Latest Posts (20 found)
Ruslan Osipov Yesterday

Are AI productivity gains fueled by delivery pressure?

A multitudes study which followed 500 developers found an interesting soundbyte: “Engineers merged 27% more PRs with AI - but did 20% more out-of-hours commits”. While I won’t comment on the situation at Google, there are many anecdotes online about folks online who raise concerns about increased work pressure. When a response to “I’m overloaded” becomes “use AI” - we’re heading for unsustainable workloads. The problem is compounded by the fact that AI tools excel at prototyping - the type of work which makes other work happen. Now, your product manager can prototype an idea in a couple of hours, fill it with real (but often incorrect) data, sell the idea to stakeholders, and set goals to productionize it a week later. “Look - the prototype works, and it even uses real data. If I could do this in a couple of hours, how hard could this be for an experienced engineer?” - while I haven’t heard these exact words, the sentiment is widespread (again, online). In a world where AI provides a surface-level ability to contribute across almost any role, the path to avoiding global burnout is to focus on building empathy. Just because an LLM can churn out a document doesn’t mean it’s actually good writing, and we’re certainly not at the point where a handful of agents can replace a seasoned PM. However, because the output looks polished - especially to those without deep domain knowledge - it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking you’ve done someone else’s job for them. That gap between “looking done” and “being right” is exactly where the extra professional pressure begins to mount. This is really caused by the way we still measure knowledge worker productivity - by the sheer number of artifacts they produce, rather than the outcomes of the work. The right way to leverage AI in workspace is as a license to work better and focus on the right things, not as a mandate to produce more things faster.

business Business ai AI career Career
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Ruslan Osipov 1 weeks ago

Homepage for a home server

I have a NAS (Network Accessible Storage) which doubles as a home server. It’s really convenient to have a set of always-on, locally hosted services - which lets me read RSS feeds without distractions, have local photos storage solution, or move away from streaming services towards organizing my (legally owned) collections of movies, shows, and audiobooks. At this point I have 20-or-so services running and sometimes it gets hard to keep track of what’s where. For that - I found Homepage . A simple, fast, lightweight page which connects to all of my services for some basic monitoring, and reminds me what my service layout looks like. Here’s what I built: I love that the configuration lives in YAML files, and because the page is static - it loads real fast. There are many widgets which provide info about various services out of the box. It’s neat. There’s definitely a question of how much I’ll keep this up-to-date: it’s not an automatically populated dashboard, and editing is a two-step process (SSH into the machine, edit the YAML configs) - which adds some friction. We’ll have to wait and see, but for now I’m excited about my little dashboard.

Yaml programming Programming devops DevOps web Web
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Ruslan Osipov 2 weeks ago

What I won’t write about

I’ve been writing a lot more over the past year - in fact, I’ve written at least once a week , and this is article number 60 within the past year. I did this for many reasons: to get better at writing, to get out of a creative rut, play around with different writing voices, but also because I wanted to move my blog from a dry tech blog to something I myself am a little more excited about. I started this blog in 2012, documenting my experiences with various programming tools and coding languages. I felt like I contributed by sharing tutorials, and having some public technical artifacts helped during job searches. Over the years I branched out - short reviews for books I’ve read, recounts of my travel (and turning my Prius into a car camper to do so), notes on personal finance… All of this shares a theme: descriptive writing. I feel most confident describing and recounting events and putting together tutorials. It’s easy to verify if I’m wrong - an event either happened or didn’t, the tool either worked - or didn’t. And I was there the whole time. That kind of writing doesn’t take much soul and grit, and while it’s pretty good at drawing traffic to the site (eh, which is something I don’t particularly care about anymore ), I wouldn’t call it particularly fulfilling. Creatively, at least. I’m scared to share opinions, because opinions vary and don’t have ground truth. It’s easier to be completely wrong, or to look like a fool. I don’t want to be criticised for my writing. Privacy is a matter too - despite writing publicly, I consider myself to be a private person. So, after 13 years of descriptive writing, I made an effort to experiment in 2025. I wrote down some notes on parenthood, my thoughts on AI and Warhammer , nostalgia, identity, ego… I wrote about writing, too. It’s been a scary transition, and it still is. I have to fight myself to avoid putting together yet another tutorial or an observation on modal interfaces . I’ve been somewhat successful though, as I even wrote a piece on my anxiety about sharing opinions . But descriptive writing continues sneaking in, trying to reclaim the field. You see, I write under my own name. I like the authenticity this affords me, and it’s nice not having to make a secret blog (which I will eventually accidentally leak, knowing my forgetfulness). I mean this blog has been running for 14 years now, that’s gotta count for something. But writing under my own name also presents a major problem. It’s my real name. If you search for “Ruslan Osipov”, my site’s at the top. I don’t hide who I am, and you can quickly confirm my identity by going to my about page . This means that friends, colleagues, neighbors, bosses, government officials - anyone - can easily find my writing. If there are people out there who don’t like me - for whatever reason - they can read my stuff too. The more I write, the more I learn that good writing is 1) passionate and 2) vulnerable (it’s also well structured, but I have no intention of restructuring this essay - so you’ll just have to sit with my fragmented train of thought). It’s easy to write about things I’m passionate about. I get passionate about everything I get involved in - from parenting and housework to my work. I write this article in Vim, and I’m passionate enough about that to write a book on the subject . Vulnerability is hard. Good writing is raw, it makes the author feel things, and leaves little bits and pieces of the author scattered on the page. You just can’t fake authenticity. But here’s the thing - real life is messy. Babies throw tantrums, work gets stressful, the world changes in the ways you might not like. That isn’t something you want the whole world to know. Especially if that world involves a prospective employer, for example. So you have to put up a facade, and filter topics that could pose risk. I’m no fool: I’m not going to criticize the company that pays me money. I like getting paid money, it buys food, diapers, and video games. I still think it’s a bit weird and restrictive that a future recruiter is curating my writing today. The furthest I’m willing to push the envelope here is my essay on corporate jobs and self-worth . Curation happens to more than the work-related topics of course. And that might even be a good thing. I don’t just reminisce about my upbringing. It’s a brief jumping off point into my obsession with productivity . Curation is just good taste. You’re not getting my darkest, messiest, snottiest remarks. You’re getting a loosely organized, tangentially related set of ideas. Finding that gradient has been exciting. So, here’s what I won’t write about. I won’t share too many details about our home life. I won’t complain about a bad day at work. I won’t badmouth people. But I will write about what those things feel like - the tiredness, the frustration, the ego.

