
Every now and then I want to know if I own a game already or if I need to buy it to play. Owning games in different stores/platforms doesn't make this as quick as I would like.

Finally this morning I made a thing for me, so I can do exactly that!

[https://observablehq.com/@pvinis/my-games](https://observablehq.com/@pvinis/my-games)

I can type something in the searchbox and I'll get a result, with the store I own it on.

Things I'd like to have:
- A way to auto-update, or even manual but still mass-update (pull new games from all the stores).

Actually that's it. That would be cool. But for now, I'm very happy with it.


My Games


Carrot Kiwi Banana is a great way to get to know your co-workers a bit more. It's definitely not my idea, it came from a [post on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/carrot-kiwi-banana-remko-vermeulen).

The idea is this: 3 subjects with 2 slides and 1 minute each. Three people choose a subject each. It can be anything they like, they learned, they want to do, anything in the world. They have to made two slides for that subject, and they have one minute to present it to everyone.

We wanted to try this while I was working with [NiceDay](https://niceday.app), and we edited the format slightly. We used to have lunch talks, that used to be one presentation about something, sometimes having a guest, a client or an external professional doing it. We replaced that with our own Carrot Kiwi Banana. We had three people choose a subject, they had to do two slides each (sometimes it was one, sometimes it was three, but two was the suggestion), and we gave two-three minutes for the presentation.

The idea for these changes to the format was mostly to be able to have all three presentations happen in the first 5-10 minutes of lunch, and no more. After the presentations were done, the three presenters would nominate the next three presenters, for two weeks later. After that, they would join everyone else on the table. CKB was not taking too long, it was fun, and it allowing for time after the presentations for possible questions or just discussions while enjoying lunch.

These three subjects served as a great conversation starter, or sparked interesting questions and follow-ups. We had presentations about keyboard layouts, tips for saving money, design imitating life, origin of certain words, factor.io, and many other fun ones!

Try it! All you need is a schedule and the three initial presenters. To make it easier, the hosts could also use a Google Slides template that is cloned for every CKB day, and presenters can add their slides in there directly, so that all presentations happen in one machine, for easier transitions (no unplugging or switching machines etc).

If you did try or want to try, I want to know all about it! Hit me up on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/pvinis)!


Carrot Kiwi Banana


Always choose time if you can.

Spend the money, and gain the time.

It's worth it.


Time vs Money


You might have noticed that my blog is called `Purple Royale`. Sounds silly? Get ready, because it will get more colorful up in here!

So you know how devices have names? `iPhone` or `John's iPhone` or `5PLA7` or whatever else. I don't like these names. I don't like the plain name, not the code name, and not the `<someone's name> <device name>`.

Many years ago I was looking for a device naming scheme. It had to be interesting to me, it had to have at least "a lot" of possible names, and it had to be easy for me to generate these names.

I googled and I asked what other friends use. I remember a friend (and a great dev) used physicist names, which I found cool but not too interesting and hard to generate for me. Yes, googling for a name is too much work. Other schemes I found I think on Wikipedia were not too interesting either, so much so, I don't even remember them or care to find them again. I decided to make my own.

## Colors!

I'll name my devices with colors. Thats interesting to me, there are definitely a lot of them to not run out soon, and its easy for me to think of a color, and only if I want a very unique color, I can use online help.

#### List of names I've used, roughly in order 🤷‍♂, with explanations and my thought process:

- **red**

An iPhone, it wasn't red. But a good color to start with. red.

- **black**

Another iPhone, that one was black. black.

- **purple**

My first macbook, that I got used from a good friend. purple is my favorite color (could you tell?), and that was my main machine, so it deserved it. purple.

- **blaxk**

iPhone X black, hence the `x` instead of `c`. blaxk.

- **blue**

A server I had running. Running my own server is cool, blue is cool, blue.

- **redo**

A server I had running but in Japan, so, redo 😅. At that point red, remember, the first iPhone on the list, that was gone, so red would be free to reuse too, but I wanted something more Japanese. I thought of the JP flag, has red, make it a bit more Japanese-y, redo.

- **green**

The macbook I had from work when I worked at a company doing football streaming. football, green.

- **white**

My ipad. Generic device, generic name. white.

- **royal-purple**

The next macbook, I bought that one myself new. It was an upgrade from purple, so royal-purple.

