NL40 - Writing and publishing

Hello from my home in Matinkylä! This is NordLetter #40, a weekly newsletter on living and walking in Finland. Each week I share some of the interesting things I found on the web.

Previous editions can be found here. You can reach out to me by replying on this mail or adding a comment on this. I am also posting on Threads and Mastodon.

I finished editing the poetry collection I am working on this week. Next up is figuring out how to format the book for publishing. I will do paperback and ebook. This will be a collection of 50 poems. So a small paperback will be a good thing to have.

I have been struggling with so-many options that are present in all these tools. As I write this, I think the better way to do this will be to focus on one format at a time and ignore the rest.

I can for example, focus on the Kindle edition first. And once that is done, move to the print edition.

Most of this exercise is one-time work. Whatever I learn now, will be useful for later. And yes, there will be a later. Many laters in fact.

The Iso Omena Library has a VOX section in it. The VOX section is where you have things like video games, a pool table, a table tennis table. I used to think it was for youth only.

I went and asked last week, and they told me the table tennis table could be used by anyone. You do not and can not book in advance. Each person gets a 15 minute slot. There is a library employee sitting there, you tell them you want to play, they put your name in an excel, and then you play.

I have been looking for a place to play table tennis for so long. There used to be a table in our office, but they removed that table.

On Sunday, I invited my friends to play table tennis. We played a few singles. All of us won 1 game each. There were three of us. And then a kid there asked if he could play with us as well. We ended up playing five doubles games with him.

I had fun. I love table tennis. The best I was at Table tennis was during my school days. I just could not find any place to play the game after school.

I have a place now.

/five things to share

1. The California Job-Killer That Wasn’t

California increased minimum wages, and while everyone claimed that it would reduce jobs, it actually did not.

In the six months after California’s new minimum wage came into effect in April, the state’s fast-food sector actually gained jobs. If anything, it proves that the minimum wage can be raised even higher than experts previously believed without hurting employment. That should be good news. Instead, the policy has been portrayed as a catastrophic failure. That is a testament to how quickly economic misinformation spreads—and how hard it is to combat once it does.

2. Honda Nissan and Mitsubishi are merging.

I asked my friend if this means they will be bigger than Toyota.
He laughed.
"No", he said.

3. How taling over a wall changed my direction as a programmer - Andrew Wulf

Basically talking over the wall, and going to that random meeting, gave me the idea that I should stick to programming, and never looked back.

4. The paper passport is dying - Wired

It mentions India and Finland, two places where there are programs going on to reduce the need to stand in immigration lines. Coincidentally I had to wait at immigration both while I landed in Delhi and Helsinki.

Digiyatra is of course enabled for local travel in India. I love the facility. The not standing in lines is again a great feature to have.

I can not wait for this to be done soon.

5. About Temu and how it is changing tactics to deal with US regulations

In NL38 I had linked to an article about how the Chinese EV industry is winning against European counterparts. One common link between both (Temu is a Chinese company) was the fact that the Chinese companies seem to be able to iterate very quickly. Be it cars or apps.

/new posts

These are the things I've written this week.

1. Book review - Poems to Fall in Love with
2. Advanced civilisations could be indistinguishable from nature - A sustainable solution to the fermi paradox
3. Sitting and talking - about the German practice of Stammtisch and missing friends.
4. Book review - Record of a spaceborn few
5. Books I've read this year - The count is 16
6. Two lessons on work - show your work + ask for help
7. Poem - Playful eyes
8. When to write - When you're away from the keyboard

If you enjoyed reading this, and know someone else who might, please consider forwarding this to them. It would help this grow and make me happy. 😄

Until next week.