writing Writing career Career
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Ruslan Osipov 3 weeks ago

Starting daycare is rough

Picture this: it’s 2 am. My kiddo is mouth breathing, loudly as she’s whining trying to fall asleep. Poor kid is running a fever. She’s drooling and scratching her face because she’s teething. No one in this household have slept well for weeks. Everyone warned me that starting daycare will be rough. Everyone said oh hey, you’ll be sick all the time, your kid will be sick all the time, you’ll be miserable. How bad could it be, right? Well, it’s bad. I don’t have a thesis for this post, I just need to vent. And yeah, sick kiddo is why I’m almost a week behind my (self-imposed) writing schedule. Because over the past month this child was supposed to be in daycare (which isn’t cheap, mind you), she’s been home at least 50% of the time. And oh how I wish I could just blame daycare and say they don’t want to deal with yet-another-whiny-and-snotty-kid, I also empathize with both the overworked daycare employees who want to send her home. Being a daycare worker isn’t easy, and I’m sure constant crying doesn’t help. When we were touring daycares, we’ve noticed something interesting: every place posts pictures, names, and mini-resumes for their teachers - and what stands out to me is that many have 1-2 years of experience. Not just at the daycare we picked, but among the majority of places we’ve toured. Turns out daycare workers have a significantly above average turnover - like a press release from Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland indicating that the “turnover among childcare workers was 65% higher than turnover of median occupation”. The wages are low, the hyper-vigilance needed to keep infants and toddlers alive takes a toll on a nervous system, and the job is mostly sedentary - with lots of sitting on the floor and baby chairs watching the little demons crawl around. Where was I? Oh, yeah, I don’t know what daycare workers are going through, but I empathize. But I also empathize with myself (d’oh), working half-days and taking unexpected time off as my clingy, cranky, annoyed toddler wants demands some kind of attention. The kiddo’s sick and wants to be held 24/7. But you know what else? She gets bored, so she wants to play. But it’s hard to play when you’re being held. So crying tends to be a good solution. And all of that is on top of the fact that this disease-ridden potato has gotten me sick, 4 times and counting in the past 3 months. Her and mom get pretty sick, but - probably because mom’s body is working for two - they do mostly fine. Sick, but manageable. I on the other hand just feel like I’m barely able to survive some days. Everything hurts, and nothing helps. I used to like being sick, in the same ways I love rainy days. You get an excuse to veg out - yeah, it’s unpleasant, but you get to binge your favorite shows or play some sick-friendly games. You order in or your partner cooks for you. You drink tea and such. It’s cozy. And most importantly for someone who struggles to sit still, I don’t feel any guilt for doing nothing. It’s nice. But being sick with a kid - hell no. Gone is the guilt-free experience. Kid’s sick, wife’s sick, I’m sick. We’re all rotating through our chores, we all have our roles to play. One of us soothes the baby, one of us cooks and cleans, one of us cries and leaves a trail of snot on the floor. So yeah, here I am, on my 4th sickness, taking a breather to write up this note while mom took the kiddo to get some fresh air. Send help. No, really - shoot me an email to tell me I’m not alone and you’ve survived this. Or maybe tell me why you also enjoy how being sick gives you a permission to be lazy. Someone please normalize my experience!

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Ruslan Osipov 1 months ago

Japan’s etiquette is weird

We went to Japan last month, and I’ve finally found the time to put together my notes. I’ve been meaning to write this for a while - my scribbles have been sitting in a text file, judging me. We spent time in Ho Chi Minh (or Saigon if you’re old) before heading to Tokyo, and the contrast was so striking that I can’t stop thinking about it. Both incredible places, both completely different in ways I find genuinely fascinating - and completely hilarious. Japanese people love to queue. I say this with admiration - it’s a cultural commitment I find both impressive and, in its most intense forms, comedy gold. Food? Queue. Taking a train? Queue. Elevator? Believe it or not, queue. I’m half convinced there’s a queue somewhere just for the privilege of standing in another queue. And oh, the “close door” button on elevators. I witnessed something beautiful in Tokyo: the unmistakable rapid-fire mashing of that button the moment someone steps inside, even when - especially when - they can clearly see me approaching. It’s not malicious. I don’t think it’s even personal. It’s just… commitment to efficiency, extending all the way down to shaving those precious three seconds off the elevator door’s natural rhythm. Dude. I can see you. I’m right here. Just look at the wear pattern on these elevator butons: That’s what most elevators looked like. The subway has a similar choreography. People pushing past you with practiced, almost apologetic urgency. Same with the konbini - if you’re in someone’s path to the onigiri section, you will be navigated around like a minor obstacle in an otherwise frictionless system. It’s nothing personal, you’re just in the way of the system. Here’s what really struck me about Tokyo: you can go an entire day without having a meaningful interaction with another person. And I don’t mean that in a sad, lonely way - I mean it as a genuine observation about how thoughtfully everything is designed. Restaurants have ticket machines where you order and pay before sitting down. Your food arrives. You eat. You leave. No one needs to talk to you. No one wants to talk to you - and that’s not rudeness, it’s infrastructure. The system handles everything. The mother’s rooms were cleaner than our own house (and I mean that literally - I looked around one of those nursing rooms and felt personally called out by my own bathroom at home). Everything has a place, a purpose, a queue. It’s impressive. It’s hyper-functional. And after coming from Vietnam, the contrast was jarring. In Vietnam, you cannot avoid interacting with people. It’s physically impossible. Every transaction feels impromptu, like you’re the first customer they’ve ever had and everyone’s figuring it out together in real-time. Paying a bill at a restaurant? That might involve three people, a calculator that may or may not work, and a vague sense that the total is more of a collaborative suggestion than an established fact. “How much?” “Uh… let me ask my cousin.” This is not a criticism - it’s delightful. There’s a warmth to that chaos. Service in Japan is polished to perfection, almost rehearsed - which makes sense, given the cultural emphasis on hospitality. In Vietnam, it felt more like someone’s aunt decided to help out at the family restaurant. Less professional, maybe, but somehow warmer? The friendliness wasn’t performance, it was just… how things were. Traveling with an infant is exhausting in ways I couldn’t have predicted, but it’s also like carrying around a small social barometer. You get to see how different cultures engage with kids, and the contrast between Tokyo and Ho Chi Minh was striking. In Ho Chi Minh, my daughter was a celebrity. Everyone wanted to hold her, talk to her, feed her something we probably shouldn’t let her eat. The warmth was overwhelming - chaotic, often not always hygienic, but deeply human. Strangers cooing at her, shopkeepers waving, someone’s grandmother stopping us to admire the baby. Human connection wasn’t optional - it was woven into the fabric of every interaction. Tokyo was different. Not cold, exactly. Just… distant. People are exceptionally polite, but there’s a respectful bubble around families. No one’s stopping you on the street to admire your baby. Which is fine! Privacy is a gift, especially when you’re tired. But it’s noticeable when you’ve just come from a place where your kiddo was treated like a visiting dignitary. In Japan, you can live in a world of seamless, frictionless interactions. Machines handle payments, apps handle navigation, and the physical infrastructure is designed to minimize the need for human contact. It’s efficient, clean, and just really cool. In Vietnam, the infrastructure almost forces you to connect. Nothing is fully automated. Everything requires negotiation, conversation, a smile and a nod - it’s messy. It’s inefficient by lack of design. And it’s incredibly human. I’m not saying one is better than the other - that’s too simple, and frankly, kind of reductive. But I do find myself wondering what we optimize away when we make things frictionless. What do we gain, and what do we lose? Japan’s systems are a marvel, but they also create a world where you can be surrounded by millions of people and have a difficult time connecting with them. Vietnam’s chaos forces connection, for better or worse. Or maybe I’m taking huge leaps in judgement based on a few weeks in countries where I didn’t speak the language and barely knew anyone. It was a good trip. We had a great time, even if traveling with an infant is a whole thing. We’ve been unable to do many fine dining establishments because of the kiddo, and honestly? We felt much more comfortable and relaxed eating at a regional equivalent of Denny’s. It’s nice not to feel too bad when your baby starts happily throwing food around. Maybe next time we bring parents along. Outsourcing some of the infant-wrangling sounds appealing.

