University didn’t leave me much time to spend coding apps, but I started getting interested in Nemomobile, an opensource mobile-oriented Linux distribution. Nemomobile has been my hobby project since then, and it’s what I’ve spent, and still spend, most of my spare time on.

I met lots of nice people on #nemomobile IRC channel on FreeNode (some of their nicknames, in random order: sledgeSim, Sage, Venemo, fk_lx, qwazix, w00t, special, Stskeeps, Sfiet_Konstantin dm8tbr, cybette, iekku, jukkaeklund, veskuh, Jonni, and many others…) , and I’ve always enjoyed the atmosphere 🙂

In February 2012 I got my Bachelor degree in Computer Science, here’s a picture of me and my girlfriend right after the presentation!

Bachelor Degree

Few months later Jolla people announced their plans, and in September 2012 the Jolla hack day was organized by Devaamo, in Tampere! 🙂 I had already been in contact with Jolla people because basically most of them were already Nemomobile contributors before Jolla was born, and I knew I would have loved a company with those people and values/ideals behind. I absolutely wanted to join them at the hack day! I had to sell a few gadgets (a tablet and something else) to be able to join them (eh, students life 😀 ), but it was definitely worth it! I also owe this to the nice girl that hosted me in Tampere for 3 days! (and thanks to CouchSurfing for making this possible).

You can hear Iekku thanking me for the contributions to Nemomobile’s image/video gallery application (which was used by Marko Saukko aka Sage to show the presentation slides) during one of the Nemomobile related talks at the hackday, link here 🙂 That was so kind of her, thanks honey-badger, I was about to panic! 😀 But maybe that was because of the many Mountain Dews I drank that day!

Here’s a picture with some of the guys I met at the Hack Day! Thanks for the great day!

Devaamo Hack Day with Jolla! From left to right: Carol aka “cybette”, Thomas aka dm8tbr and his fiancee, Jari, and me

In November 2012 Jolla launched their mobile OS, SailfishOS! I was lucky to be able to join them at Slush 2012, and Jolla was kind enough to provide me with a Jolla Guest Pass, awesome!  A very friendly man I contacted on CouchSurfing (that website rules ehehe) offered to host both me and Sfiet_Konstantin, so we slept in the same (double) bed! Sounds weird, but hey, that was the only choice if we wanted to attend SailfishOS’ launch!

The launch was just AWESOME! It was very exciting, and I felt as happy as them 😀

After the launch event, as soon as Marc left the stage  I asked a girl who had a fancy Nikkon pro-camera to a picture of me and Marc with my N950…

She took 7 PICTURES…and….well, you can see the result below. 🙁 🙁 🙁

If you want to live that moment again, here’s something for you!

SailfishOS launch at Slush 2012

Me and Marc Dillon…it takes some fantasy, but we’re there!

After November I had to dive again into university studies…and I kept contributing to the nemomobile project whenever I had some spare time (either by fixing bugs or by helping people on chat) or I was not as stressed as I am during exams periods. So we’ll fast-forward to May 😀

20th May 2013, Jolla Love Day! (Yes, I was there as well!)

Other great moments with Jolla people, the location was very cool, and we also got to talk to Marc Dillon (currently Head of Software at Jolla, ex-CEO) and many other Jolla guys in a very interesting pre-launch meeting.

After that, the launch of The Jolla, the first SailfishOS phone by Jolla which is supposed to be shipping during XMas period. Very exciting stuff, just like you would expect from a Jolla event 😀

Though I have to say I was a bit disappointed this time because we were told so many times to “wait for May to get more info”, and we got almost nothing 😀

But, well, not their fault, they worked so hard, and they showed us all they could show at that time 🙂

This time I also met Jason from Jolla UK, and few other cool people from other Jolla communities (Jolla Suomi, and Jolla Sweden if I remember correctly :D).

If you want to watch the launch of The Jolla, head here!

Me and Marc Dillon, better picture this time 😀

Me and jpetrise

The launch event of The Jolla is about to start!

And, finally, the last event I’ve been at was the Devaamo Summit (period between two university exams), where I finally met Venemo.

Again Couchsurfing and Ryanair made this possible 😀 A very kind Finnish couple of young people hosted me, Venemo, and fk_lx!

The talks at the event were very interesting, and the free soft drinks and food made everything better 🙂

I also got an awesome Devaamo T-Shirt for my volunteering effort…thank you so much guys!

The second day there was a hacking challenge going on as well…at the end of the day, after the talks were finished, we formed up 3 teams of 2 people (me, qwazix, aknight, Venemo, fk_lx, and another guy) and went through all the puzzles in about half an hour 🙂

It was very entertaining I have to say, I’m looking forward to participating in another hacking challenge 🙂

Devaamo Summit 2013! From left to right: Raine Mäkeläinen, veskuh, Jonni, Venemo, and me 🙂

Then university exams, university exams, university exams…

The exams period eventually finished, and at the end of July I finally had some spare time again to hack Nemomobile! 😀

The plan there was to start the transition from Qt4/X11 to Qt5/Wayland.

Exciting stuff! 🙂

But I’m tired of writing 😀 and this post is already huge 😛

So I’ll leave the nemomobile hacking to the next one 🙂

To those of you who managed to read the whole post, cheers!