mitul_45

The whole system with vignettes is really confusing. This summer, we were travelling to Bavaria from the Netherlands and didn't plan to visit Austria at all.

But due to road construction work in Germany, we ended up driving on Austrian roads for a few kilometres. Two months later, we got a fine for driving in Austria without a vignette, and now we have to pay €200 for a sticker that costs €13 for 10 days!

Worst part? The original fine letter never got delivered, so now our case is being passed on to the Austrian authorities. Based on what I've read online, people have had to pay anywhere between €300 and €3,000 for this :/

I've been using Firefox for almost a year now (on Phone and Desktop) and the only reason I switch to Chrome is to translate websites. I live in Netherlands and don't speak Dutch so to browse any local website I have to rely on Chrome's auto-translate thingy.

I used to hate printers too but that changed when I started using HP Instant Ink.

The printer needs to be connected to wifi all the time but on the flip side, the printer orders ink cartridges well in advance (so they get delivered in time and I have them ready when I need).

Wow, I had exactly this idea when I moved to the Netherlands!

My friends and distant family members would call at weird times without checking if it's early morning or night here.

The bikes are not very expensive, you can buy them second hand for about 100-150 EUR. And what do you have to maintain in a simple bike? Just adjust air pressure every couple of month and that's all.

Owning a car in Amsterdam is crazy expensive due to parking. For example, the parking costs at my office is about 500 EUR/month (only to park during workdays between 7AM-7PM)

This looks cool, I've also built something similar for my needs. The difference is, it's a web based app – so I/my wife can add expense on-the-go.

Uses Google Sheets as a database.

https://github.com/mitul45/expense-manager

Similar things are discussed in this year's World Happiness Report – http://worldhappiness.report/ed/2019/the-sad-state-of-happin....

Specially figure 5.4 makes it pretty clear: more internet hours = less happiness.

I also had a similar issue, but then it became like a habit – every night I would check my accounts and add day's expenses (it's difficult if you have a lot of cash transactions). For the tip, wouldn't you round off to nearest full digit? You can just add that as an expense.

Not a freelancer, but I wanted to track my everyday finances since long. I tried lot of different tools but in the end ended up using simple Google sheet with some formulas.

The only issue with this approach is – adding expenses is pain. When I am shopping for something, opening Google Sheet (on phone) and adding an expense/income is too cumbersome. So I built a UI for it – https://github.com/mitul45/expense-manager.

I have been using it since last couple of years and have an idea of my monthly/weekly expenses.

I was also having the same dilemma, although not a freelancer. I wanted to track my finances and tried lot of different tools but in the end decided to use plain excel.

But then adding expense on Excel from mobile is real pain, so I wrote a frontend client for it. I've been using it for about 1.5 years now, works like a charm.

I have expense history of almost every cent I spent in last 1.5 years :)

Check it out: https://github.com/mitul45/expense-manager.

If you are using Excel, I made a frontend wrapper on top of it to add expenses/incomes easily. For analysis you can use whatever methods you are already using.

Check it out: https://github.com/mitul45/expense-manager

I also love listening to Nujabes, but there aren't many different tracks on YouTube. Do you have any other resources?

I'm an Indian living in Amsterdam just because of these immigration rules.

My spouse is an Architect and she won't be able to work in the US due to H4 rules and in Canada because they don't accept the academic credentials for her foreign university. I find Europe a little better option in that regard.

I was using Vimwiki for this stuff for long, but this idea seems promising for a daily journal.

I mostly divide my tasks by day so I don't want timestamp to be added everytime I add an entry. Here's my aliases if it helps:

  alias ndid="nvim +'normal Go' +'r!date' +'normal o' +':exe \"normal i=============================\<Esc>\"' ~/Dropbox/did.txt"
  alias did="nvim +'normal G' +startinsert ~/Dropbox/did.txt"

So use `n(ew)did` at the start of the day and for every subsequent entries, use `did`. Also using Dropbox as storage for portability.

I moved to Amsterdam 5 months back from Bangalore and couldn't agree more on the last paragraph.

Everything here seems so laid back which was one of the reasons why we moved to EU – to have a better/more relaxed lifestyle but at the same time, I do miss the vibrancy and liveliness around me.

Especially as a web developer, I gave Firefox a second chance and tried to use it's FirefoxDeveloperEdition - but debugging JavaScript was so painful. It somehow felt so slow compare to Chrome's JS debugger.

Has anyone else felt this too?

Related talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/anupam_mishra_the_ancient_ingenuit....

I don't know how but somehow power cut hasn't been a thing in my hometown - Ahmedabad, Gujarat. Maybe privatization has helped.

Torrent Power has completed its acquisition of the Ahmedabad Electricity Company in 1997 [1]. And since then there hasn't been single power cut longer than 15 minutes which I can remember. Same goes for Surat now.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torrent_Power.

Thanks for the tip! Are you in Amsterdam? Would love to catch up in the first week, if you are around.

Nah. That's one of the major reasons. Others being - working with a diverse culture, working on a big scale such as theirs, and building things based on data rather than opinions.

Yeah, questions were pretty much same you found on the internet. About the tech stack, they do let us know a little but mostly it depends on the team you land on.

Well, I am joining Booking.com as frontend engineer this November and this makes me a bit worried. The only reason I chose to join Booking was Amsterdam (I wanted to live/work outside India for a couple of years).

I have also heard the tech stack is kind of old and so learning-wise it might be an issue. Any tips on surviving and keeping the learning curve straight from a current/former employee?

Interested! Do you guys support Visa sponsorships and relocation if required?

Submitted an expense-manager PWA 83 days ago - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14279653.

There was a lot of traffic in first few weeks. Now it has been stable - around 25 weekly (<100 monthly) active users.

I guess these are the people who are actually using it daily to manage their expenses. I had the same question - how can I make all of these people visiting first time come back again.

Your newsletter is great! Thanks for compiling. Just curious, how much time you spend daily on HN for this?

Thanks for sharing! This looks as a great starting point. Will surely take a look.