Gabor self reporting for 2021.03

This is the report for March 2021. (See also the list of previous reports).

Overview

In this month I felt that I did even less work than in February. I have to take in account that besides my long-term client I also had a Programming Bootcamp which took 10 mornings in which I was either helping students or checking exercises.

I also had a few hours of two international clients. With both I am working on some old Perl code-base. That's actually very interesting to me.

I posted quite a few pages on the Perl Maven site describing various functions and operators in Perl. That was good.

I also had a few pair programming sessions that were recorded. I liked these and I am thinking how to make them even better and more useful to other people as well.

I think I get tired of programming and learning a lot faster these days than a few years ago, or I just notice it more? Many times I feel that the tasks in front of me are too difficult and I choose to do something useless where I get positive feedback much faster. Is this the problem of the age that we live in or my own age? Or both? I think I sit way too much in front of the computer without going for a walk. When I go for it is great. I feel much better after it. My head clears out, but I also get tired and many times I need to rest before I can start using my head again.

I waste way too much time on playing stupid card-games where I don't need to think.

I also watch way too much TV. (Netflix, YouTube etc.)

Personal blog posts

There were only 2 posts on my personal site.

LinkedIn

Number of followers: 


  Hebrew:   603 (+14)
  English:  547 (+6)
  Spanish:   32 (-)
  Hungarian: 10 (-)

  Perl:    761 (+30)
  Python:  636 (+36)
  DevOps:  359 (+8)
  Golang:  209 (+2)

  Personal: 4,194 (+19)

Twitter

Same as last month, I primarily posted in my two main Twitter accounts.

Facebook

Some posts on the Perl Maven page, the Python Maven page and the page in Hebrew.

Number of followers: 


           Follow         Like
  Perl:    279 (+12)      260 (+12)
  Python:  170 (+34)      167 (+34)
  Hebrew:   26 (+1)       26  (+1)

Patreon

No huge changes here.

  • 2021.03 ended with 66 Patrons and 8 followers
  • 2021.02 ended with 66 Patrons and 8 followers
  • 2021.01 ended with 68 Patrons and 8 followers
  • 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 have posted 6 times in March.

According to my Patreon page there are now 112 videos, 1 writing and 2 links available to the Patrons with $5 or more monthly support. (It is like in the previous month because all 6 of the new posts were made public.)

All the other posts are public.

Dev.to

In dev.to in March I had no posts.

Perl Maven

On the Perl Maven site there are only 16 posts in March (22 in February and 3, 34, 14, 5 in the previous months).

You can see them in the archive.

Code Maven

On the Code Maven site there are 7 posts in March (2 in February and 12, 2, 7, 13 in the previous months).

You can see them in the archive there.

Perl Weekly

Nothing very exciting on the Perl Weekly newsletter. I edited 3 of the issues and Manwar edited 2.

YouTube

My uploads slowed down. The number of followers on the various YouTube channels: 


  English:   2,149 (+39)
  Hebrew:      178 (+11)
  Hungarian:     9 (-)
  Spanish:       6 (-)

Webinars and Meetups

This month I had 2 webinars in Hebrew. One pair-programming session, and I've also publish one of my event in English there.

For next month I've scheduled 3 events in Hebrew and I think I am going to have a 4th one. I've also already scheduled 3 live coding events.

Spanish lessons

I keep learning Spanish with Duolingo.

I had no 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.

COVID 19

I still cannot travel abroad (e.g I cannot visit my mother) and I still hardly meet anyone, but things look very good here. 60% of the population is vaccinated. The number of new cases is going down, and what is probably even more important the number of really bad cases and the number of deathes are going down.

Games

After 4-5 years of break on March 10 I started to play Go again on Dragon Go Server. My rating was 12 kyu. I was fully expecting it to get worse after a few games, but surprisingly it actually improved to 11 kyu. I wonder if there is just an inflation of ranking or not playing improved me. In any case since I started again I won 10 games and lost 6.

Sport

According to Runkeeper I went walking 14 times in March. I often go to the supermarket or to the bakery as an excuse.

Hiking

If you are interested in the routes and the pictures here are the 3 hikes I had in March.

Nahal Og - Wadi Og - An Nabi Musa bridge near the Dead Sea.

Bet Meir - Burma Road on the way to Jerusalem.

Qumran / Qalya - Rosh Tzukim - HeEtequim cliff - Ein Fasha near the Dead Sea.

TODO

In April I'll spend again about 10 days working for long-term contract and I also have the two international clients for Perl. (I'd love to have more.)

I have to check the final projects of the students from the Programming Bootcamp.

I would like to explore more the pair-programming or team-programming ideas. I have a whole bunch of thing to say about this topic so I'll write a separate post with that.

I definitely need to get back into recording more episodes for my courses and more public videos. The pair programming session will probably help fill this need. At least partially.

The biggest question I think is how do I keep myself motivated and productive? How do I reduce the time I waste on useless stuff?