What have you done for me lately? (Feb 2023)

After a few previous editions (January 2019, September 2018, and December 2017) I’m back with another recap of all the things I’ve been doing instead of writing blog posts. Without any ado, let’s dive into stuff I’ve been up to!

Blog posts

Same as last time, although I’ve not been blogging much here on my personal blog (only one post, about my Book List), I have been writing content for my employer’s blog:

Not as many blogposts as previous years, but still a handful!

Advent of Code

The yearly advent calendar of programming puzzles deserves its own section. Three things revolved around this event for me:

Plus I got to craft fresh Egg Nog during Infi’s Meetup around Advent of Code, which is always nice!

Projects

Then there are a handful of full-on side projects:

Sketch notes

I’ve been doing several more (amateur level) sketch notes of Tech Events, here’s a few links to them (on Twitter only, for the moment):

Now that I post those links, thinking about the state of Twitter, I should probably also give my sketch notes a more permanent home where I am in control of the data.

What’s next!?

Those were the things I’ve been doing (instead of blogging) in the recent past. I find that I actually enjoy blogging only once in a while with recaps of all the weird side projects. So, up next, are probably a bunch more side projects!

Plus, I write this post at the start of an 8-week sabbatical. So who knows? Maybe that gives enough room for one or two side-projects!?

What have you done for me lately? (Jan 2019)

Here’s yet another post similar to ones from September 2018 and December 2017: a recap of things I’ve been busy with in stead of writing more blog posts. It includes several blog posts I’ve written (and possibly should’ve cross-posted here?) for my employer: Infi.

One special thing of note is my previous blog post from two years ago, about “Reproman”. I had much energy and a great plan for a grand new project. First, it somehow didn’t “click” for me… and then a pandemic hits. And also my job title changes at the same(ish) time. So that project didn’t go as planned. I can firmly declare it frozen (if not dead) at this point. There, I’ve said it.

With that out of the way, let’s dive into some things that did happen since that last post.

Blog posts

I have not blogged here, on my personal blog, for two years. That doesn’t mean I haven’t been writing some new content! Let’s start with blog posts I’ve written for my employer’s blog:

Emotionally, it feels right to “restart” the list with all the stuff from “before the pandemic started“:

So no shortage of inspiration for things to write about, as you can see! Just on a different blog, is all.

I will say I’m considering pushing myself to write more frequently here, on my personal blog. But we’ll see.

Projects

In addition to writing for Infi’s blog, I’ve also been busy on a few projects. As always, you can find the more interesting ones on jeroenheijmans.nl, but here’s a couple of highlights:

That’s just a few highlights though, check my homepage for all different projects I’ve been running.

Various

Relevant to how many blog posts I can write, and how many projects I’m able to produce, is of course context. In software development, “it depends” is the standard state of things, right? It makes sense to share a few of the prime influences.

First up, since 2020, I’m not only a Technical Lead at Infi anymore. I’ve also signed up to be part of the management team as CTO of Infi Utrecht. I consider getting management responsibilities a demotion rather than a promotion, yet I feel compelled to spend part of my time making and keeping Infi a place I want to work at.

Second, of course, is the pandemic. In addition to having just about all possible privileges already, in the pandemic I also had no kids, had a great partner, and a relatively stable job. This makes (I presume) things a lot easier to handle. But still, it affected me regardless. I’ve mostly been acknowledging that, and acting accordingly. I hope you all can do so too!

Finally

In conclusion: what’s next!?

Well, I consider writing part of my job. So if you follow me on Twitter you’ll at least see my posts I wrote for Infi circulate. In addition I might write a bit more frequent here too. And if not, I’ll be sure to write another one of these “round up” blogposts in some months or years.

We’ll see.

What have you done for me lately? (Sep 2018)

In December 2017 I wrote a similar post. Over the past few months I’ve been busy with other projects (writing and non-writing), and I’d love to aggregate them all here in a single post.

So, here’s some stuff from the recent past:

Some things that are in progress:

  • 2018-09-xx: Part 2 of the “Auth0 and Angular 6” blog series is forthcoming on infi.nl
  • 2018-09-xx: A status report on my EmpGrid project is in progress

Finally, some stuff I hope to be writing about in the near future:

Stay tuned!