Tomas Vik

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My workflow

Since the dawn of time (my school years) I’ve been battling procrastination. Doing the assignments at the latest possible time was a popular activity in my social circles and I don’t remember when/if I actually started working on an assignment the day I got it. There was one mystical place where procrastination mostly avoided me and that place was the office. With colleagues sitting all around me and working, there doesn’t seem to be any alternative other than to work as well.

Minimalism

I was sitting in my rented room in central Melbourne. After months of preparations I was closing my suitcase, expecting an Uber any minute taking me to the airport. Leaving Australia after almost five years of living there and closing or at least pausing a chapter in my life. This article is going to be focused on one critical section of the previous paragraph: “my suitcase”. I’m going to be writing about how I managed to squish five years of my life to a suitcase, even though I lived in a fully furnished house, owned motorbike and at one point in time even a car.

Why I Love SpaceX

Probably my favourite company of all time, SpaceX, is a manufacturer of rockets and satellites. They inspire people around the whole world and are a great showcase of what is good about US. 1 - Making life multi planetary SpaceX’s mission is nothing less than making sure that humanity can survive a mass extinction event on Earth. It’s the whole way Elon Musk, the influential founder and Chief Engineer of SpaceX evaluates his priorities when faced between two options: Which option is going to get us humans faster to having a self-sustained colony on Mars.

Opportunity cost

Thanks to the virus the economy goes bananas. My initial instinct is to do nothing. I mean financially. Hold on to my savings and wait this situation out. And this initial reflex, hoarding savings, is what nudged me to write about a concept that is still quite foreign to me. I grew up in a lower middle class family. Both parents educated but not earning too much money. There was always a big emphasis on saving in my upbringing.

Remote

Interesting times, interesting times. Let’s not wait till the government orders quarantine. If your work involves predominantly computer, you have to start working remotely. This is how you do it. Who am I to talk? I’m a software engineer at GitLab, the largest all remote company in the world. In my ten-year career I’ve worked in teams as small as two and as large as forty people. I’ve had all collocated team, I’ve worked with outsourced offshore team from China and now it’s all remote.

Hashtag: Vanlife

Last Summer, after years of watching YouTube videos about tiny homes and van conversions, I made the decision. I’m going to buy myself a van. Convert it to a camper van and potentially even move into it. Purchase My requirements were quite simple. It needed to be L2H2 (classification of length and height). It had to be around 8K USD so that I’m not too afraid to drill and cut holes in it.

Iteration

Today I’m going to be writing about one concept that is as common in software development as it is counterintuitive. With the added benefit that it translates well into every day life. Imagine you are about to: pick up painting as a new hobby change career from salesperson to a carpenter start going to the gym If you are anything like me, you would do actions like: buy yourself expensive art equipment and text books quit your job and get a workshop sign up for the gym and get new gym gear If these seem like a reasonable steps, you are in for a treat.

Signal - the secure messenger

After writing about privacy and security in general, this is the first time I’m going to be talking about a specific solution. Full disclosure: I’m not a security professional, more of an enthusiast, so please take the advice with a grain of salt. I’ve been disconcerted with the messaging situation for a few years now. I’ve been super excited about using WhatsApp back in the days when it was still an independent company.

Meditation, introduction

This post is an introduction to meditation. If you are meditating regularly, you can skip right over it. What I mean by meditation? When I refer to meditation, I mean mindfulness meditation. That means paying close attention to what is happening in your own mind and consciously trying not to change or force anything. The main goal (at least for me) is to understand better what my own mind is and how it operates.

Security is like ogres

I’ve just seen security report in the news about a critical Bluetooth Vulnerability on Android devices. The report says that the attacker was able to run arbitrary code on Android 8 and 9 devices. Just by being within the Bluetooth range. That got me thinking. How safe can I be from breaches of my privacy/security. Ever. No matter how much effort I would spend on keeping my devices and accounts secured.