The future of this website

Tue, 03 Mar 2026 08:33:00 +0000

I haven’t posted here in a while, mostly because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with this ~~blog~~ website. Recently, the Indie Web has gained popularity as an escape from algorithm-driven content and AI-generated noise. Another thing that resonated with me was the essay A programmer’s loss of a social identity which put some of the feelings that have been bothering me in the past months (often subconsciously) into words. All of this (and many other things) made me realise I don’t want to give up on this website yet; I just need some inspiration to shape it.

Journalling

I’ve been interested in journalling probably since I learned how to write - like every kid in the early 2000s, I had notebooks with silly little locks. In high school, I discovered MySpace - one of the best things to ever exist on the internet. It taught me basic HTML and CSS skills before I even decided to study Informatics. Later came Facebook, but I didn’t stick around long after it became mainstream and I became interested into privacy, along with other Reasons why I don’t use Facebook. I also tried blogging on LiveJournal for a few years but eventually moved ✨here✨. My Twitter account, originally created for a job interview, lasted until it stopped being called Twitter. The only social media account of mine that survived* is Instagram - though it’s unrecognisable from the simple photo-sharing app it was in 2013. I keep it to stay in touch with friends, follow interesting content creators and watch the occasional silly reel, but one day I might get mad enough at Meta to finally deactivate it.

* that excludes sharing my analog photos on Lomography and Flickr which fall into the photo-sharing community category

Online identity

Reflecting on the various the social media profiles I’ve held, I realised that these platforms are inherently transient. This website is the only piece of my online identity that I truly control. My main struggle with maintaining a blog was that my topics felt disparate - it was never stritly a “tech blog”, nor was it purely about hobbies or daily life. I value consistency, yet I could not force my interests into a single box. Everything clicked after I discovered the concept of now page. Moving away from traditional, chronological blogging toward digital gardening feels like the right path for me. My online identity doesn’t need to be perfectly curated; after all, I’m only human. The collection of random things I care about is exactly what makes me who I am.

It’s a start

Jekyll Upgrade: I’ve used this static site generator from the start and finally updated it to the latest version. The process was much less painful than I anticipated, and while there are newer alternatives out there, I’m sticking with what works for now.
Remove Disqus: I finally removed Disqus because it’s become a bloated, ad-heavy corporate tool.
The “Now” Page: My goal is to update it every few months to keep this “garden” alive.

Programmer's guide to parenting

Sun, 23 Jul 2023 09:41:00 +0000

It has been more than 8 months since I’ve become a mother. Like anything amazing in life, having a baby is something that cannot be described with simple words without sounding cliche. That’s why I’ll try explaining it using programming principles and terms, in a semi-humorous manner.

KISS

Kiss your baby all the time! But also, keep it simple, stupid! Nature always finds a way, no need to overcomplicate things. There is so much information, so many products, everyone will give you different advice which might make you feel really overwhelmed. But remember that humanity has survived throughout centuries and you’ve got instincts. And common sense.

LIFO

When time is limited, last in, first out might involuntarily become your way of doing chores. You wash your hands and remember that you have to change the towel. On your way to the laundry basket you notice a few groceries that need to be put in the fridge. After taking care of them and still holding the dirty towel, you notice that you’re running out of laundry detergent. You pick your phone to write that in your shopping list. But you notice that your hands are still a bit wet so you go back to the sink just to remember you were on your way to pick a clean towel.

Less is more

This one might seem insignificant but less is more when it comes to cosmetics. Many products, marketed for babies, contain unnecessary and even harmful ingredients. For example, baby wipes might have different scents and long lists of ingredients or contain only water. Obviously the second option is better.

YAGNI

No matter if you consider yourself a minimalist or not, be prepared that your baby will require lots of stuff. But don’t go on a shopping spree because there are tons of items that you aren’t going to need (it). Instead, start small (crib, stroller, clothes, etc.) and pay attention to what your own baby needs. For example, a baby bouncer might work magic for others but not be needed in your home.

No “right” way

There are many apects of taking care for an infant and many ways to do it. If you ask 10 families what’s the best way to put a baby to sleep you’ll hear 10 different approaches (or at least a few variations). So remember that there is no “right” way to do it, just observe your baby and see what works.

Debugging

Having a baby is a lot like debugging. Every time you find the bug, crack the code and get a green light (or a pat on your shoulder), a new challenge appears (see below).

Software updates

You’ve reached a state when you perfectly understand your baby, your life is easy and then one morning everything changes. Your baby used to sleep through the night the last 4 months? Not anymore! Your baby couldn’t sit independently? Not anymore! Who’s to blame? The software updates of your infant’s brain! Sometimes it’s just a patch, other times it’s a minor update or even a breaking change - you never know what and when to expect.