writing Writing entertainment Entertainment culture Culture
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Ruslan Osipov 1 months ago

The illusory truth effect

I’m a bit late with this, but here’s an interesting headline: “Liberal arts students have lower unemployment rates than computer science students according to the NY Fed”. It’s a headline I saw early last year, took a note to read further, and just rediscovered the headline when cleaning up my notes. Here’s an article from The College Fix from June 20, 2025: Computer engineering grads face double the unemployment rate of art history majors . In the article, the author claims: The stats show art history majors have a 3 percent unemployment rate while computer engineering grads have a 7.5 percent unemployment rate. Computer science grads are in a similar boat, with a 6.1 percent rate. Ok, let’s find if this lines up with what NY Fed says : Oh, what’s that number next to “unemployment”? Uh-oh. Underemployment accounts for people working in a job which does not require a bachelor degree. This means that a computer engineering graduate is working a tech job, while an art history major takes up work in a fast food restaurant. And all of a sudden, the picture shifts. 17% of computer engineering majors were underemployed, while a whopping 46.9% of art history graduates weren’t utilizing their degree. This article is one of many, which cherry-picked data from the NY Fed and made outrageous claims. Further, the data is from 2023, which the article above mentions near the end, in passing. That’s a pretty relevant bit, for an article written in 2025, isn’t it? For me this brought up a question of digital hygiene and how the headlines I see affect us. I have seen this headline many times throughout the year - I never read through content, but over time the headline stayed in my memory. The illusory truth effect is the cognitive bias where repeated exposure to a statement makes it seem more truthful, even if it’s known to be false. I really did believe that CS graduates had lower employment than art history majors. Don’t get me wrong, the job market for newgrads is oh-so-brutal, and the future prospects are murky. Which probably made it easier to believe such an outrageous claim. Yes, disproving the headline took all of 10 seconds, but how many headlines do you see a day? What other misinformation cements itself in your head? And ultimately, is it better to limit access to such information, or - however impractical - try to verify everything you see?

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Ruslan Osipov 1 months ago

I shouldn’t have bought that keyboard

A little over a month ago I bought a keyboard for my phone . Here’s what I wrote: I’ll follow-up in six month to year to see if that’s just a gimmick purchase. Or maybe I end up drafting up my next book using this thing - we’ll just have to see. Well, it was a gimmick. It’s a great keyboard, and I’m sure niche use cases will come up here and there, but… yeah, a gimmick. There I was, on our family trip to Japan and Vietnam, excited about all the writing I might do from a hotel room, or maybe in a coffee shop, or even on the long flight. But here’s the thing, we travel with an infant. Yeah, that’s an important part I kind of glanced over. There really isn’t that much free time to write when you either entertain, feed, or sleep the little potato, and when you’re not doing that - you just want to lay down, or maybe talk to your partner because you two haven’t had uninterrupted conversation in months. But even beyond that, I massively overestimated my own desire to write when I’m on vacation. I love writing, and it did find a few occasions to plop open the device and jot down some notes, but ultimately writing is work. Rewarding work I enjoy, but it’s still work. I don’t like to work on vacation. I like to chill. With hindsight, as I’m reading the excited mini-review for my little ProtoARC XK04, I can clearly see how naive I was, and how I fell for the idea that all I need is a sleek little keyboard, and I’ll write more! I will be oh-so productive! My partner and I often talk about the barrier to doing things (tm) and how it interacts with the stuff you buy. I don’t really need a fancy pair of running shoes to start running. And I don’t need a fancy notebook or a nice keyboard to write. Yes, it’ll probably get me excited to get into the hobby, but this type of excitement passes quickly. A few years back - half a decade or so - I lived a little too far from work to bike. A little too close to justify driving. My wife and I decided we’ll get me an ebike, ebikes aren’t cheap, or at least they weren’t back then. We got one, and it was exactly what I needed: a little more power to make my hilly 30 minute commute by bike a no-brainer. I biked 5 days a week, and I did so for years until we moved. Maybe that’s why it’s so hard to tell when something is the right tool for the job, or ultimately just a gimmick and a waste of money. Companies have gotten very good at selling you a belief in a version of yourself - you don’t buy an item, you think about who you will become (with a help of said item). I think of myself as somewhat frugal and prudent with money, but this just comes to show how easy it is to fall into that trap. So yeah, I didn’t write more because I bought a little keyboard. But I am writing more (twice a week for nearly a year now) because I made a commitment, because I enjoy the creative process, and because it makes me feel good.

