Hello from my home in Helsinki! This is NordLetter #96, 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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Spring is here! Really, truly here.
I resumed going out for my walks with Savya this week. On the first day, the roads were still full of snow and slippery in places, especially the patch around the back.
The next day, the weather changed, temperatures shot above zero (1-5 degrees) and the ice started to melt away.
Slowly, over the week we are now at a place where most of the path we walk on is soil and gravel now.
On the third day, while walking past the tram station, under the bridge I saw some kids on their skateboards. And I thought spring is here. And I remembered distinctly having written about spring. I tried to search for it and found this NordLetter - NL4, which was about spring. But not really about spring. Then I searched for spring, and lo and behold I found it!
As I walked further, toward the beach area, I could hear the birds somewhere up above, chirping. The grass had turned green! There was moss on some stones, on tree trunks. There were more people about as well.
And I thought, is this why they call it spring? Because nature springs back to life, from the death of winter?
I had the same feeling as I walked past the kids and all the people who were walking on this trail beside me. Spring is here. Spring everywhere - from the crows sitting on that patch of land, to all the grass visible now that the ice has melt, to all these people out and about. Spring is here, now.
It was a big week in the household.
Prerna went to three women-celebrating events - one organised by Microsoft, one by AWS and the final one by IWF. The last one to support a friend of ours.
There is value in these events. But whenever I have been to any tech events, I have found the lack of women there galling.
Whenever I go to these events, I go sit, listen to the talks, eat and drink a little and come back. Prerna talks with folks at these events. She makes genuine connections with people - following up with them afterward on Linkedin. She met some inspirational people in these meets. And she told them how she felt about them.
It is not easy. I am working on it.
During a Python event, Prerna went and talked to an organiser and wondered the same question about lack of women in the event - there were two other than her. Next she talked to him about getting mentored. He said he did not have time right now, but he will talk to a friend. The next day, Prerna went and had a chat with her mentor at Oodi.
It was awesome! I have wanted a mentor in my life. I guess, everyone does. But I haven’t went and said it to someone. Even though asking for help is one of the principles I believe in deeply. I don’t find talking to people as easy. But I am working on it. Hopefully, I will find a mentor next.
I finished reading a few books this week - Zen in the art of writing, Die with zero and System Collapse.
I loved Zen in the art of writing. The essay on feeding your muse was particularly interesting to me. From the review -
Feed your muse.
- Read a poem a day
- Read essays - learn about the smells, sights and tastes people may feel in different places
- Read stories and novels - things you want to read and don’t.
TCS has a bibliophile group. I had joined it, but never cared much for the events in it. They asked me to lead a talk, and so I joined a session to know about the format. It was fun. There I got to know about the book - Jaya, a retelling of Mahabharata. I am reading it now and enjoying it. We had watched the Mahabharata series that came out on Star. I find myself placing the scenes from that Mahabharata, while reading this book. Perhaps the first time I am feeling this. It’s awesome.
Read more everyone.
/five things to share
1. What do coders do after AI? - Anil Dash
But there are people who have spent decades honing their craft, committing to memory the most obscure vagaries of this computer processor or that web browser or that one gaming console, all in service of creating code that was particularly elegant or especially high-performing, or just really satisfying to write. There’s a real art to it. When you get your code to run just so, you feel a quiet pride in yourself, and a sense of relief that there are still things in the world that work as they should. It’s a little box that you can type in where things are fair. It’s the same reason so many coders like to bake, or knit, or do woodworking — they’re all hobbies where precisely doing the right thing is rewarded with a delightful result.
Compared to those who see this just as a job, are not passionate about it, and seem like people who will be replaced by AI.
2. Software Bonkers by Craig Mod
So after years of pain, I finally sat down last week and started to build my own. It took me about five days. I am now using the best piece of accounting software I’ve ever used. It’s blazing fast. Entirely local. Handles multiple currencies and pulls daily (historical) conversion rates. It’s able to ingest any CSV I throw at it and represent it in my dashboard as needed. It knows US and Japan tax requirements, and formats my expenses and medical bills appropriately for my accountants. I feed it past returns to learn from. I dump 1099s and K1s and PDFs from hospitals into it, and it categorizes and organizes and packages them all as needed. It reconciles international wire transfers, taking into account small variations in FX rates and time for the transfers to complete. It learns as I categorize expenses and categorizes automatically going forward. It’s easy to do spot checks on data. If I find an anomaly, I can talk directly to Claude and have us brainstorm a batched solution, often saving me from having to manually modify hundreds of entries. And often resulting in a new, small, feature tweak. The software feels organic and pliable in a form perfectly shaped to my hand, able to conform to any hunk of data I throw at it. It feels like bushwhacking with a lightsaber.
I have built similar things for myself. I also tend to ask it to create a script instead of doing the thing itself. A script or code that you have seems more than letting CC do something.
3. “This Is Not The Computer For You” · Sam Henri Gold
This computer is not for the people writing those reviews — people who already have the MacBook Pro, who have the professional context, who are optimizing at the margin. This computer is for the kid who doesn’t have a margin to optimize. Who can’t wait for the right tool to materialize. Who is going to take what’s available and push it until it breaks and learn something permanent from the breaking.
Loved reading it. Reminded me of the shitty PC I used to play RE4 on.
4. About the Macbook Neo
The Essence of a Machine by Om
Customers and reviewers alike look at a laptop and ask all sorts of wrong questions. How much RAM? What GPU? Can it run Final Cut in real time? Nobody stops to ask what they actually need it for.
The spec sheet becomes the thing. The benchmark becomes the measure. The webpage becomes a place to extract every cent. Every human relationship on Instagram an opportunity to transact. And somewhere in all that maximization, the person using the machine disappears.
Also, John Gruber’s review was fun to read.
And I can buy one, just like this one, for $700. That’s $170 less than an 11-inch iPad Air and Magic Keyboard. And the Neo comes with a full-size keyboard and runs MacOS, not a version of iOS with a limited imitation of MacOS’s windowing UI. I am in no way arguing that the MacBook Neo is an iPad killer, but it’s a splendid iPad alternative for people like me, who don’t draw with a Pencil, do type with a keyboard, and just want a small, simple, highly portable and highly capable computer to use around the house. The MacBook Neo is going to be a great first Macintosh for a lot of people switching from PCs. But it’s also going to be a great _secondary_Mac for a lot of longtime Mac users with expensive desktop setups for their main workstations — like me.
I have three devices as well - the iPhone 16 Pro, MacBook Air M1, and iPad Air. I so want to use the iPad - it is great as a focus device, but would I miss it if I did not have it anymore? I think not. I have not started drawing on it yet though. Maybe I would after that. I used to read on it, not right now though. But in that case I would have two devices - the Mac and the iPhone. Both of these are essential to me.
5. Finnish sweets giant Fazer plans to enter Indian market
Fazer said it has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Indian branding firm Reliance Consumer Products Limited (RCPL) to make that happen. according to a company press release.
This is the brand of chocolate I take to India whenever I travel back home. Fazer is awesome. Good move.
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.