- **pavlos' airpods**

😬 Yea that one was like that. For some reason when I got the first airpods, I didn't think they needed a device name like that. Shameful 😛.

- **royal-black**

That was my next iphone, I felt like keeping the black color for my phones, so from blaxk i went to royal-black, similar to the macbook. At the time of naming, I didn't feel like looking for a different shade of black, so the easy name was that. royal-black.

- **maroon**

My next airpods. This time I got a nice name for them. red was the first iphone I named, maroon is close enough but darker, fitting for the airpods, used usually with my iphone. maroon.

- **samblue**

I got a nice TV, a Samsung. I saw that I can change the name of it, so I thought of something nice, blue is nice. Samsung + blue, samblue.

- **lavender**

The next work macbook. This one is close to purple as a color, because I really like that company I'm with. Its subject is art, I enjoy working there a lot, lavender felt like a good combination. lavender.

- **royal-blanc**

Not a new device totally. My royal-black broke and I got it replaced. So as it needs a new name but not a totally different name, I made a small change typographically speaking. royal-blanc.

- **the-pink**

I got a little gaming PC for myself. It's small, it's cool, it allows me to play games and talk with my friends, quarantine style. Even though I have the lights on the case colored purple, the PC is a nice little fancy thing, so I wanted pink as a name. Just pink didn't feel special enough. the-pink.

- **wh1te**

Similar to royal-blanc but not really. I got a second ipad from my brother. Sticking with white for the ipads, that one felt like an upgrade to the last one, so again, small change. wh1te.

- **hookers-green**

I got a gaming laptop to be able to play and talk with friends while I'm away from home. It was an unexpected buy, but one that definitely was a good one. It's windows, which I like slightly less than mac, it's a lenovo, which I like less than macbooks. So I looked for a less great color. To me that was green. green was free since I had left the company that gave me that macbook before, but still I didn't want to reuse. green was that one. This should have another name. I googled for shades of green, and there it was. A funny silly name for a shade of green, perfect for that laptop! hookers-green.

- **yellow**

I decided to name the linode server I have to yellow. It's in Europe this time, but the color has nothing to do with that. Just a color that will not be used for any of my main daily devices, so I might as well use it there. yellow.

- **neon-orange**

I got a Synology to use as an extra backup thing and some other uses. So you know that neon orange vest that workers wear, so you can spot them from afar and in the dark? That's what this NAS is doing. It's a worker, backing up, doing things for the betterment of my data. And I need to acknowledge that. neon-green.

My **current devices** are royal-blanc, royal-purple, lavender, maroon, the-pink (when I'm home), hookers-green (when I'm not home), wh1te, samblue, yellow, neon-orange.

### Wow

So there we go! People have asked why my phone is called that or commented on the name of my airpods etc. Now we all know where these come from. From the need to have a unique device name (unique within my devices, but being unique in the sea of `John's iPhone`s doesn't hurt either. They are fun and easy to remember, for me. They are easy to recognize, for me. They make sense, to me.

Do you have an interesting device naming scheme? Let me know on [twitter](https://twitter.com/pvinis).


My device naming scheme


Day 2, let's go!

This morning I was reading this post on how to [create a text editor in Rust](https://www.philippflenker.com/hecto), and at [some point](https://www.philippflenker.com/hecto-chapter-2) it said that Rust supports variable shadowing, and not only that, it was referred to as "immensely useful".

🤔

That got me curious! I work with TypeScript mostly, for React Native projects, and variable shadowing is a "bad" thing in JS and friends, here's the [eslint rule](https://eslint.org/docs/rules/no-shadow) for it too. Normally it's something to be avoided in JS, since it can have weird unexpected side-effects. See this code below:

```ts
const name = "alice"
if (true) {
	const name = "bette"
	if (true) {
		console.log(name)
	}
}
console.log(name)
```

(You can play with the code above [here](https://www.typescriptlang.org/play?#code/MYewdgzgLgBGCGBbApjAvDARPANgS2GUwCg8AzGACigCcBXZAShgG9iBIUSWBFdLAEbIoUIh3JVaDZm3adwEEDmQA6HCADmlXkw4BfYga6LlazdqTIgA).)

In this code, first of all, notice that typescript complains about the shadowing. Even with that complaint, it will let you run, so hit `Run` on top, and if you open your browser console you will see the following printed:

```
bette
alice
```

Variables are declared in scopes and accessed that way. The nested `console.log` will look for a `name` in the inner `if` scope. There is none, so it will go one up, and find the `name` with the value `"bette"` and print that out. The bottom `console.log` will look in its scope, which is the global, outermost scope. It will find the `name` with value `"alice"`, and print that one out.

