What I Was Up To Then
I've been in Stockholm for eight months
Arthur and I are starting to settle in. We have made a few friends. We went to a fun Halloween house party. After our Thanksgiving vacation, we decorated the most beautiful Christmas tree we have ever bought. Swedes later informed us it was too early, but the trees were for sale. I haven't learned much Swedish, but I can count to 20, which is enough to get through a Barry's Bootcamp class.
Arthur and I took our first real vacation since starting at Spotify. We went to southern France for Thanksgiving week. The French were being too modest when they named the city Nice. It's gorgeous.
I became an uncle again. My dad turned 60. My grandma-in-law passed away.
My last day at Spotify was December 8th. Arthur, the reason we moved to Sweden, is still doing great work at Spotify. I will be exploring new opportunities in the new year. I am particularly excited about a few ideas that I have been fostering for years. I think the time finally might be right. I hope to share more soon.
Since the last update
My first Firefox extension, Page Translator, attained a 5/5 star rating and over 6,600 monthly active users. Unfortunately, Mozilla removed my extension from its Addons directory because the extension relied on externally loaded JavaScript. I was disappointed. While I understand the reason for not permitting externally loaded JavaScript, I also believe disclosing the behavior and permitting Firefox users to decide if the security implications would be acceptable to them would be a reasonable and better policy. Sadly, the person in charge of Mozilla Addons sees the world in black-and-white. While Page Translator cannot be discovered via Mozilla Addons, it can still be installed from its Github repository.
Barry’s Bootcamp Stockholm opened in September and I have been working out there regularly. If you are in Stockholm and want to try it, I still have several free first-time guest passes.
My presentation about JSON API for Nordic APIs Platform Summit in Stockholm was well received at the conference and after. Sadly, I was not able to present it at API Strategy & Practice in Portland as planned because Spotify backtracked on covering my travel expenses. Fortunately, Yehuda Katz gave an incredible related talk in my place.
My 3 goals over the next 90 days
Thanks to Taylor Davidson for the /now page tip.