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My Personal Blog


“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

― Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles"

Finally upgraded - the new desk is amazing!

By 💫 Jimi Wikman ·
Yesterday, I ripped down my old desk setup and rebuilt it with my new desk. It took a while and there was some cursing due to some cable management not working as anticipated. Overall, though, things turned out pretty good and while I have some final touches to do, I love the new setup.
To say that it takes a while to rip down a desk when you have a 48-inch TV as monitor with a 27-inch side screen and a video setup with camera and lights is an understatement. Still, it is satisfying to take everything down and make a full reset. Even if it gets a bit messy at first...

The new desk is a lot sturdier than the first one, and it is 20 cm wider. I also get a nice walnut color, which is really nice. Cables are still all over the place, but I will fix that next week when I get the shipment from Amazon. I also have some felt coasters, an iPad stand and some plants coming, so then this will come together even more.
With this upgrade I now feel much better about making videos and hold education since I now have a decent camera, a good microphone and a setup that allow me to engage a bit more than sitting with the side to the people watching. I will play around with this during the weekend to make sure everything is ready for the education I will hold on Monday.

I will get a new mouse pad since the one I have is a bit dirty, and it is nice to switch things up a bit. I will probably try an LTT Northern Lights desk pad since it fit my theme pretty well. I also have an Ikea lamp on my wishlist. I am looking at Hektar to stand to the left of the desk, this would not only add a bit of extra light in three directions, but I can also use it as a rim light when facing forward and as a side, or key light, when shooting from the side.
Eventually I might invest in a camlink for the camera, but I think it's best if I learn how to use the camera first. I also consider getting a new chair. I am looking at a Titan Evo 2022 from Secretlabs, but I am still doing some research. Probably going to pick up some new headsets as well, since mine are broken and probably will fall apart sooner rather than later.
For now tough, I am very happy with my setup of my homeoffice!

Going full YouTube - world of Video here I come!

By 💫 Jimi Wikman ·
In the past weeks, I have gone from having a webcam setup for presenting my education sessions to complete madness. It has snowballed and I am now waiting for another shipment of things to set up for a full-fledged studio setup. I have even set up my old YouTube channel finally and have a pretty big list of topics to place there. In short, I am going full YouTube, and it is something I have been considering for a very long time. I guess it felt right now for some reason.
Besides ordering everything from microphone to camera to lightning, I also have made some small investments into assets for Adobe Premier pro. While they are probably not necessary, I feel like trying some things out with proper gear rather than going in half-baked. Well, at least as far as equipment goes. I still need to learn how to do videos properly, since it is a lot different from holding education sessions. I also need to learn the tools, and it will take a while to learn how to use Adobe Premier pro and OBS to its full potential.
Furthermore, I threw out a test shot using nothing but webcam and no real settings for microphone at all. It is bad, but not terribly so. I still feel awkward talking to myself, but it gets easier, I feel. I also had the beginnings of a bad cold, which you probably can pick up in the video. Right now, I can barely speak...
Later this week I will do a full rebuild of my desk to set things up, and I have not yet decided if I should invest in a new desk at the same time. There is nothing wrong with my desk, but it is a bit short and I would like to have that walnut desk top. I am also considering getting a desktop that is arched with a short extra right side. Not sure if that would work in my very limited space, but I am considering it.

I am also contemplating getting a new chair since this one is a bit stiff and I do have lower back issues to consider. Not sure what to get, though, so I'll hold off for now. I might get something like the Secretlab Titan Evo 2022, but I have not decided yet. For now, I'll keep my existing one and focus on other things, like how to fit a good camera angle with a 48-inch TV as monitor...
That is probably my biggest issue right now, since my lighting setup will be very dependent on how I set up my camera. With a 48-inch TV, standing on a small shelf as well, I tend to look up towards the top of the screen quite a lot. My face is in a pretty good spot facing the center, or slightly above the center of the screen, but to get to the top of the screen I have to tilt my head up a fair bit.
Having a camera at that height might look weird. Like me looking up towards the people watching the video or stream. I do have a second camera for screen sharing, so maybe that will be less of an issue than I imagine it. Once I get the new camera and have it setup, I might make some changes due to this. Things do get a bit tricky when you have limited space, sitting in a little cave where your closet used to be in your bedroom.
Anyway, first I need to get this sore throat taken care of, then I'll just focus on making content and let things evolve from there. I do not expect to become a huge YouTube star anyway, just to publish some instructional videos here and there.
So, off we go 🙂

