Even if the weather is nice and the sun is shining the work is real also here. Last few weeks have been quite busy and I’ve been doing 60 h work weeks to finish the project we’re working with. To counter the time spend between the chair and the laptop I’m planning to rent a car tomorrow for a short road trip around the Madeira island and enjoy my last few days here in more relaxed manner. I’m heading back to Finland for Christmas holidays, but I’m not going to stay there for too long. I don’t have any exact plans yet, but after I get things[…]
BLOG
Initial Web Dev Experiences
First Steps I picked the web developer hat from the drawer two months ago and I’ve been learning and doing web development since. I started by updating my own homepage using WordPress due to couple of reasons. First of all I was interested to know how smooth it is to develop a website using WP these days since WP is still very popular framework for simple website development. I was also preparing to do basic website development for some time and I wanted to know more about WP since it’s kind of the biggest enemy for a web dev ;). Based on my experiences it depends[…]
Travel Gear Update After Two Months of Travel
I’ve been slow traveling and living abroad for two months now and I think this is a good time to recheck the travel gear I’m carrying. At this point I know quite well what I need, what has been working well and what haven’t. Christmas is also getting closer so this post may give you some good ideas for christmas present shopping. What have worked Merino wool t-shirts and training shirt – I just cannot praise these super.natural and Icebreaker shirts enough. These shirts keep you dry, they are comfy and they resist sweat and odour like crazy. They have lost some of their shine and gathered[…]
Destination Funchal
The amazing views from the plane during landing and from the bus during the way to centre gave me very positive initial impression of Funchal. After three weeks my thoughts about the city haven’t changed. City Funchal – founded in 15th century – is the capital of autonomous Madeira region with a bit over 110 000 residents. The weather is quite warm throughout the year, but compared to summer time the temperature is few degrees colder during the winter months. November daily average is 19 degrees. Nice weather, modern infrastructure, atmospheric city centre, beautiful nature and nearby smaller cities and sights form a very nice combination[…]
How Apps and Processes Keep Me Productive and Organised
I find personal productivity as an interesting subject and it’s also a common topic in digital nomadism and entrepreneurship related forums. I don’t have numbers to prove this, but I’d estimate the work digital nomads do leans towards getting paid for results instead of hours spent. We have our own businesses, services or products we provide and the payment may not depend solely on the amount of hours we put into work. That motivates us to do what we do efficiently so that with the saved time we can either push our business even further or spend more time traveling, being in interesting places and having new[…]
Lisbon Wrap-up
I stayed a bit over a month in Lisbon and moved to Funchal, Madeira earlier this week so its time to wrap-up my Lisbon experiences. People People in general were really nice and helpful in Lisbon. Service in shops and restaurants were nice even if the older generation didn’t usually speak English. I had a neighbour – a friendly old gentleman – who was determined to teach and remind me of the Portuguese greetings like Bom dia, Boa tarde and Boa noite after I greeted him with Hi. Traffic was quite hectic in the central area of Lisbon, but the[…]
20 Tools, Apps and Services I’ve Found Useful as Digital Nomad and Sole Trader
I’ve now been a sole trader for six months and traveling as a digital nomad for a month. With that background in mind here is a list of around 20 web services, tools and apps I currently regularly use for business management, software development and personal purposes. Productivity boosters Wunderlist This has been most likely my most important software during the last month or so. I’ve had a habit of keeping several todo lists in various places – email mail drafts, browser tabs, todo lists in stickers etc – but I realised it is not the optimal way to get things done so[…]
Travel Gear
The packing strategy I didn’t necessarily need to travel light since my purpose is to stay in on place at least a month so having bigger luggage bags wouldn’t be an issue. However I liked the idea behind traveling light and only carrying the absolutely necessity with me so I decided to give it a try. Its also much easier to travel light into a warm destination; it would definitely be a challenge to travel to a cold destination with cabin luggage only. I ended up getting two Osprey bags: Osprey Nebula 34l back bag and Osprey Beta courier bag. Both bags seemed[…]
Coworking in Lisbon and Oulu
I was quite busy during the summer, but I managed to find a free day for checking out Luova Laboratorio in Oulu. My plans to travel to southern europe were quite clear at that point, but I wanted to know what kind of coworking spaces Oulu has, since there is a good chance I’ll need a desk place from Oulu at some point in the future. I was also planning to visit Njetwork Inn coworking space, but unfortunately I didn’t have time for that. There are also other options in Oulu such as Business Kitchen, but I’m not sure if they offer similar services as regular coworking spaces[…]
Digital Nomad? What, why & how?
Why to become a digital nomad I’ve been working in IT business for 10+ years in Oulu, Finland. During the last few years I’d been thinking what I’d like to do during the next 10 years or so and what would be beneficial for me as an IT professional, but also as a person. I had many different dreams and plans, but I guess I was waiting for some external turn of events to push me into some direction. Well, in the end I grew tired of waiting and about one year a go I set few targets for myself[…]