These are the notes for my talk at the TechKnowFest in Amsterdam. We always see big technology companies as the best place to work and as those who make the world go around. I’ve been pretty disillusioned in this regard lately. The main reason why technology isn’t really making the world go around is that […]

Nix is a broad product with a steep learning curve. It’s capable of everything from installing a single package to managing every file and application on your OS.

One useful thing you can do with Nix, even as a complete beginner, is manage your dev environments.

Nix lets me have multiple projects on the same system that each have their own independent view of what dependencies are available. I can have one legacy project running Python 2.7 and Node.js 4.x alongside a modern project running Python 3.11 and Node.js 20, and they won’t interfere with each other.

Highlights

• I’m trying to work around manufacturer delays.
• I’ve decided to hang onto TinyPilot’s office for two more months.
• I’m planning my escape from a miserable seller experience on RapidAPI.

Goal grades

At the start of each month, I declare what I’d like to accomplish. Here’s how I did against those goals:

Well, well, well. Who would have thought I would give this another go after pouring my heart a few years ago in a blog post? But I did! And nothing terrible happened!

I've had a silly idea of something I wanted to build for a long time, and I was daydreaming of turning it into a talk. While at Pixel Pioneers earlier in the summer, I asked Jeremy, Michelle and Andy for their opinion on my "elevator pitch", and they encouraged me to go for it. Later on, Hidde gave me excellent feedback on my written pitch. (Thank you!)

I applied around and was excited to have been invited to give it at the State of the Browser (which happened last month) and at FFConf (which is due to occur in less than a month). Another event is lined up for next year, but an official announcement still needs to be made.

My plan is to adapt the talk to each event. For the State of the Browser, I wanted to emphasize what you can do now with the browsers and their current ability. So, using vanilla javascript, HTML and CSS only. For future events, I'm hoping to expand on the tooling but also bring other aspects of fun and encouragement to build silly things for the sake of having fun.

I was incredibly nervous at the State of the Browser. It was my first talk in so many years, but the audience was incredible, and it was lovely to see so many familiar and friendly faces cheering me on. It went well. I even dared to watch the video! I now only hope that it gets even better each time.

I'm very nervous but looking forward to FFConf. It's literally the conference that started a journey of inspiration and acceptance in the tech community I chose to belong. I hope to contribute to people feeling as happy at the end of the day as I felt all these previous years as an attendee. And there are still tickets available!

I don't know where else I will give this talk - or if. But I will convert it to a blog post sometime next year. Regardless, I've updated my speaking page.

PS.: How cool is it that I could link a bunch of people here to their personal websites?