writing Writing
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Ruslan Osipov 1 months ago

Looking back at 2025

2025 was a crazy year - a good kind of crazy for once. My daughter was born, and she’s pretty cool. Adjusting to life with an infant wasn’t easy, but we took on the challenge gladly - we lost our firstborn, and we’re grateful for every inconvenience or a sleepless night. But yeah, life won’t ever be the same. I took a lot of time off work to be with my kiddo, which was great for my mental health. This is the longest I haven’t worked in my adult life, and believe it or not - not working is nice, and I’m hoping I’ve been trying to keep this optimistically detached attitude as I got back to work throughout the year - with mixed success, but it’s nice to know what the north star feels like. The space to not work opened up room for other things. I got pulled into writing - a lot more than before. This year I published far north of 100,000 words across this and my gaming blog - publishing weekly across both outlets. That’s a thick novel worth of words, and while not everything I wrote was great, I enjoyed having to come up with new topics, having to get my thoughts out on paper, and getting to experiment with various voices as a writer. 4 of my articles got boosted on Medium this year (which I thought was pretty cool), and I had some incredible conversations with folks in email and comment chains. I especially enjoyed jotting down decades worth of unfinished thoughts about games - gaming is a hobby I deeply enjoy. We’ve done a few international trips - namely to Japan and Vietnam, and enjoyed both. Traveling with an infant was fun and weird, and I’m excited for even more travel next year. I also got to enjoy building different relationships with my parents and my in-laws, since we now primarily engage with them from the lens of having a kid. It’s fun, it’s frustrating, it’s novel. All of this - alongside many conversations with family and friends - really brought on a philosophical shift. More appreciation for the impermanence of things. Life won’t be simpler than it is today, things will only get more complicated. And that’s fine. I get to appreciate the way life was before, and I get to enjoy the way life is now. More complicated, more messy, much more full of life.

writing Writing gaming Gaming
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Ruslan Osipov 2 months ago

Home is where my stuff is

When I was in my 20s, decluttering was easy. I didn’t have a lot of stuff. I came to the US with a single suitcase, and I mostly kept my stuff contained to that suitcase for years. It was nice - every time I’d move when renting rooms (which was often), I’d go through all my stuff, put it back in the suitcase, and be back on the move. My mom lived through the dissolution of the Soviet Union, which instilled a scarcity mindset - something I naturally inherited. You don’t own too many things, you take care of what you own, you don’t throw stuff away. Stuff was hard to come by, so you respected it. The irony is that this mindset both prevents accumulation and makes decluttering harder. You don’t buy frivolously, but you also don’t discard easily. Every object earned its place. I slowly started accumulating stuff. First, it was the computer. My love of both tech and games is no secret, so I upgraded from a tiny netbook into a full-blown gaming PC. It wasn’t anything to write home about, but it was big enough that it would no longer fit in my suitcase. There was a monitor too, so two things that I had to have. It was the first time I needed help moving - and my last landlord was nice enough to help - a suitcase, a PC tower, and a monitor. I still didn’t have too much stuff, and a dedicated PC really was a great investment for a gaming enthusiast like me. I got a bicycle too, but that was really a transportation method, and while it was yet another thing - it made me healthier and opened up the city around me. Clutter escalated once I rented an entire place to myself. All of a sudden I needed furniture, moving up from prefurnished rooms. At first I lived in a tiny studio which didn’t even have a functional kitchen. A bed, a clothes rack, and a desk for my computer. The studio was cramped and utilitarian, but I remember a specific kind of peace. Everything I owned was visible from the bed. No hidden boxes, no “I should really go through that” guilt. I could see all my stuff. I didn’t realize at the time that this was a temporary state - not a lifestyle I’d chosen, but a constraint I’d graduate out of. Minimalism is easy when the life is not yet complicated. I won’t bore you with every place I lived in throughout my life, so let’s fast forward a decade. My wife, child, and I live in our house in San Diego, and have a lot more stuff now. Naturally, all the furniture, clothes for three, kitchen stuff (I love to cook), so many different things. There’s all the home improvement stuff - hey, gotta keep the paints, the brushes, the hammers and the drills. Need all of that to take care of the house we own. I have many more interests these days too - from miniature painting to, as of recently, 3D printing . All of the hobbies take up valuable space. I had a director, Luke, who was complaining about business travel - and me, being a young tech professional, could not relate. He would say “Home is where my stuff is. I like my stuff.” And now that I have more stuff - ugh, I get it. I go through annual decluttering, Konmari exercises (“does this bring me joy?”). But it’s hard, because buying stuff is really easy. A few clicks and tomorrow (or sometimes even today) there’s a box on your porch. Look, just last week I talked about a phone keyboard I bought. The friction is gone. The decision to acquire takes seconds; the decision to discard takes emotional labor. Here’s what I’ve realized: every object I own is a fossil. A little sediment left by a past version of myself. The gaming PC wasn’t clutter - it was proof that I’d made it, that I could afford something nice for once, that I wasn’t just surviving anymore. The drill isn’t clutter - it’s homeowner-me, a version of myself that 20-something-year-old me with his suitcase couldn’t have imagined. The 3D printer is current-me’s curiosity, an exploration of a hobby. The miniature paints are the version of me that finally has time for hobbies just for the sake of having hobbies. This is why decluttering is so hard. It’s not really about tidiness. It’s about deciding which past selves get to stay. That drawer with random cables? That’s “I might need this someday” me - the Soviet scarcity mindset my mom handed down. The programming books I’ll never open again? That’s a young programmer me from a decade ago. The fancy kitchen gadgets I used twice? That’s “I’m going to become someone who makes pasta from scratch” me. Aspirational me. He didn’t pan out, but he tried. Some of these versions of myself are still relevant. Some aren’t. The hard part isn’t identifying which is which - it’s accepting that letting go of the object means letting go of that version of me. Admitting that I’m not that person anymore. Or that I never became the person I bought that thing for. I don’t think the goal is to minimize anymore. I’ve read the minimalism blogs, I’ve seen the photos of people with one bag and a laptop living their best life in Lisbon. Good for them, I lived that life before - hell, I lived out of my car for a year . But I have a partner, a kid, a house, and more varied interests. All of which come with stuff. I want to be intentional about which identities I’m holding onto and why. Some sediment is just dirt - clear it out, make space, breathe easier. But some sediment is bedrock (I’m not a geologist, I don’t know rocks). The one suitcase life isn’t coming back, and that’s okay. I’m in a different stage of my life: I look back at my “simple life” with longing, but I enjoy my life today even more - or maybe just differently. I certainly enjoy it in the way important to me today. So now when I declutter, I try to ask a different question. Not “does this bring me joy?” but “which version of me needed this, and do I still want to carry him forward?” Sometimes the answer is yes. The drill stays. The 3D printer stays. The gaming PC - upgraded many times now - stays. And sometimes the answer is: that guy did his best, but I’m someone else now. Thanks for getting me here. Into the donate pile you go. It doesn’t make decluttering easy. But it helps me make peace with the mess. The suitcase me is not coming back, and that’s probably for the best - he didn’t really have much of a life yet. I’ve got more stuff now. I’ve got more me now. I’ll figure out what stays. It’s been 10 years since I first wrote about my experience with minimalism . Reading through it now - many of the story beats are similar, but the perspective changed. Funny how that works…

