy mother’s day. And if you can, give them a hug!
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Until next week.