Gabor self reporting for 2019.11

A few years back I used to write almost regular public reports about my activities. Then for a long time I fell silent.

Seeing the monthly reports of Mohammad S Anwar made me feel that I too might benefit of similar monthly reports.

Normally one should wait till the end of the year to have a New Year's Resolution, but why wait? So I am jumping in. Let's see how can I hold this up.

As this is the first post after a long break let me go back a little bit more in time than just one month.

January-May

In January-February 2019 I was fully booked at two clients and so I did not have time for any extra activity. I did teach a one-day Testing with Python training class and I had a remote client for whom I worked a bit.

I had a few lunches with people who also learn Spanish.

In March-April I tried to organize lunches for DevOps people. The first one attracted several people, but then they quickly disappeared. It seems the idea or the implementation was not that good.

In May, after spending many months at Twiggle providing them DevOps work, finally I figured I could ask them to host my Workshop Meetups. (The ones I have stopped doing when I got too busy with work and when Google closed its campus for renovations.) Talk about being slow thinker.

I had a few workshops there.

The first workshop was about Fixtures and Test Doubles in Pytest. I used this opportunity to prepare my talk for PyCon Israel.

I also spent about a week in Budapest visiting my mother and attending the Craft Conf where I organized the BOFs and a hike after it.

June-August

In June we had PyCon Israel 2019 where I was a speaker, organized the BOFs and the social event. Otherwise I was fully booked. I also had a workshop called Getting Started with Google Cloud.

In July too I was fully booked so I did not have a lot of time for other things. I still managed to have a Workshop: Getting started with Docker.

Actually it was so popular I had to run it twice. The second time so many people arrived that we could not fit them in the meeting room so I had to use the kitchen. That was not received too well by the administration at the company so I felt I should stop organizing my workshops there. Luckily not long after that I found out that the new Google Startup Campus has a class-room that can fit 24 people and it is practically next door. So from September I started to organize the workshops there.

In August 2019 we spent 10 days traveling in Iceland. It was a bit tiring to drive more than 2500 km even for 3 drivers, but it was a fantastic trip. Indeed Iceland has really special views.

Because of the trip I only spent 15 days at my clients and I did not have any Meetup/Workshop organized.

Looking back the whole year almost all the months I was full booked at my clients. Setting up CI systems, helping with DevOps and helping with Automation in general.

September-October

In September 2019 I was full booked at two of my clients and also ran a 5-day long Programming Bootcamp for scientists at the Weizmann Institute of Science. I always enjoy teaching this course. It is very hard, but it is such a great change from teaching people who are in the hi-tech world.

I also had my first (two) Workshops at the new Google Startup Campus. The topic was Getting Started with Golang and two weeks later Getting started with Data Science for non-programmers.

While I was teaching in the Weizmann Institute I got a nasty surprise. One of my clients sent home all its employees and of course all the freelancers as well.

OK, so I was expecting my contract to end soon, but I was surprised of the timing. On the eve of Rosh HaShana.

October 2019 was full of holidays and I've also spent a few days visiting my mother in Budapest so I would not have time to my client much anyway. So on the few working days we had in the month I worked and I also had another 5-days long course at the Weizmann Institute of Science.

While in Budapest I've recorded the first few episodes of my new Hebrew podcast.

I had two workshop this month. The first on Getting started with Git, the second one called Your First Open Source contribution. This was the first event where I used my pre-recorded videos. It was an interesting experience. I'll write about the workshops at another time.

November

In November 2019, that is last month, I ran again the Getting Started with Data Science for non-programmers workshop, but this time it was in Haifa. It was a live presentation as usual. Some 50 people attended. It was actually really nice traveling to Haifa and spending some time there. I should probably do it again later on.

In Tel Aviv, in the Google Campus I had 4(!) meetings with pre-recorded presentations. The title of all of them as Learning Python Programming and I kept adding more and more videos each week. There were about 15 people at each meeting. A little less than I was hoping for, but I do these meetings on Thursday evening. As you might know that's the last working day of the week in Israel (Friday and Saturday are the weekend). So I guess it is not surprising the room is available for me every week.

I've also managed to organize two short (4 hours each) hikes in near-by places. That was a nice change after a long break.

I only spent 10 days at my clients, but the rest of the time was spent well. I have recorded a lot of videos for my Python workshops and updated the Code Maven site to have multiple languages and to support the private accounts on the Hebrew version of the site. The videos are primarily in Hebrew for now thought there were a few in English as well.

I've also managed to update my new Slide generator code. It can now handle almost everything the old code could. So soon I'll be able to convert all of my old XML-based slice code to Markua-based code and thus I'll be able to put all of the on GitHub. That will also allow me to automatically convert them to books on Leanpub.

Future

The short term lookout is good. I already have 10 Advanced Python training days booked between 18 December - 2 February. I also have two courses booked at the Weizmann Institute of Science in February and March. (Python programming bootcamp for Scientists). In addition I have a client where I am going to spend about 16 days in January February 2020.

That leaves me quite a few days to record videos, improve the Code-Maven site and get it ready to start selling subscriptions again.

Spanish

I have been learning Spanish every day 20-30 minutes using Duolingo, reading books (appropriate to my level of Spanish), listening to podcasts and even having lessons via italki. I also had the occasional lunches with other Spanish learners. I think I made a nice progress, but actually in the last few months I slowed down. I spent less time learning and I had nearly no classes. I have to change that and put more time and energy into it again. Let's say I should start having a weekly lesson again so my speaking ability improves.

On the other hand recently I've started to supplement my Spanish studies with some German. I know some, but never could really speak. I would like to see how does this work out now using Duolingo and later maybe lessons via italki.