gaming Gaming culture Culture
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Ruslan Osipov 2 months ago

I bought a keyboard for my phone

So, here’s an interesting purchase. An external folding keyboard for a phone . It’s something I picked up on a Black Friday sale for $24 (which is about how much the device is worth, probably). Why an external keyboard for my phone? I like to write - a lot. I take notes, I write down my thoughts, I publish a blog or two - that’s how I process the world. Sitting down in front of a keyboard is a great way to unload what’s in my head: I type faster than I handwrite, and it’s just a meditative experience. There’s just one problem: I have an infant, which makes sitting down at a computer problematic sometimes. There’s just not enough peaceful minutes in a day where I’m able to sit at my desktop, or even pull out a laptop. My phone’s always nearby though, and I’ve jotted down notes on the go before. But I hate the on-screen keyboard, which makes me want to pull my hair out when I have to write anything longer than a “k” response to a text. So here comes a keyboard that’s small enough to fit in my back pocket, yet becomes a almost full size keyboard once it unfolds. Moreover, I’m excited to take it with me on a vacation, or maybe even a quick trip to a coffee shop. I’m not going to travel with a laptop, but it would be nice to be able to write in a hotel room, or on the plane - without the added bulk of another device. A quick pullout keyboard accomplishes that. I picked up ProtoArc XK04 , which has been working out pretty great - it easily pairs to my phone, the keys feel fine enough, and the build doesn’t feel flimsy or cheap. In fact, it’s a little heavier than I expected, which makes for a nicer typing experience (but it’s still light enough to carry around). I’ll follow-up in six month to year to see if that’s just a gimmick purchase. Or maybe I end up drafting up my next book using this thing - we’ll just have to see.

mobile Mobile hardware Hardware writing Writing
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Ruslan Osipov 2 months ago

How a nasty cold fixed my diet

Our whole family has been sick with a really nasty cold. It probably has something to do with the fact that our infant licks every surface and object she comes in close proximity with. I’ve been sick for 11 days and counting (don’t worry, I’ve seen a doctor, I have my antibiotics now), and this is just the worst. But it did fix our eating out problem. You see, we love good food, we live in a foodie neighborhood, and we eat out a little too much. We want to eat out a little less, if only to enjoy the times we do even more. And most importantly, we want to stop eating out just because we’re lazy. And we’re often lazy. But guess what, when you’re sick, the idea of going out, spreading your germs, being uncomfortable and being a public menace just isn’t a great one. It’s much, much easier to eat at home than to eat out right now. So we’ve been eating at home. This idea of reducing friction to do the right thing reminded me of the period in my life when I got in pretty good shape by biking every day. I lived not too far from the office, but the nature of Bay Area traffic meant that it would take me up to 40 minutes to make a fairly short commute. I could commute at a different time - earlier or later, or I could bike. Because it would consistently take me 30 minutes to bike to the office, and if I was late, or if I was being lazy (which I am often), biking was the fastest option. My office being Google, having showers in the office helped, of course. I’ve been trying to recreate making it more convenient to do the right thing ever since. We don’t have a driveway here in our house in San Diego - so driving often means losing a parking spot. This makes biking or walking a much more appealing - often an easier option. Back to better diet, I’ve been buying those yummy frozen meals from Trader Joe’s, because sauteing some Kung Pao chicken in the skillet is healthier, faster, and easier than getting takeout. It works, as long as we don’t run out of frozen food that is. Are there ways you trick yourself into making better choices?

programming Programming
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Ruslan Osipov 2 months ago

Unveiling my gaming blog: Unmapped Worlds

For the past eight months, I’ve been running two parallel writing projects. You know about this one: my weekly posts in this blog (this is post 42, by the way). But there has been a shadow project running in the background. I love video games, and I’ve collected too many opinions on them to keep them to myself. Meet Rooslawn’s Unmapped Worlds , a blog where I write essays about games. I decided to go for a phonetic spelling of Ruslan in the title, in the hopes I’ll get misnamed less. I don’t review games. Instead, I write about game mechanics and tropes, and I love breaking down how digital worlds are constructed. It’s a place where I can complain about my dislike for map markers and quest GPS, or explore the reality that I rarely actually finish the games I play. It is a home for deep dives into immersion, design philosophy, and the specific friction that makes a game memorable. A few of the pieces I’m most proud of include when I didn’t speak the language of games and difficulty sliders are dumb . Running the project anonymously was a great idea - I was able to be more vulnerable, it allowed me to experiment more with different topics and formats, and find my voice. The voice of Unmapped Worlds can be described as rambly. I’ve been thinking of it as written gumbo . It isn’t clean and corporate, there’s texture, love and care put into it, and you know it’s authentic. Gumbo is something spicy, authentic, textured, visceral, and willing to take risks that alienate some of the audience. This is unlike slop, which usually comes from the desire for inoffensive predictability and consensus, even if we have to falsify our preferences to achieve it. - The FLUX Review, episode 211 Ultimately I felt like attaching my name to Unmapped Worlds does it justice - who I am is highly relevant to the writing. Gumbo’s flavor is unique to the chef. If you like video games, see if any of the 42 (so far) essays connect with you, and consider subscribing to my newsletter .