Let's check what Rust does:

```rust
let name = "alice";
if true {
	let name = "bette";
	if true {
		println!("{}", name);
	}
}
println!("{}", name);
```
(You can play with this code [here](https://play.rust-lang.org/?version=stable&mode=debug&edition=2018&gist=132fd25d73a6b8971836c510e4eaf4b2).)

If we run this, we will see that it does.. exactly the same?! Hm. So why the same exact code a "bad" thing in JS and an "immensely useful" thing in Rust?

After reading a bit more about the usage of shadowing in Rust, it seems that it is mostly used for doing some processing on an immutable variable without having to make it mutable. Let's check!

```rust
let name = "chloe";
let name = name.to_string().to_uppercase();
// name = "dana"; // => this would produce error[E0384]: cannot assign twice to immutable variable `name`.
// let name = "dana"; // => this would work.
println!("{}", name);
```
(Available [here](https://play.rust-lang.org/?version=stable&mode=debug&edition=2018&gist=5720a2aa93c46a7feb557c7c3fc7e443).)

We can see here that we declare `name`, assign `"chloe"` to it, and then we shadow it and make the value uppercase. This code will print out `CHLOE`, **and** it will complain if we try to assign anything else to `name`, unless we explicitly shadow it again.

Let's try the same in TS 😬.

```ts
// const name = "chloe"
// const name = name.toUpperCase() // We can't do that!

let name = "chloe"
name = name.toUpperCase()
name = "dana"; // => this will work, so our `name` is not immutable!
console.log(name)
```
(Available [here](https://www.typescriptlang.org/play?#code/PTAEGMHsDsGcBdTQIYFsCmoC8oBE4ALAG0nVwCgQIYEk1McUMA6eSAVQAdP0AnAYWSx0ACgCU5ckXSImDPIRJlyc7HRZsuPAUNETVOXABNkKXAG5QVLAD5Q8AgEtYoAO6OiRN5F4BrADSgsJCgkACuvKAABnJRoM5IkIiOqKhh8MgARtIAhORQcJDSzCQA5iJyEkA).)

We can't do it! The only way we can make this work is by making `name` mutable, but then it stays mutable. Forever mutable. Forever easy to break! Ok, a bit dramatic, but you get what I mean. We lose immutability on `name`.

Under that new light, it does make sense that Rust *wants* and *likes* to have variable shadowing. It takes something that could result to funkiness and uses it for good!

If we wanted to do the same in TS, it would be a bit roundabout, using something like the following, which works, but uses extra variables.

```ts
let namePreparation = "chloe"
namePreparation = namePreparation.toUpperCase()
const name = namePreparation
// name = "dana" // => this would produce a TS error
console.log(name)
```
([Here](https://www.typescriptlang.org/play?#code/DYUwLgBAdghgtiACgJxABxsmYCWB7KCAXggCIBjAC2DxFIChYEV1Nt9CSmlUMtcCAOjB4AqmjQhkAYRgBnEAAoAlPXIE5kbsWjwerfh3oB6Y7oQ7SAExixSEU8QB8EMJRxyIAdzwBXYFYQaMh4Vr7kIBAwEAAqAMoQUiHIahp4oII0AOaK3MpAA).)

I'm sure it could be done in an inline function to avoid the extra variable. Let's try.

```ts
const name = (() => {
    let namePreparation = "chloe"
    return namePreparation.toUpperCase()
})()
```
([Here](https://www.typescriptlang.org/play?ssl=4&ssc=5&pln=1&pc=1#code/MYewdgzgLgBGCGBbApjAvDAFJglOgfDAN4BQM5MANsrAigAoBOyADvI-FAJbjowBEwABaUQyfmQrMoAV0Zg4SZE1btOPMADooIAKosWyRgGF4EZLhIBfHJYD0dxSj78AJvAT8YDgjChCuCBgAdxAZSlcYFkYQVxlgVHgYABUAZRgjGMYSUEgQak1RAHNMOmQcIA).)

That's cool that we can do it, but it is obvious that the simplicity of Rust's code is nice to look at.

```rust
let name = "chloe";
let name = name.to_string().to_uppercase();
```

Wow, this turned out to be a way longer post than I thought. Cool.


