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:
- September 2022: a (Dutch) blogpost about Fronteers Conference.
- August 2022: a (Dutch) blogpost about the Rust Meetup we hosted at Infi.
- March 2022: a (Dutch) blogpost about our Vestaboard-themed hackathon.
- January 2022: a (Dutch) blogpost about The Infi Way.
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:
- AoC 2022 solutions in JavaScript. I wanted to do Kotlin, but given the situation at work there was no room to learn a new language as I went, so I reused JavaScript.
- The AoC 2022 Survey and its Results. Last year I changed from a PowerBI setup to a custom web based dashboard. This year I refactored the inner workings so I could actually publish results with little effort while on vacation in Cape Verde.
- My AoC Charts Browser Extension got a significant update (with lots of contributions from the community!)
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:
- At vesta.infi.nl I’ve created a tiny website showcasing what we did at Infi with our Vestaboard. Notably it collects all pixel art I had posted on Twitter during 2022.
- My angular-oauth2-oidc starter kit repository got a handful of updates in the past. Even so, I did announce I’d be stepping down as community support for the library itself, to be able to focus on other things.
- ✨ Upcoming: I’m working on a “Tier List” website to centralize my various “lists” such as my Book List and Game Rankings. Stay tuned!
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):
- October 2022: INFI-CON (conference) sketch notes (remastered them after the event).
- October 2022: Ladies That UX (meetup) sketch notes (actual pen & paper!).
- September 2022: FronteersConf (conference) sketch notes. Which also includes a timelapse of how I create sketch notes.
- June 2022: Joy of Coding (conference) sketch notes.
- Feburary 2023: FOSDEM 2023 (conference) sketch notes.
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!?