I'm Antti, a freelance software engineer from Finland, methodically exploring and experimenting as I go, living a nomadic life.

I'm passionate about programming and personal development. At the moment I'm likely developing software in a startup, working with my mind maps or building software tools for thinking and learning.

The web is my platform.

I've been experimenting with a range of technologies to create software for the web. Besides helping me think and learn — and paying my bills — it enabled me to explore the world.

Latest


My book Mind on Maps released!

Mind on Maps -- Navigate your thoughts methodically with digital mind maps is available on Amazon. See Mind on Maps website for info. Available at Amazon

Projects

What I'm up to at the moment...
  • Mind on Maps

    Navigate your thoughts methodically with digital mind maps.

    I've been using digital mind maps as my daily go-to cognitive tool for over 10 years now. During those years I've moved from a collection of a dozen scattered maps to a connected system spanning hundreds of them. I wrote a book about my experience.

    https://mindonmaps.com
  • Anywhereism

    A journey as digital nomads. In our previous life, from about 2013 to 2017, me and my wife have were working 99% online and living out of our backpacks. We occasionally wrote updates about our travels. It's quite strange to think of that time, the whole world seems to have changed so much from those times.

    http://www.anywhereism.net
  • Anywheris

    Do you have a software project that would use the help of an experienced full-stack developer in the team? I'm available for part-time, remote contract work. Our company.

    http://www.anywheris.com

Cognitools

Tools and prototypes for computer assisted thinking and learning. Computers enable us to think in ways that we naturally can't and make many other thought processes much easier. Mind maps are one way to extend our cognitive capabilities but they only solve a specific set of problems. These kinds of tools are something I love to work on whenever I have the time.
  • SocrateaserGuided thinking using predefined question sets

    Avoid context switching and use cognitive off-loading to facilitate repeating thinking tasks. What an external coach, a facilitator – or a manager – effectively does is she makes an otherwise non-linear and multi-faceted process flat and linear for a person. Without this help, in order to follow each step of a given process, a person needs to constantly switch the focus between the content and that process. Even the simplest 'chatbot' with predefined questions and zero AI can have a significant impact.

  • Valuesorter(Bubble) Sort out a list of thoughts

    Simple, guided sorting algorithm to help in prioritizing things, using pairwise comparisons. Sorting a list of items, especially personal preferences, mentally is a surprisingly difficult. It's even difficult to do with pen and paper (try sorting out your top 10 personal values this way!). With a help of an app it becomes a simple task of comparing two items at a time until the list is sorted.

  • SynapticleTickle your brain with information, reinforce your memory, collide ideas.

    There are several ideas here. Learning materal preview and priming, review and reinforcement by repetion, and methodic ideation by generating combinations. Synapticle also introduces randomness to the thinking process, which is not really possible without an external device.

  • NumbervisionTrainer for visual acuity and working memory.

    Numbervision was an experiment to train visual recall of numbers (and text). The observation was difficulty in verifying that two long number strings are the same: the bank account numbers when copying them from paper to an online form. The hypothesis was that the problem was due to trying to verify them by subvocalizing, by saying them aloud in one's mind, one at a time – and running out of short-term memory. Coloring the numbers was an attempt to enforce visual matching instead. Android app in Play Store (unmaintained).

More bits and pieces of code at my GitHub account.

Blog

In the blog I time to time write (only in Finnish for now) about what I've learned on the way.

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