Keeping track

Keeping track keeps you sane. You might find baby tracker mobile apps quite useful, especially in the beginning when you’re learning your baby’s habbits. One morning in the first weeks I woke up and panicked that I’ve slept through the night and my infant hasn’t eaten in 7 hours. But when I checked my phone, I saw that I had recorded nursing at 3 am, although I didn’t remember waking up at all.

TITS

This one is a bonus advice from my husband - always keep your time intensitive tasks separated. Whatever that means.

In a nutshell

Parenting is truly a wonderful and life changing experience, sometimes a bit difficult but ultimately rewarding. It teaches you to observe, be patient and prioritize. There is no greater joy than seeing that little person smile at you, search the room for you, stretch their little hand to touch you and many, many other loveable milestones I’m looking forward to experience.

Generative art: Context Free

Mon, 20 Apr 2020 11:26:00 +0000

Generative art, sometimes called algorithmic art, is defined by Wikipedia as “art that in whole or in part has been created with the use of an autonomous system (…) [which] can independently determine features of an artwork that would otherwise require decisions made directly by the artist”. Back in my second year at university I studied Grammars for Generative Art which introduced its visual aspect to me. Many years have passed since then and I have only recently started experimenting with it again after browsing /r/generative.

Context Free

Context Free is a digital art program that generates images from instructions in the form of context free (design) grammar called cfdg files. What a context free grammar typically does is to analyze a sentence of symbols to see if they can reduce to some root symbol. Here the symbol is a shape, composed of some number of primitive shapes (squares, circles, triangles and fills) and non-primitive shapes. A cfdg file consists of startshape and some number of shape rules. These rules provide information about the shape - colour, geometry (position, size, rotation and skew) and Z order (for overlapping shapes).

Example 1

Here is an example of an image with two primitive shapes. The startshape is called BRANCH but you can use any name. Note that at least one shape with the same name should be provided, otherwise Shape with no rules encountered warning will be displayed. The two shapes are a triangle and a circle. The first one has hue equal to 160, brightness 0.8 and saturation 1. The second has hue 250, brightness 1 and saturation 0.1 but it’s also moved horizontally (x) by 2 and vertically (y) by 1.

startshape BRANCH

shape BRANCH
{
  TRIANGLE [h 160 b 0.8 sat 1]
  CIRCLE [h 250 b 1 sat 0.1 x 2 y 1]
}

Example 2

The example above demonstrates that rules tell Context Free how to draw a shape in terms of other shapes. When a shape is drawn, its rule is evaluated and the shape is replaced with the shapes listed in the rule. Each replacement has a state, relative to the state of the parent shape. This can be illustrated with a simple recursion. The BRANCH shape contains the triangle from the previous example and a call to the same BRANCH rule with parameters. On each call size changes by 0.9, y by -0.2, alpha by -0.2 and hue by 8. Note that the order of the parameters does not change how the shape is drawn.

startshape BRANCH

shape BRANCH
{
  TRIANGLE [h 160 b 0.8 sat 1]
  BRANCH [s 0.9 y -0.2 a -0.2 h 8]
}

Example 3

The next example shows how to define another shape, called SNOWFLAKE which calls the BRANCH shape 9 times while rotating it by 40.

startshape SNOWFLAKE

shape SNOWFLAKE
{
  loop 9 [r (360/9)] BRANCH []
}

shape BRANCH
{
  TRIANGLE [h 160 b 0.8 sat 1]
  BRANCH [s 0.9 y -0.2 a -0.2 h 8]
}

Bonus example

This was my course project for the Grammars for Generative Art course. This 565x565 image contains 39 942 shapes, using only circles. The code can be found in my context-free-artwork repository.

Even more

The examples above show only a fraction of what you can achieve with Context Free. More detailed information about these and other features can be found in the Wiki page. You can also check the official Context Free Gallery for many stunning images.

Generative music

Music combined with live coding is another popular form of generative art but, unfortunately, I haven’t experimented with it yet. Here are some amazing examples:

Film photography

Fri, 03 May 2019 13:37:00 +0000

In early 2000s, when I got my first digital camera, I never looked back to the old, basic film cameras that my parents used to take photos with when I was younger. Digital cameras were the only way to get decent photos as mobile phones with cameras were yet to become popular. Things changed a lot since then and taking a photograph has become like a second nature, muscle memory. But I guess I’m too nostalgic and sentimental to be that involved in this new, shiny technology.