Rust likes variable shadowing?


I just read [this blog post](https://critter.blog/2020/12/24/just-start-a-dang-blog-already) and all its links, and yes. I agree, and I will do it. I'll try to do one post a day. Or let's aim for 5 a week, and leave weekends out, just in case I need so skip a day or two.

I really liked another post, called "[Intense intervention or acceptance. Pick one.](https://critter.blog/2020/11/24/intense-intervention-or-acceptance-pick-one)". Good title, and a good way to look at things. I've been postponing this for no reason other than it's not my first priority.

After trying this out for a week or two, I will be able to definitely say that I want to spend time doing this, or I still don't care for it enough. Either way it will help me get it out of my head. Done it? Cool, let's schedule it and keep doing it. Not done it? All good, and from now on if the thought "I should start a blog" comes, I can tell it to gtfo because I did try it and it didn't seem good enough to keep it up.

See you soon, I guess.


Ok ok, I'll start


In the beginning of September I was in Poland for the React Native EU conference. It's the biggest european conference focused on React Native, which is the technology we use to build our NiceDay app for both iOS and Android. There are a bunch of them all over the world, some for React Native and some for React (which is a similar technology to build a website). Each of the conferences invites people to become speakers, and this year for this conference I got invited to give a talk on the topic of upgrading React Native apps.

For context, a lot of developers that use React Native have trouble upgrading their apps when a new version comes out. I always had a specific way to upgrade that was working well for me and a few other devs that I had talked to. I took a script that helped me and modified it to work with all the versions of RN. It would generate some files that could be used by devs. It made upgrading easier by making the differences between version more understandable and clear. Then I made a simple website that could display these files. After this got a few users, and even some contributors, I was invited to talk in that conference, in order to show it to everyone that was interested. Some of the people attending the conference were using my "upgrade flow", but a lot of them were not, so the idea was that I will present it, explain it, and hopefully help RN devs when they googled how to upgrade easily.

I've never done another talk before, not in any conference or any meetup, so it was a new thing for me, but I immediately said yes to the invitation. I had been in conferences before, but being there as one of the speakers was such a different and awesome experience. I got the chance to meet and talk to all the other speakers in the speakers dinner the day before the conference, as well as in the hotel in the morning and going out in the evening. I've seen other talks from some of them, I've talked and work with some of them, but always online. It was so great to finally meet all of them in person, and even better to hear that they were impressed with what I had done, that they look forward to seeing my talk and to see that some of them even recognized me!

The talks in the conference were great, many of them very interesting and informative. It seemed that many people enjoyed seeing the talks and I think everyone got something out of them. In the coffee/launch breaks I talked with a lot of people there, speakers and attendees, from small companies and startups all over Europe, to Microsoft and Facebook from the US offices. I enjoyed exchanging our experiences working with RN, both using it to make an app and improving it or building a tool for it in and sharing it with open source community.

In my talk I basically explained how this script that generates the change files works, how the website for it was built, I showed the flow of upgrading a RN app using these tools, and the reasons why it's good to use it. Before my talk I had people come up to me saying they look forward to my talk, and after it I had people come up to me saying that they really enjoyed it and they want to try it out. I really hope it helped a lot of RN devs, experienced and not.

In general, this was a great experience, I enjoyed it a lot and I hope I get invited for another one again!

[Link to conference](https://react-native.eu)

[Link to videos](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbvLih553T7f5OAGTfbsJkQ/videos)

[Link to photos](https://www.facebook.com/pg/reactnativeeu/photos/?tab=album&album_id=658228464664869)


My first conference as a speaker


Let's get this out of the way. This is my first post!

I wanted to make a blog for the longest time. I never took the time to complete one, even though I tried several times to start one, using static site generators on my own domain.

Yesterday night, I read a [post](https://dev.to/brunolemos/tutorial-100-code-sharing-between-ios-android--web-using-react-native-web-andmonorepo-4pej) from [@brunolemos](https://twitter.com/brunolemos) on [dev.to](https://dev.to), on my phone. It was a technical post like the ones I would like to make, and it looked great on my phone screen, so I made an account (and even put a small monthly donation, I'm a sucker for betas of all kinds 😁). Now it's the next morning, and I am writing this first post to explain myself and in a few minutes I'll be typing my first actual post.

Look forward to that! Thank you and see you in the comments soon.