Office upgrades and Youtube - planning for more video content

By 💫 Jimi Wikman ·
This week I did some upgrades to my home office. I added a second screen, purchased some lights and did a big investment in a green screen. This adds some useful tools for me, so I can not only do my job better, but also start working on some video content for the website. The green screen require some commitment as it is not something you throw up in a hurry for a video call, but it is pretty great for what I plan for the future. So let us dive into it.
A second screen
Adding a second screen to my setup was not really planned. Previously I had my MacBook on the side and the plan was to use it for quick calls. It worked fairly well, but since I already have a camera setup that is a lot better than the camera on the MacBook, it was kind of redundant. So I just got an idea to try out having a second screen when I was browsing for some additional lights to add to the camera setup. I stumbled upon a portable external screen that looked pretty cool and since I had a screen standing in the closet I figured I would just see if it worked y removing the laptop tray and place a VESA mount instead.
As it were, it turned out great, and it did not take very long to plugin. It's still a mess with cables, but I'll fix that later!
The benefits with having a second screen are many, but for me, I now have a very good way to have the overview I need for when I hold my training sessions. I installed a little program that give me a clock that I can place above content and when I use Teams I can move the overview and the chat to the secondary screen. I can also put my notes there instead of writing them down on paper, or use my iPad. This give me a far better overview of what I am doing, and I can see if someone raises their hands or write in the chat.
When I eventually will make more video content I can also see what the recording, or streaming looks like.
When I do not hold lectures or do video content, it is a great place to have things like my Teams and Email, so I always see if someone need me. I am also testing out Tasks, which was actually much better than I thought, since I can very easily switch between accounts. I also see it inside Outlook in the task bar, which is great. Anything I flag in emails, I can also sync with Tasks which is awesome. The only downside is that Outlook does not work with private accounts, but I can live with that.
Overall, I am super happy with the second screen.
 
Bright light, but not enough
My home office is dark, very dark. So in order to get some light for video, I bought an Elgato Key Light. It is indeed extremely bright, and it works great for training sessions in Teams and things like that. When I pull up the green screen, however, things are still too dark for the green screen to work properly. I can still make it work by doing some tweaks in OBS, but I will probably add more light sources eventually to increase the light in the room. It will also help prevent sunburn from the super bright Elgato Key Light.
I could have bought the Elgato Key Light Air, which was almost half price, but I don't have a lot of space on the desk, so I decided to pay some extra for that reason. The Elgato Key Lights come with an app to control the lights, which is nice.
 
Elgato Green Screen
The Elgato Green Screen is pretty awesome, as I can easily pull it out and put it back in seconds. No need to use clips or mounts, just pull up and shoot, then pull down and stash away. It was not cheap, but the investment feels motivated since my home office is in the bedroom and I will save on time and comfort instead.
It is a bit tricky to set up since space is very limited, and I need to have it at an angle since the camera is also at an angle and I have a wall in that direction. I am considering if I should switch sides on the setup, since that would remove the need to put the green screen at an angle. Probably will test that when I get the new desk top.
 
YouTube plans
I already have my YouTube Channel ready, so it is just a matter of using it properly. I have made some tests and so far things look pretty good for what I plan to do later. I have several ideas on what I want to do, and I will start out with a Jira and Confluence series on how to set up Jira and Confluence. Furthermore, I also plan a few videos for Invision Community on how you can use Pages and how things work in terms of code and so on. Finally, I wonder if I want to add sort of a rant/opinion where I talk about different topics, like the communication failures of Atlassian and Invision Community this week.
We'll see what I come up with, but I will start with Atlassian guides for Jira and Confluence. I do not aim to be a big YouTuber so I'll just try to have fun with it.

Roles - a much needed database it seems

By 💫 Jimi Wikman ·
In the past couple of weeks, I have had several interesting conversations about weird new roles and fields of work. Some are downright silly, like the UI Engineer, while others just seem unnecessary, like the field of Development Experience (DX). What is clear though is that people, especially from the USA it seems, have no idea what titles are in their field, so they make things up. This means that without definition work titles are pretty useless and this is where a proper database where we define roles will be important.
While I find it interesting how young people, especially in the US, have an almost absurd desire to name themselves with titles of self-importance, it does cause a lot of confusion in the industry. Poor understanding of the work itself from the employers, and to some degree the people, is bad enough. It does not help that we add titles that make no sense or even add to the confusion.
Hopefully we can create a database over these strange new things and evolve them together, since some new names is actually not that bad and others already exist and need to be adjusted. I already have the base, so it's just a matter of getting things put together and styling it. Unfortunately, I do not have an abundance of time right now, so it will be when time permits.
Always moving forward though 🙂