gaming Gaming writing Writing
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Ruslan Osipov 3 months ago

Piracy thrives where services fail

There are three editions of my book in circulation: two English editions of Mastering Vim (the second being a complete rewrite), and a Japanese translation by the amazing Masafumi Okura. And I don’t really mind if my book gets pirated. Yeah, piracy isn’t legal, yada-yada. But if $30 is too much right now and your library doesn’t have a copy to spare - I won’t blame you for torrenting it. Here’s my full permission, I hope you enjoy the result of my sweat, tears, and deadline anxiety. Amazon is convenient, but you don’t own your Kindle books. They can be deleted or changed at any moment. Amazon has literally changes book covers after purchase, especially when books get a movie release. Ugh. Meet DRM (Digital Rights Management) - the technology that ensures you’re renting, not buying. Packt, publisher of Mastering Vim, does offer DRM-free PDFs. But there’s no good PDF syndication ecosystem. No convenient library management. No sync across devices. You’re not really missing out. Growing up in Russia, I pirated video games. Not out of principle, but pragmatism. Fan translations arrived six months before official ones. They were better too - localizers who actually played the games versus outsourced rush jobs. This was different kind of piracy, too - a guy on a corner selling pirated CDs at a market-appropriate rate. I stopped in 2011 - already after I moved to the United States. Not because of some moral awakening, but because I learned about Steam. Cloud saves, achievements, automatic updates. The service became worth paying for. Music followed the same path - Spotify and YouTube Music (which I like because our family pays for YouTube Premium) made piracy pointless. Video streaming went backwards. Netflix was the Steam moment for TV - everything in one place, reasonably priced. I loved our Netflix subscription, it felt oh-so-magical. Now? Eight subscriptions to watch your shows, content vanishing mid-season, regional restrictions. I watch a handful of shows or movies each month, and I once calculated how much I would have to take in subscription costs if I didn’t strategically sign up and cancel for periods when I want to watch my favorite shows. Over a $1,000 a year. Screw that. I, of course, don’t pirate, not do I condone piracy. But I do use Jellyfin to organize my legally owned media library. One interface, no disappearing content, works offline. It’s simply a better experience than juggling Disney+, Netflix, HBO Max, Paramount+, Apple TV+, and whatever new service launched this week. Piracy isn’t about price - it’s about service. Steam proved gamers will pay. Spotify proved music fans will pay. But fragment the market, add restrictions, remove content randomly, make legal options worse than illegal ones? Don’t be surprised when people choose the better experience.

business Business
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Ruslan Osipov 3 months ago

Turns out Windows has a package manager

I have a Windows 11 PC, and something that really annoyed me about Windows for decades is the inability to update all installed programs at once. It’s just oh-so-annoying to have to update a program manually, which is worse for things I don’t use often - meaning every time I open a program, I have to deal with update pop-ups. I was clearly living under a rock, because all the way in 2020 Microsoft introduced package manager which lets you install, and more importantly update packages. It’s as simple as opening a command line (ideally as administrator, so you don’t have to keep hitting yes on the permission prompt for every program), and runinng . Yup, that’s it. You’ll update the vast majority of software you have installed. Some software isn’t compatible, but when I ran the command for the first time, Windows updated a little over 20 packages, which included the apps I find myself having to update manually the most often. To avoid having to do this manually, I’ve used windows Task Scheduler to create a new weekly task which runs a file, which consists of a single line: I just had to make sure Run with the highest privileges is enabled in task settings. So long, pesky update reminders. My Windows apps will finally stay up-to-date, hopefully.

ui UI devops DevOps
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Ruslan Osipov 3 months ago

Modality, tactility, and car interfaces

Modal interfaces are genuinely cool. For the uninitiated, a “modal” interface is one where the same input does different things depending on the state (or mode) the system is in. Think of your smartphone keyboard popping up only when you need to type, or a gas pedal driving the car forward or backward depending on the gear. I love the concept enough to dedicate a whole chapter of Mastering Vim to it. But there’s a time and a place for everything, and a car’s center console is neither the time nor the place for a flat sheet of glass. I was traveling this week and rented a Kia EV6 - a perfectly serviceable electric car. I was greeted by a sleek touch panel that toggles control between the air conditioning and the audio system. Dear car manufacturers: please, I am begging you, stop. When I’m driving down the highway at 75 miles per hour, the absolute last thing I should be doing is taking my eyes off the road to visually verify which mode my AC knobs are in so I can turn down the volume. I can’t feel my way around the controls because gently grazing the surface of the screen registers as a button press. It’s not just annoying - it’s unsafe. Modality works fine when you have physical feedback. My old Pebble Time Round ( may it rest in peace ) had a tactile modal interface. It had four buttons that did different things depending on the context. But because they were physical, clicky buttons, I could operate the watch without ever looking at it. I could skip a track or dismiss a notification while riding my bike, purely by feel. Compare that to modern smart watches, or, worse, earbuds. Don’t even get me started on touch controls on earbuds. I’m out here riding my bike through rough terrain - I do not have the fine motor control required to perform a delicate gesture on a wet piece of plastic lodged in my ear. I miss the click. I miss the resistance. I miss knowing I’ve pressed a button without needing confirmation from the software. We’ve optimized for screens that can be anything in so many areas of our lives, but these screens aren’t particularly good at controlling stuff when we’re living said lives. Yeah, I miss analog buttons.

design Design Electronics hardware Hardware
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Ruslan Osipov 3 months ago

