Programming insights to Storytelling, it's all here.
An asylum stood in a recluse town that bordered the coast. The winds came from the west and washed the shore with some pacific waves. Everyday, the asylum's staff walked along the coast with their assigned patients. The serene sounds soothed troubled minds and brought them peace, even if it was for a moment.
In college, my English class required reading a novel. I was only interested in college to learn a practical skill. The skill would allow me to get out of the classroom and make a living. Programming classes taught me just that. English classes? Not so much. The novel in question was The Assistant by Bernard Malamud. I didn't buy the book. Well, I was broke. I could barely afford signing up for class, and the re-sell value of a novel is negligible. Instead, I borrowed the book from a classmate and read it in its entirety in one night.
On August of 2018, I publicly announced that I am writing a book. Saying it out loud was a relief. It wasn't the first time I make this decision. In fact I even have a couple books written and filed in the bottom of a dusty box inside an obscure closet. From time to time, I mention them in passing only to dismiss the whole work as a hobby. There is a reason why I can't publish those books. I can never remember what they are about until I start reading them over.
Sometimes, I want to prove a point. I'm in the middle of an argument with a friend and Google is the ultimate decider of who is right or who is wrong. Each armed with our phones, we formulate a query that Google gladly completes, and then we click on that first result.
On May 22nd, I received a message on twitter telling me that my blog was down. I tried to open the website on my phone and saw that it was in fact down. I was on my way to work and I had to wait until I get access to my computer to diagnose the problem. When I got to work, it was an extremely busy day, I couldn't go through my logs to figure out what the issue was. So, I restarted my Digital Ocean Droplet and the website came back online. Mission accomplished!
As a web developer, I always add Google Analytics tracking scripts to the projects I work on. If you want to know where your users are coming from, and how they behave on your website, GA is an excellent tracker. Building the same thing in-house, even if it's a subset, will require months of development. But even GA isn't enough sometimes. At my startup, we decided to go one level deeper to understand exactly what users where doing. We used mouseflow.
Not too long ago, I made a living working as a contractor where I would hop from project to project. Some were short term where I would work for a week and quickly deliver my service. Others lasted a couple months where I would make enough money to take some time off. I preferred the short ones because they allowed me to charge a much higher rate for a quick job. Not only I felt like my own boss, but I also felt like I didn't have to work too hard to make a decent living. My highest rates were still reasonable, and I always delivered high quality service. That was until I landed a gig with a large company.
Every time April arrives, I can't help but have lots of flurry emotions overwhelm me. April represent many milestone in my life, and many important events. At the risk of sharing a little too much about myself, I'll start my yearly reminder that this blog first lunched on April 1st of 2013.
We no longer live in a world where we can separate our activity online and offline. Both are from the one and same world. What you do online is not immune to consequences. What you do offline may be documented online with or without your consent. This is why, as programmers, we shouldn't be blind to the effect of our work.
If you are in a car accident, the presence of alcohol in your blood automatically means you are guilty. If you fail to drink responsibly, any problem that comes as a result is entirely your fault. It is very likely that before crashing, a drunk driver will drive by a billboard that advertises a drink and also warns to drink responsibly. We are a society of strong-willed people, and only the weak-minded are irresponsible.
