Software Developer
Changelog
Monthly updates + happenings
Latest Updates
Archives
March 2024
- March was a very busy month at work. A couple of my colleagues were away for March break and so it was just me and another teammate holding down the fort a bit, so to speak. We had a lot of fun and still a great sprint demo.
- I learned this month that my current contract will be extended for another year. The project is a .NET Blazor server application, which has me building UI in C#. It's been a great learning experience for me, and is contributing to my growth as a developer. I'm feeling very grateful for the opportunity to continue working with this team.
- This month marked my partner's 40th birthday. I and a couple of close friends planned a big surprise bash for her, with 65 of her closest friends and a bit of family gathered at Boxcar Social Riverside for a night of drinks, laughs and a bit of dancing.
- These are the songs that we partied to, and that I listened to most in March.
- Those were the highlights, see you next month ✌️
February 2024
- It was a busy month of work. I continue work on the modernization of a student loan application system for a Canadian provincial government. The project is a .NET Blazor server application, so I've been continuing my journey in building UI in C#.
- I wrote a blog post about my experience with Blazor so far. TLDR: it's pretty good, also I still miss JS 😄.
- I migrated my website to Astro, and wrote another blog post about my experience with Astro + Markdoc + Keystatic
- I got to see Brittany Howard at the Danforth Music Hall thanks to our amazing friend Cody.
- Finished final scheming on birthday plans for my partner next month 🤫
- These were the songs in my rotation in February.
January 2024
- Continued work on the modernization of a student loan application for a Canadian provincial government. The project is a .NET Blazor server application, so I've been continuing my journey in building UI in C#.
- A very busy month socially. Visits with my parents, my partner's parents, my sister's family and a bunch of close friends.
- Attended a couple of my nephew's soccer games. Amazing to see the progression.
- Went to the Art Gallery of Ontario to check out the KAWS:Family and Keith Haring exhibits. Delicious, both of them.
- Started physio for my subluxated shoulder. Not an injury I'd recommend getting.
- These were the songs in my rotation in January. A Way Forward by Nation of Language is an eminently listenable album.
December 2023
- Continued work on the modernization of a student loan application for a Canadian provincial government. The project is a .NET Blazor server application, so I've been continuing my journey in building UI in C#.
- Finally watched The Bear. It's amazing. And so much more than I thought it would be. Ostensibly a kitchen drama. Actually a show about trauma and adult children of addicts / parents with mental health issues.
- Subluxated my shoulder in a cycling accident, attempting to avoid a car parked in the middle of the road.
- These are the songs in my rotation in December.
November 2023
- Continued work on the modernization of a student loan application for a Canadian provincial government. The project is a .NET Blazor server application, so I've been continuing my journey in building UI in C#.
- Travelled to Chile for 10 days with my partner. We travelled to Punta Arenas and saw penguins on Magdalena Island; to Puerto Natales and day-hiked in Torres del Paine park (incl. the Mirador Las Torres hike); to San Pedro de Atacama and saw the Valle de la Luna, the El Tatio Geysers and Laguna Cejar; and to Santiago where we enjoyed the city and nearby Valparaíso. I'm hoping over the holidays to write a few longer-form posts about our experience.
- These were the songs that carried me through November.
October 2023
- Started work on a new contract for a Canadian provincial government to modernize their student loan application process. This is a .NET project, which takes me out of my usual React work and has me coding almost exclusively in C# to build a Blazor server application. I am accumulating a lot of knowledge of this relatively immature ecosystem, which I hope to share in a longer-form blog post one day.
- For the first time since the Covid pandemic started, I hopped on my bike and attended a tech meetup downtown. I went to the StorybookTO meetup in Toronto. A great event with great presentations on the ways organizations like Rangle.io and Wealthsimple are leveraging Storybook in their workflows. I learned a lot and met some great people and overall hope to do more meetups in the coming year.
- Stephanie Zeng from Rangle.io presented on "story-driven" development, which is an interesting variation on TDD for modern UI development.
- Seth Davenport talked about UI testing at Wealthsimple. He gave a great talk on how his teams are using Chromatic and Storybook to drive snapshot tests, a11y tests, documentation generation and test coverage, all while conceding that innovation in the tool chain matter less than innovation in the product (i.e. should be in service of the product).
- Finally, Varun Vachhar talked about using Chromatic's new Modes feature for testing. Modes sit above globals and can be used to test components in a number of different "mode" scenarios (localization, dark mode, etc.).
- I went to the premiere of The Great Canadian Baking Show new season at HotDocs. My partner, Carmen, is a photographer and she shot the cast and bakers for their various media. It was a very fun and sweet and wholesome evening.
- These were the songs that carried me through October.
September 2023
- My dad suffered a detached retina at the beginning of the month, so I spent the first half of the month up north doing some care-giving.
- Deep diving into Blazor for UI development for a new project.
- These were the songs that carried me through September.
August 2023
- Took some time off this month to fix some things around the house. Also spent a bunch of time catching up with people we missed during the winter and the pandemic.
- September is just around the corner, and I'm really excited to get back to coding and a regular work routine more generally.
- Found a very nice collection of short docs of Berlin Bike Messengers by Claire Tayler. I really do miss that city. 😔
- These were the songs that carried me through August.
July 2023
- Finished my contract work leading UI / feature development of a micro frontend for a publicly traded HR SaaS platform. Helped my team get their MVP HR ticketing solution shipped and out the door for customer feedback, complete with documentation and knowledge transfer for the UI devs I helped hire. With that, my contract has come to an end. I'm planning on taking some time off in August to reboot and fix some things around the house, and look forward to building more fun things in September!
- Attended a large family BBQ at my dad's in Bobcaygeon.
- These were the songs that carried me through July.
June 2023
- Continued work leading UI / feature development in a micro frontend for a publicly traded HR SaaS platform.
- Started exploring Keystatic by Thinkmill for a personal project. It's pretty cool tech and uses Markdoc, which I love, under the hood. May write about it in a longer post at some point.
- Also spent some time exploring the Shoelace web components library. It's quite good.
- Learned how to play There Will Never Be Another You, another jazz standard, and had my last guitar lesson until the fall.
- Spent some time with my parents and extended family.
- Finished weeding and planting the front garden.
- These are the songs that carried me through June.
May 2023
- Continued work leading UI / feature development in a micro frontend for a publicly traded HR SaaS platform.
- Implemented fun solutions with react-query and mock service worker.
- Interviewed a number of developers for my client and now assisting with onboarding of a new engineer.
- Caught up with old friends, including an old colleague from Serbia.
- Saw Sasha Velour live at Meridian Hall.
- Finished learning how to play Dust Filled Room by Steve Gunn.
- Explored minor pentatonic scales (C#, A and D#) for soloing and bending.
- Picked up a Kobo e-reader to read library books a bit easier. It's made of recycled plastic that would otherwise be ocean-bound and is pretty awesome.
- These are the songs that carried me through May.
April 2023
- Started a new project with a new team at the same company I've been working with for the last year. The new project has me leading UI development in a micro frontend for a new feature.
- Came down with Covid for the first time. It was not enjoyable and dashed a lot of plans for this month.
- Celebrated my goddaughter's first communion.
- Guitar: continued learning how to play Dust Filled Room by Steve Gunn.
- These are the songs that carried me through April.