A few years ago, I had a conversation with my ex mother-in-law about turning forty. She told me she got a bouquet of roses for her birthday, and that she put it in a vase, sat down on the couch in front of it, and started to cry. It felt as if she mourned what…More
On language and boxing up: a rant
I started working hard on becoming more socially active, and how these things develop depends strongly on which language they happen in. Polish? Mamma’s tongue, I could do this all day, but Norwegians seem limited to wódka, kurwa, gofry, and dentysta, so we never get very far. English? Smooth sailing, but this is the language…More
Making our applications greener
Recovering from burnout means delays in doing things. Thus, this is a written version of a talk I made during DevopsDays Oslo 2019. You can find slides from my presentation here, and the recording of the talk here. Note: this written version is published as is, with data from 2019, when COVID-19 hasn’t happened yet.…More
A beginner’s guide to computer colors (and the terminal prompt)
The time to make my workstation look and feel the way I always wanted to has finally come. No more default high-contrast, dark, hacker-movie terminal themes or industry-accepted color palettes. No more default fonts. My soul is neon-pastel baby, and so should my computer be. If tinkering with your Linux color palette sounds appealing to…More
From Ruby apps to large-scale distributed systems: navigating technology as a self-taught outsider
This is a written version of a talk I gave at the Ada Lovelace Day mini-conference in Oslo, on October 9 2019. A fantastic event by the way, with lots of amazing technologists from different IT fields. You’ll find the full slides here, and the recording here. A curious child from cosmonaut to literary critic…More
Ethics in software development
This is the written down talk I gave at TIAD.io on October 4th 2016. Slides can be found here. If you’re watching the TV series “Silicon Valley”, you might remember the signature gag from season one, shot at a real TechCrunch Disrupt event. Each of the presenting teams claimed they are making the world a…More
Why I publish my talks in written form
some people prefer reading to watching videos (time, Internet connection, personal preferences) people with hearing impairments exist not everyone is a native English speaker and it might make it easier for them to follow some people speak with strong accents, mumble (both natives and non-natives) and you might just not understand everything with the rising…More
DevOps and sharing
This is a written version of a talk I gave at DevOps Days Kiel. You can find the slides here. My computer failed me during the presentation and hung up on Libre Office, so I had to go the first 5 minutes without slides. Pro tip: keep your speaker notes on a different device than…More
Openness in OSS communities at CoreOS Fest Berlin
I was part of a very interesting session at CoreOS Fest Berlin today. The folks from CoreOS will prepare a proper blog post highlighting results of the discussion, but I wanted to write down some of my own impressions from the session. Apart from that, the thought process that led us to the chosen format…More
Your infrastructure ain’t a special snowflake… and neither are you
This blog post originally appeared on my other blog, but I decided to move it here to keep all my IT blog posts in one place. I’m sorry to break it to you, guys, but you’re failing miserably on the DRY front. I’m on a mental health break from Twitter. What led me to it…More
Marta Paciorkowska 