The Geek Talk

Who’s Mika Tuupola?

I am a technology guy with passion for advertising. Originally from Finland but currently living in Tallinn, Estonia.

Do you have a Brand?

Consciously, no.

How do you choose the idea and the colors in any new project?

Since I am not a designer I do not know much about colors. Even when I used to do graffities (long time ago) I only drew the lines. Other guys did the fills.

New open source projects usually start from a specific need. I wrote Jeditable after switching from Prototype to jQuery. I did not find edit in place plugin which suited my needs. So I ended up writing my own. Same thing with Lazy Load I saw YUI ImageLoader and wrote something similar for jQuery. Sometimes I just want to see how something can be done.

Work projects are a bit different. Since I work in advertising they start with brief from the client. Team then sits down comfortably for brainstorming and figures out creative and technical solution.

What does your typical day look like?

Wake up at 8:30. Drink coffee, feed pets and read the mails at home to avoid traffic jams. Drive to work at 9:30. Day is mixture of meetings, coding and drawing wireframes.

What are the tools you couldn’t live without?

I can not live without my MacBook Pro. Perfect companion for it is iPhone. Both are tools I use every day. On the software side TextMate and Git are perfect for coding. Debugging life would be much harder without FireBug.

What do you do in your free time?

Playing with the three Bengal cats we have. They are named Atari, Bakari and Google. I really enjoy cooking with my wife. Especially when friends come to eat. I also build and fly radio controlled helicopters. Lately I have developed an interest in hardware hacking and computer-human physical interaction. Before I used to do lot of wakeboarding.

Current favorite apps?

TextMate, Transmit, Twitterrific, Terminal and OmniGraffle on OSX. GitHub, Campaign Monitor and Basecamp on web.

What OSs do you prefer?

OSX on laptop and any Unix on serverside. I used to be huge Solaris fan but that has been fading away.

Small pic for your Wokrplace?

Favorite: Colors, Font, Languages (PHP, Ruby), JS Framework?

Dark blue must be my favourite colour. I use green Monaco font on black background on my terminals. It is an old school thing i guess. I like both PHP and Ruby. PHP for the speed of development, Ruby for the elegance of syntax. I still speak better PHP though. JavaScript frameworks: jQuery of course!

The things or source that inspired you?

Best coding inspiration comes from finding a problem which is tough to solve. I sometimes get manic trying to figure out how to code something.

Creative inspiration comes from seeing other peoples work. Especially when I see something simple and elegant. Best ideas are usually the simplest ones. Same thing with food. Best recipes are simple. That is why I love Jamie Oliver. I also get inspiration from TED Talks and books by authors such as Malcolm Gladwell.

Sometimes inspiration comes out of nowhere. Usually just before you fall asleep. I keep paper and pen close to bed so I can write the ideas down. I would not remember them in the morning.

What’s do you prefer, the freelance work or the full time employee?

I prefer working as full time employee. I am not well enough organized to be working as freelancer. Just look at the photo of my desk.

Your personnel projects and goals for 2010?

Spend more time with the loved ones who I have been ignoring lately. Start wakeboarding again.