PC Gamer physical edition is good, actually

I spend a lot of time in front of a computer or a phone, even now that I have a kid. Hey - she needs to sleep, and I have some time to kill. Many of my hobbies revolve around a screen too - like playing video games, tinkering with stuff, or writing. It’s unsurprising that I’ve been wanting to take a step away from the screen and find a way to engage with physical media more. I used to read a lot of books - I don’t anymore. I listen to audiobooks sometimes, but it’s been a good year or two since I last sat down and read a book cover to cover. That’s fine - life ebbs and flows, and even though sitting down and reading books used to be a huge part of my life - they aren’t today, and that’s okay. But it’s nice to put down devices and just hold something in your hand. I worked around this limitation though and decided to get more into magazines. Yeah, print media is still alive and kicking. We have two physical publication in our household this year - The New Yorker, and PC Gamer. Two very different magazines, and you can probably tell which subscription appealed to my wife - and which one to me. I’ve been reading both, although I’ll admit that PC Gamer has received more of my attention. Hey - unlike The New Yorker, which oppressively sends you a new issue each week, PC Gamer has been sending me issues monthly. And I don’t need to tell you that The New Yorker is a great publication - it’s got hell of a reputation, and for a good reason. It’s quality journalism, and peak writing, or so I’m told, but it certainly reads that way despite my limited knowledge on the subject. But I do know a thing or two about video games, and one thing I know is that gaming journalism from major publications - PC Gamer included has been steadily declining in quality over the past decade. Between corporate relationships, out of touch and burnt out reviewers, and sanitized, often generic pieces - I have been avoiding mainstream gaming media. There are lots of small independent reviewers who do a wonderful job covering the titles I care about, and I trust those a lot more. I’ve read somewhere that the print edition of PC Gamer is somewhat different. You still have the same people working on the issue, but the time pressure’s different, articles can’t be updated once they go live, and there’s much more fun and creative writing. I’m sure all of that’s available offline too, but I don’t think I would’ve read any of that if the magazine wasn’t already in my hands. Reading editions of PC Gamer feels like stepping a time capsule, in big part due to fairly substantial retro game coverage - you can’t exactly publish breaking news in a monthly print, so the focus is much more on having interesting things to say. Chronicles of Oblivion in-character playthroughs, developer interviews, quirky reviews - there’s lots to love. I’ve heard Edge Magazine is well known for high quality writing and timeless game critique. I think I’ll check that out too - here, I just subscribed.

media Media gaming Gaming journalism Journalism
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Ruslan Osipov 4 months ago

The Yamaha moment

There’s this old joke: I just had my own Yamaha moment. I was looking for a good pepper grinder, and I just found that one of the best pepper grinders on the market is made by… Peugeot. Yup, apparently the car company produced great pepper grinders, bicycles, and cars, in that order. Live and learn. And yeah, the pepper mill is sturdy, feels and looks great, and the grinding mechanism comes with a lifetime warranty. Me: I’d like to buy a piano. Yamaha: We got you! Me: I’m also looking for a motorcycle, where could I get one? Yamaha: You’re not gonna believe this…

entertainment Entertainment hardware Hardware business Business
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Ruslan Osipov 4 months ago

Ego and the moving finish line

This is an entry to the IndieWeb carnival on ego hosted by bix . In case you don’t know me - I’m Ruslan. A father, a husband, and a big nerd for video games and optimization problems. A few years ago, I would’ve started this intro differently: “Hi, I’m Ruslan and I’m an engineering manager at Google.” Oh - I’m still a manager at Google, but my priorities in life are different, and the shift is driven by the way my relationship with ego has changed over the years. Over a decade ago, in my early twenties, I seeked recognition. I wanted to be widely known and respected. I moved to the United States from another country, pursued a career in tech - hopping between companies until landing at Google. This was huge for me, as I admired the company growing up, and working at Google felt like a peak achievement for a little computer nerd like me. But I haven’t really savored the accomplishment. Now that I got to Google, it was all about getting to the next level, getting a promotion, bumping up my salary, expanding my span of influence, and so on. I compared myself to other early-twenty-somethings. Look, Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook at age 19, and I’m already a few years behind! Did I want to start a company? No. Did I even like Facebook? No, I didn’t. But that didn’t stop me from comparing myself to others, and it leached the joy out of life. The generational curse of productivity certainly has something to do with it - I couldn’t just relax and savor the victories. I had to work hard for the next milestone. But a huge driver behind my early professional achievements was my ego. I wanted to be the best, and I wanted others around me to know it. I simply didn’t know a different way to live. Throughout my early years I was really concerned with what people thought about me. I still struggle with it. And professional success felt like a way to bring authority into the conversation - “look, you can’t think poorly of me, I’m mister big pants in a serious company”. Mind you, we’re talking about an imaginary conversation in my own head. In my mid-twenties I met my now-wife, who had a much more balanced outlook on life. She’s a hard worker too, but her achievements weren’t driven solely by the need to be seen by others as something else. No, she simply did things she was good at, and did them well. There’s lots of professional pride, yes, but it just felt… healthier? We both were ambitious, we both wanted to do our work exceptionally well, but while I wanted to be seen as the best, she just cared about her craft - regardless of who’s watching. That was a major change from how I approached life, and her attitude rubbed off on me. I tried to decouple my own self-image from my professional successes. I began to engage in hobbies for the sake of enjoyment. Look, I started this blog back in 2012 to bolster my professional image. I wanted to appear attractive to prospective employers, and I wanted people to see how many important thoughts I have, and how many cool things I know. This blog is very different now, because I have less people I care to impress. I don’t want a large audience . Do I get excited when an article I write goes viral or I get a royalty check from my book in the mail? Absolutely. But do I get worked up when only a single reader gets through the entirety of what I write? Not anymore, no, because my ego as a writer needs less feeding than it used to. That’s why I removed comments and other visible indicators of popularity on this blog (eh, and I just don’t want to be tempted by the pursuit of bolstering my own ego). In my mid-30s, I care less about impressing people. It helps me be a better listener, a better friend, or even just a better fleeting acquaintance. I have richer interactions with others when I don’t try to impress them. It ain’t perfect, and I find myself struggling - but I feel like I’m on the right track. I know I’ll win when I won’t be checking the view counts on this piece though. If you’re curious about what other writers have to say about ego, I recommend you check out other entries on IndieWeb Carnival: On Ego .

career Career gaming Gaming
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Ruslan Osipov 4 months ago