How I got into film photography

I would have continued focusing on digital photography unless my significant other and I didn’t get our hands on an analogue Zenit 11 and a few old rolls of film back in late 2015. We took the camera with us on a hike and experimented with the two different lenses we had. Everything was good until I lost track of the number of photos because I hadn’t set the frame counter dial. The film had ended and pressing the advance lever too strongly tore up the role of film so it couldn’t be rewound. In those situations the best thing to do is to take the camera to a professional studio but I didn’t know it back then - upon opening the back to see what’s up we ended up losing all of the photos. Some time passed and while we were at the seaside on a gloomy autumn day, my significant other spent an entire roll on photographing the fog, crawling above the autumn leaves and the sea. This time we had success with the rewinding and got the film developed. It had been such a long time since I had seen analogue photos but these had turned out pretty good. After that day I got more and more into it and a few years later it’s still a little hobby of mine which I practice mostly out in the nature or during trips.

Film vs. digital

Although digital photography is predominant these days, film photography is still a thing. I use both methods as each one has advantages and disadvantages but here are some of my favourite things about film photography:

It looks so good

I was one of those people searching for the perfect Photoshop/Lightroom tutorial to make my digital photos look like they’ve been taken on film. Was it working? Sometimes I used to get decent results. Was it necessary? No, it just doesn’t feel right ruining high quality photos by applying restrictions and imperfections that belong somewhere else. Film photography gives you this lovely nostalgic look that works like a time machine.

Quality over count

Rolls of film typically have 24 or 36 exposures which compared to digital cameras sounds limiting. But it’s this limitation that makes you stop for a moment and think about what exactly you want to capture.

Surprising result

It’s always exciting to see the results as it’s usually days, even weeks, between you taking photos and receiving your freshly developed film and prints. Seeing those for the first time is exciting and satisfying like looking through an old album you have completely forgotten about.

Perfect in its imperfection

Back in the days when people didn’t have digital cameras nobody cared about taking a perfect shot. It’s hard to imagine it now as we’re so used to cluttering our smartphones with many photos of the same object, trying to capture it as well as possible. But if you flick through an album with photographs from the 1990s or earlier, you will see how unintentionally perfect they are. And, oh, the light leaks!

No electricity required

Some analogue cameras can be a bit too heavy and bulky but at least you don’t have to think about batteries and chargers. In fact, the whole process from taking a photo to getting it printed can be done with no electricity.

It’s all about the hardware

Cameras and lenses

I have used two film cameras so far - Zenit 11 and Smena 8M. They’re old, analogue and Russian but that’s not hard to figure out once you see them. Zenit 11 is a heavy and tough SLR camera. It is completely manual but the mechanism is quite simple - there is a build-in Selenium cell lightmeter that helps you choose the proper speed for the chosen aperture or vice versa. There is also a manual ISO-speed switch which should be set according to the ISO of your film.

Smena 8M is a low-cost camera, produced to be accessible to the public. It’s very toy-like and completely manual, in fact so manual that the winding of film is separated from shutter cocking. And that is lovely because you can easily make multiple shots without advancing the film - the so-called multiple exposure photos. One of the biggest pros of this camera is that it’s really light, especially compared to the Zenit 11, which makes it a good choice for trips. I’m still having troubles figuring out the manual focus which is marked with distances but I’ll continue experimenting.

Lenses

I’m no expert in lenses so I’ve been using what I already have with my Zenit 11. The mass produced Soviet Helios 44M-4 58mm f/2 is my usual choice because it works perfectly for most of the photos I take so it’s my “stay-on-camera” lens. It has a really nice medium tele range and although the sharpness might not be that great, the bokeh is very bokeh-licious and the overall quality is very good.

The East German Carl Zeiss Jena Sonnar MC 135mm f/3.5 has an amazing build quality. Although a bit heavy for its length of 8 cm, it’s still smaller than comparable telephoto lenses. The overall quality is good, sharp in the center with smooth and soft bokeh.

Films

Fujicolor 200 is one of the most common cheap films that can be found everywhere. It renders quite balanced colours, although the greens are one of its strongest points. The reds are a bit muted and the same applies for the contrast. Blue and yellow tones are true to colour. Overall a decent film for everyday use.

Kodak ColourPlus 200 is Kodak’s analogue of Fujicolor 200, price-wise. The main difference is the warmth - Kodak ColorPlus 200 is soft, with yellow and green tones slightly warmer than in real life. Blues and reds are vibrant and mostly true to colour, however, reds can sometimes look a little orange. Overall, very pleasant warm colours and good for everyday use.

Fujicolor Superia 200 is the other consumer option by Fuji, considered more “premium”. The reds, greens and blues are usually intense, while the yellows are more neutral and maybe even a little dull. Just like Fujicolor 200, Fujicolor Superia 200 is a balanced film with green/blue tones but with more vivid colours and contrast. The rolls that I used were expired but performed well.

Kodak Gold 200 is Kodak’s “premium” consumer film. It’s a type of film which I only recently tried and I have finished only one roll of it. Colours come out a bit too saturated, especially the yellows and blues which gives it a very vintage, almost lomo effect. The greens and reds might be a bit muted and the contrast is higher.