Stories are in place - time to move on to new things

By 💫 Jimi Wikman ·
The Stories section is now in a fairly good place. It will be some tinkering, and I am still playing around in my mind how I want to make the database relations show up. It is in a good enough place, so I can move on to other areas. The areas that are up on the board are a new Links database, a new Videos database and the Code Reference database. I probably will start with the Links, since it makes it a bit easier to work with Stories that way.
The things remaining to iron out with Stories are a little bug in the category listings where you can not rate the first entry, and I also want a way to map feeds to the custom fields. Fosters over at the IPS forums had an RSS plugin that allowed that, and I hope that this might lead to a solution for this. I can still live without it, but it would help a lot to have this mapping.
For links, nothing beats Links Directory from Adriano. Unfortunately, though, I can't cross-link applications with databases. This means that I can not pull in data from different databases. It is also affected by different changes that IPS does, which has ruined applications in the past more times than I care to think of. So, while I will never get all the features that are in Adrianos amazing product, I do get a solution that fit into the overall structure that is also less prone to be affected by application rules and changes.
This is the same reason for the Videos database. While the current solution is very good, I do want a solution I can cross-reference and that I can control. I also want a way to automatically bring in videos from popular creators, which again would benefit greatly from having a mapping with custom fields...
The Code Reference database on the other hand will be a different beast. While the documentation is not that hard to do, there are a lot of cross-references that needs to be handled. For HTML, for example, there are elements and attributes with several reference sheets for languages and so on. CSS have selectors and functions. So the solution must have options for multiple references with different names. I will start this for frontend, and then we can see where we go from there.
Onwards towards greatness 🙂

Simple Digg clone - submit stories and boost them for better visibility

By 💫 Jimi Wikman ·
Last night I could not sleep, so I played around a bit with this idea I have had for a while to have a section for quick links to interesting blog posts or news. I realized that not only would this be fairly easy to build, but the functionality to promote, or like, things was already built and I had the code for it installed! I just need to adjust the code a bit and give it some design love and it should be good to go.
Anyone who remember the old Digg site probably remember the many great things you could find there in the early days. While I have no ambition to reach anywhere near the same popularity, I hope that some people might find it useful at least.  With so much content, it is hard to keep up with all the great things, so this can at the very least be a nice way for me to drop in great articles that I find.
The idea behind this setup is fairly simple. Provide a simple way to add links to specific articles or news, so content creators can get some links back to their websites. Use a simple boost button to let people vote up good content and a bury button to vote things down. Allow for the users to see things based on last added content, curated content or based on ratings.
In short, it will be a news aggregator like the good old Digg and it's many copycats. While it will not have as many bells and whistles, I will add a few things that I have not seen before. The perhaps most interesting thing will be the connection to other databases. This will allow me to not just share links in the Stories section, but also to cross post to for example products, companies and later on people and certain add-ons like the Atlassian add-ons.
For now, I am just playing around in Figma to see what kind of designs I can come up with. All the heavy lifting has already been done by Ralf Herrmann, an amazing IPS creator that provide some of the best plugins for Pages. His plugin SuperVote have all the features I need to build this, even if I will hack it quite a bit.
For now, I have an idea in my mind where I will keep the same style as for other parts of the website, which means that I will color each story based on category. I am also playing around a bit with RSS imports for certain sites that I want to keep tabs on. These will be added as hidden and then manually edited for now. Later on, I plan to have them be fully automatic, but I want to control them a bit first. Images, for example, will only be added if uploaded by the owner of the links, or if I have their permission.
I will start small and then see what happens.

Y3 plans - moving forward with many new ideas

By 💫 Jimi Wikman ·
As Year 3 continues, I start to get some ideas sorted in my mind. I have long struggled to find a way for the site to be useful beyond just articles and places of discussion, but as I look into the development section, that has changed. I am taking some inspiration from W3 schools that I myself have used a lot over the years, and I also start to look at the new links section as well. With the template changes needed and the new plans, I have a feeling I will be very busy in Year 3.
As the About Me section is now in a decent shape, I am looking into the sections in more detail. I have started to plan out the landing pages and now starting to dive into the branches and leaf portion of the navigation trees. I feel it is important that they follow the same structures, even if the content may differ a bit. I also want to make sure that the sections have focused content to avoid DRY (don't repeat yourself). This means that some content may be generic to a root level rather than multiple branch levels.
So for Development, that I will focus on first, the root page will branch off into two sub-sections: front-end and back.end. The front-end branch will then have multiple sections where I will start with HTML, CSS and JavaScript. There will be a generic section also for front-end frameworks such as Bootstrap. Basic reference sheets like language and country codes, or HTML symbols will also be added.
At the root of Development, I will also have a new database for code references. This will be a similar setup as on W3Schools with every tag and property will be listed, but a bit more fleshed out with discussions, videos and more. I will also add a page for code editors that will link to the product database. It will be a landing page of sorts with all the code editors presented and then linked to the product page that will be fleshed out with more information and content such as news.
The new Links database will be fairly similar to the add-on I used to have, but with references and more information. The main reason I wanted to build this as a database is control, of course. Not just over the design itself, but also to be able to control linking with other databases. By doing this I can connect links with products, companies, people and more. I will most likely do a new database for Videos as well later, since it is fairy easy to build for what I use it for.
So there is no shortage of things to do, that is for sure!

