Gabor self reporting for 2020.12
This is the report for December 2020. (See also the list of previous reports).
Overview
I checked Udemy and felt I could not upload my courses there. Then I had the brilliant idea of trying the courses of Leanpub where I have been selling my books for some time. It was very easy to add my Python Programming Bootcamp and start selling. announced on December 3.
Then came another brilliant idea to play on the idea of the Advent calendars and create both a Dancer and a Mojolicious course during the first 25 days of December. (well, I was a bit late for the start, but I figured better late than never.) After recording a few episodes of Dancer I arrived to the conclusion that doing both would be way too much work especially as I had a lot of other work to do. I announced the Dancer course and published the Dancer course on Leanpub.
After the initial day when I recorded some 5-6 videos I managed to record one or more videos every day so by now I have quite a lot of content in the course.
There were also about 60 people who bought either one of the courses. Again, not a huge number, not yet enough to cover the time I spent on it, but it is a very encouraging start.
As I got really enthusiastic about that I started to create another course. However in the meantime I also started to feel that the current version of Leanpub is not really good for the people who view the courses. Luckily I remembered that I am taking a Spanish course hosted on Teachable that looks quite nice. So I looked around on Teachable and decided I'll give it a try.
Thus on 31 December, a few hours before the end of the year I've opened two of my courses: The new Perl Dancer course and the even newer Functional Programming in Python course.
I even had a paying customer on them still in December 2020.
Then on January 1st 2021 I had a few more customers.
I am quite encouraged by this and this impacts my plans for January that you can see at the bottom of this page.
Personal blog posts
I started the month with 4 post on my personal site but did not have time to continue. Even though there were a few things I could at least announce. I hope I'll do better in January.
For some strange reason in the middle of this month I was allocated 150 extra invitations to the Python page. I used them. I also started to post a bit more to both the Python and the Perl pages, but I did not have enough energy to post to the DevOps and Golang pages.
Nevertheless I am quite happy with the increase in the number of followers.
As I have started to create the video courses for Python, it starts to be a really good reason to invest a lot more energy in that page along with the Perl page.
Number of followers:
English: 526 (+10) Hebrew: 542 (+37) Spanish: 33 (-) Hungarian: 10 (+1)
Perl: 569 (+74) Python: 386 (+95) DevOps: 323 (+15) Golang: 190 (+13)
Personal: 4,114 (+25)
Same as last month, I primarily posted in my two main Twitter accounts.
I keep posting in the Perl programmers group and I like the feedbacks there.
Patreon
Finally I could start offering annual subscription via Patreon. Some of my supporters took the offer and even upgraded their support to a higher tier.
- 2020.12 ended with 66 Patrons and 8 followers
- 2020.11 ended with 69 Patrons and 6 followers
- 2020.10 ended with 66 Patrons and 6 followers
- 2020.09 ended with 63 Patrons and 6 followers
- 2020.08 ended with 54 Patrons and 6 followers.
- 2020.07 ended with 30 Patrons
See a partial list of supporters.
I lost one supporter because their financial situation changed, one because they are "channeling the funds elsewhere", and one because "too much Python".
I have posted 33 times in December. An improvement compared to the previous month, but I am now not sure if doing this is really a good idea. I finished posting all entries of the Programming Boootcamp for Scientists series and started to post the Perl Dancer series.
According to my Patreon page there are now 79 videos, 1 writing and 1 link available to the Patrons with $5 or more monthly support.
All the other posts are public.
Dev.to
I was not at all active on dev.to in December
Perl Maven
On the Perl Maven site there are 34 posts in December (14 in November, 5 in October). Almost all of them for the Perl Maven Pro members.
You can see them in the archive.
Code Maven
On the Code Maven site there are 2 posts in December (7 November, 13 in October). You can see them in the archive there.
Perl Weekly
Nothing very exciting on the Perl Weekly newsletter. I edited 2 of the issues and manwar edited 2.
CPAN Digger
I have not done anything regarding the CPAN Digger in December. I think I got tired of the indifference of several people. However the imminent closing of RT.CPAN.ORG seemed to have an impact in the good direction.
According to the stats there is an improvement in the last 2 week. I think it is primarily because of the closing of CPAN RT.
YouTube
I uploaded a number of videos, but they are all also published as pages on my other sites, so I should probably not count them here. The number of followers on the various YouTube channels:
English: 2,046 (+32) Hebrew: 113 (+17) Hungarian: 9 (-) Spanish: 6 (-)
Webinars and Meetups
This month I had two webinars in Hebrew about Deploying Docker to the cloud and about Continuous Delivery/Deployment (CD) using GitHub Actions.
For next month I've scheduled 3. One about Async Python and two about testing in Python.
Daily routine - Afternoon nap
Now that it is winter the evenings are a bit cold for my walking, so instead of that I started to have my almost daily walk during the day. Around 1-1:30 I leave. When I get home I make a salad, warm the lunch (or wait till my wife or my daughter do their magic) have lunch and soon after that I get really sleepy. So I take a shower and have an afternoon nap. Just to continue working later in the afternoon and in the evening. Not bad, but I have no idea what I am going to do if I have to go to an office and work there the whole day or teach in a class-room.
Spanish lessons
I have re-started learning Spanish with Duolingo. I am still afraid of the various past tenses, but I decided I'll fake it if nothing else helps. Till now I was primarily doing the new exercises that were added to the first part of the course. So it was not that difficult.
Starting on the 31 December I got back taking lessons on Spanish lessons via italki.
I keep listening to podcasts in Spanish and I watched a few YouTube channels that are aimed to native Spanish speakers.
Hebrew
I kept improving my typing and spelling skills with Duolingo. I feel more and more confident writing even to real people.
Hiking
Park Canada (Park Ayalon) a short and not too steep walk.
I planned for a longer walk, but left home late and also found out that the road is flooded and while car could cross I would get really wet. So instead of the whole 18 km circle I had a much shorter walk. Only 9 km in less than 3 hours. In April-May I'll try it again.
Sport
According to Runkeeper I went walking 18 times in December. Each time about 5.29 km. My Speed is around 6km/h.
TODO
In January I'll spend again about 10 days working for long-term contract. Currently I have a task that will also allow me to create a bunch of examples for a future Python course.
I don't know yet, but I might have 2 or 3 days with my Perl-training client writing tests for some old code. That task will probably also lead to a few blog posts or slides in my Perl courses.
Post a video every day to my Patron subscribers. This will probably include the videos from the Perl Dancer course and the Functional Programming in Python course.
I would also like to post at least 5 videos publicly to the English YouTube channel.
I plan to run a poll on the Perl Maven LinkedIn page
I am going to finish recording the Functional Programming in Python course and I am going to record at least one another Python course. I have plenty of ideas, just need to decide which one is next. I might run a poll on the Python page. I might start a Perl course as well.
I would like to reach 520 followers on the Code Maven Python LinkedIn page and 600-620 followers on the Perl Maven LinkedIn page. For that I'll need to share a lot more content on both of those pages. The plan is to post at least once a day either to the Perl or to the Python page.
I really hope I'll be able to go for a few hikes. That partially depends on the weather and if the lockdown will be released.
Sport: keep walking every 2nd day or so.
Hike: 1-2 times, depending when the closure is lifted.
I made nice progress, but I have to further clean up my inbox.