Thoughts on 3D printing

A few months back my wife gifted me a 3D printer: an entry level Bambu Lab A1 Mini . It’s a really cool little machine - it’s easy to set up, and it integrates with Maker World - a vast repository of free 3D models. Now that I’ve lived with a 3D printer for nearly half a year, I’d like to share what I’ve learned. After booting up the printer, printing benchy - a little boat which tests printer calibration settings, and seeing thousands of incredible designs on Bambu Lab’s Maker World - I thought I will never have to buy anything ever again. I was wrong. While some stuff printer on a 3D printer is fantastic, it’s not always the best replacement for mass produced objects. Many of the mass produced plastic items are using injection molding - liquid plastic that gets poured into a mold - and that produces a much stronger final product. That might be different if you’re printing with tougher plastics like ABS, but you also wouldn’t be using beginner-friendly machines like the A1 Mini to do that. So yeah, you still need to buy the heavy duty plastic stuff. And even as you print things, I wouldn’t say it’s cheaper than buying things from a store. It’s probably about the same, given the occasional failed prints, costs of the 3D printer, the need for multiple filaments, and the fact that by having a 3D printer you’re more likely to print things you don’t exactly need. Oh, I’ve printed so many useless things - it’s amazing. The Elden Ring warrior jar Alexander planter. Solair of Astora figurine. A beautiful glitch art sculpture. I even got a 0.2mm nozzle (smaller than the default 0.4mm) and managed to 3D print passable wargame and D&D miniatures. Which was pretty awesome, although you have to pay for the nicest looking models, which does take away from enjoyment of making plastic miniatures appear in your house “out of nowhere”. I’m not against artists getting paid, they certainly deserve it, but printed models were comparable to an mid-range Reaper miniature if you know what I mean, which certainly isn’t terrible, but it’s harder to justify breaking even. Maybe I could get better at getting the small details printed nicely. Oh, and if you’re into wargames - this thing easily prints incredible terrain. A basic 3D printer will pay for itself once you furnish a single battlefield. Once you’re done with printing basic things, you do need to start fiddling with the settings. Defaults only take you so far, and if you want a smoother surface, smaller details, or improvement in any other quality indicator - you have to tinker with the settings and produce test prints. It’s a hobby in it’s own, and it’s fun and rewarding, but this can get in the way when you’re just trying to print something really cool. But the most incredible feeling of accomplishment came when I needed something specific around the house, and I’d be able to design it. We bought some hanging plants, and I wished I could just hang it on the picture rail of our century home. And I was able to design a hanger, and it took me 3 iterations to create an item that fits my house perfectly and that I love. My mom needed a plastic replacement part for a long discontinued juicer. I was able to design the thing (don’t worry, I covered PLA in food-safe epoxy), and the juicer will see another few decades of use. Door stops, highly specific tools, garden shenanighans - the possibilities are endless. It took me a few months to move past using others’ designs and making my own - Tinkercad has been sufficient for my use cases so far, although I’m sure I’ll outgrow it as my projects get more complicated. 3D printers aren’t quite yet the consumer product, but my A1 Mini shoed me that this future is getting closer. Some day, we might all have a tiny 3D printer in our home (or have a cheap corner 3D printing shop?), to quickly and effortlessly create many household objects. Until then, 3D printers remain a tinkerer’s tool, but a really fun one at that, and modern printers are reducing the barrier to entry, making it much easier to get into the hobby.

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Ruslan Osipov 4 months ago

The generational curse of productivity

My daughter’s grandma is visiting, making me reflect on my upbringing more. I grew up in a culture that heavily values working hard. My mother was a hard worker, my father was a hard worker, their parents were hard workers, and so on up to 7 generations (or so my grandmother’s genealogical records say). This meant sitting down to relax wasn’t really something valuable - further, “why are you sitting down? It’s daytime” was a common phrase I’ve heard thrown around. I wasn’t abused into working non-stop, mind you (in fact, my mom loved me very much), but I did pick up a lot of the core beliefs about hard work, the value of the work, and what makes a good hard-working person “good”. This had quite a few upsides. I wouldn’t get tired when I needed to work - be it physically or mentally. Or more or less, I wouldn’t really be bothered by feelings of fatigue. You just push through, naturally. That made studying and working easier. A 16 hour shift during the sowing season? Not a problem. Study late into the night? Easy. Crunch time in the office? No worries. This mindset has set me up with a decent academic performance, and a string of jobs which eventually ended up in a career in the heart of Silicon Valley, and a career I’ve done well for myself in. The Silicon Valley mindset didn’t help. There’s this ever-present push to be more productive, to grow, and to spend every minute of your day getting better, faster, stronger (I touched on this briefly when I wrote in defense of quality ). This just worked to reinforce the mindset I already have. I spent many evenings and weekends reading self-improvement or programming books (which is reflected in the content of my blog about a decade ago) or taking classes. I tried to get really good at my hobbies, so that I don’t waste time stagnating. No time to waste. You see, there are negative aspects to believing that hard work is the only measure of “goodness”, because ever since I was a kid sitting down, relaxing, and not doing much was frowned upon. Oh, don’t get me wrong - I got to play plenty, but the play had to be enriching, useful, and valuable to my growth as an individual. Otherwise it’s “grumble-grumble” and “we’re going to throw away this computer some day”. I find myself taking these beliefs into adulthood. Despite much self-work (a patient, loving, and caring companion helps), I still sometimes find myself worried that I’m not being productive, or doing the right thing. I saw this play out even during my time off. I’d spend days organizing documents and tackling long-delayed paperwork, instead of taking the time to focus on things I’d rather do instead. Work, work never ends. A decade ago I still played video games and watched shows I love, but I saw the activity as a waste of time. And I’d feel guilty every time I’d engage in any form of entertainment, and sometimes I’d even engage in mental gymnastics to try to prove to myself that what I’m doing is done to improve my own qualities as a human being, like playing a game to learn a new language or maybe pick up a skill I could use in a real life. After much rediscovery, self-love, and care I try not to do that anymore. I work hard, yes, but I don’t beat myself up for relaxing and smelling the roses. I love my video gaming hobbies, I enjoy miniature painting, reading science fiction, and picking up short-lived but fulfilling interests here and there. Going on paternity leave this year has been a great experience in slowing down. Yes, taking care of an infant is a lot of work, but there’s much downtime to enjoy life (I recently wrote about reflections on my paternity leave ). I’m not working to build some sort of a portfolio of interests and I’m not trying to turn every hobby into a side-gig or be the most efficient hobbyist to grace this Earth. There’s a balance I’ve been missing, and slowing down has been doing wonders for my wellbeing. Maybe the most productive thing I’ve done was to finally stop trying to be productive.

career Career culture Culture
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