For this blog post, I’d like to change gears for a bit and tell a story from my previous life, the one when I was a software developer at JetBrains. Android Studio is celebrating its 10th anniversary, and this brings back memories of my own contributions to the project. I never actually knew how much Continue reading

Now that the exams are over and the grades are coming in, I think it’s a good time to recap my first semester as a pre-master student of linguistics at Leiden University. While my previous post was focused on my personal experience as a student in my forties, now I’d like to talk about the Continue reading

I’m currently in the middle of (reluctantly) migrating my note-taking system from Tana to Obsidian. Given that Tana is still in early access and not many people are familiar with it, I’d like to share some background and information on why I’m doing this. While I was at JetBrains, I didn’t use any formal note Continue reading

The midterms week has just ended, and now seems to be a good time to reflect on my experiences so far as a pre-master student of linguistics in Leiden University. TL/DR: it’s been quite challenging initially, but it’s becoming more and more fun. (If you’re unfamiliar with the concept, the pre-master program in Dutch universities Continue reading

AI has been a subject of many conversations with my friends lately, and I’ve decided to share some of my thoughts about it in writing. Quick summary: I never use any LLM-based AI tools for any tasks, ever. An important part of context for this statement is that my last role at JetBrains, roughly between Continue reading

Something remarkable happened last week, something that may never happen again: A new Quenya text by J.R.R. Tolkien is now in print. Hundreds of pages of Tolkien’s linguistic writings have been published in Vinyar Tengwar and Parma Eldalamberon, and there’s reason to hope that we’ll see more. However, most of these writings talk about the Continue reading

Let’s start with a general life update this time: we now officially live in Leiden! The move went smoothly, and now we’re offically registered as Dutch residents. Right now we’re putting the very last finishing touches on the apartment, and we’ve already had our first guests. And I’m still as much in love with the Continue reading

Starting, as usual, with Leiden news. This time, the big news is that we’ve found a place where we’ll be living, and in less than two weeks we’ll get the keys. We’ve already started preparing and making arrangements for the move, and this has been taking quite a bit of my time. On the research Continue reading

The Leiden University news of the month is that I’ve once more registered for the Summer School. The courses I’m taking these year are Sabellic languages, Introduction to Sogdian, Historical grammar of Sanskrit and Old Irish. The Sabellic languages are the closest relatives of Latin, spoken in parts of Italy before Latin took over, and Continue reading

As usual, starting with university news. Confirming the validity of my diploma turned out to be easier than I had thought, so now the admission process is officially complete, and I can start my pre-masters program in Leiden in September. Yay! As for my personal projects, all of my time in February was spent on Continue reading