Support Tickets - building a new one using only Pages

By 💫 Jimi Wikman ·
While working on the components for the new About Me section, I realized that I needed a proper way for people to communicate with me. After considering the options for a while, I decided to build my own ticket system. This is fairly easy and I could have done things in several ways, but decided to use some tricks from my Task Manager to make it a little more dynamic.
 
 
In essence, this is just a database where I have defined the setup so that you only see your own entries. As the owner, I of course see all entries, which makes it easy to work with. I have added a few fields to help sort things using filters. These fields include Status of course, type of request as this setup does not include any categories, Priority for escalation and SLA, which is just a date field I can set for due date that is then calculated to show time to completion.
I also have a field for Assignee, even though it is a bit of an overkill for my purposes. I have added it thought for others to use that have more than one person managing the tickets.
Database fields and Templates
While working on this new set of templates, I realized that I probably should add some variables for dealing with the field numbers. In most cases you use template names, so it's fairly easy to manage, but in the case of adding the ability to update fields in the frontend we use field ID's instead. Since everyone has a different ID sequence, this can be a bit annoying to work with, so I am thinking I will add variables instead at the beginning of the templates. This way they will work just like CSS, so you can change one variable and it will update across the template.
Easy creation
This setup is nothing fancy and it is just a first iteration. I will probably build more on it as I see the need for it, but for now it will suit my need. All in all, it took about a week to complete, but that was mostly because I did not have much time to commit to it. I will still do a new form for this one, but other than that I think this one is done. It is nice because I only needed to customize two templates and the form, instead of all five templates.
Tasks integrations
I have a field for database relations that I will add later. Not that I think I will actually need it, but more because I want to write a guide on how to do it and also so I can use it if I want. I also want to make sure that if someone else wants to use both together, they have a way to do it out of the box.
Onwards with About Me
With this, I now only have to figure out how I want to set up the History part about me. I have some ideas for it that include setting up a database where each category will become a full width component, or just use blocks for it. I'll ponder on it some more in the coming weeks to see where I might land on that.
Always moving forward 🙂

Having some fun again - Diablo 3 and Diablo 2 in September

By 💫 Jimi Wikman ·
On July 23 Diablo 3 kicked off season 24 and as usual I have dropped in and have some fun. I am having some extra fun this season since the theme forces me to play a bit differently since I have to play all 7 classes. I am also waiting for the release of Diablo 2 remastered that come sin September. It is a game I spent a ton of time with back in the days, and I look forward to reliving those moments a bit again this fall.
At this point, I am almost done with the season, having all the ethereals unlocked and just missing one conquest to have the seasonal journey unlocked. I went for a demon hunter as usual and focused on the GOD build that is superfast. This has allowed me to pretty much done everything I need to do and after failing the 350 kills (I got 332) after searching for the cursed chest for an hour I decided to skip that mindless conquest and do the years of war conquest instead.
This conquest will of course take much longer since I need to complete 6 greater rifts with 6 different sets. Taking this decision also means I will have spent more time playing the game, while having fun, rather than just sniping maps for hours. I consider that a win.
So right now I am building up my Monk as I want to try the Innas new play style. This will make it fairly easy to do GR 55 with my five favorite builds: Demon hunter GOD, Demon hunter multishot, Demon hunter Sentries, Monk Explosive light and the new Inna build. That leaves one more build to complete, and I probably will go for a Whirlwind barb there. Just to see what the new transmogs that you get for preordering Diablo 2 resurrected look like.
It feels good to have fun again playing, but I do miss having a game I can enjoy now that I have decided never to play Destiny again. While Diablo will manage that itch for a while, I do need a new game to be my mental distraction. I have not seen any on the horizon, so I guess we will see what the future brings.
For now, I am just enjoying going back to hell 🙂
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