2024, to layoffs and new beginnings

this year i felt on my bones what a layoff is about.
took some time-off to process what happened, and mainly how it happened.
hope none of you have to undergo through one of these, and if it does happen, my advice for you, is to focus on the fact that most probably you did nothing wrong. stop trying to understand why you were targeted.
seldom if ever do they give you any rationale on why, making your head spin endlessly on the whats/ifs you had done things differently. you will not get anywhere, unless you reach people on a personal level to get any hint.

with the battery charged, joined a new company!
still trying to find my sweet-spot company; the nice equilibrium of being part of a team where i can both learn and teach from the daily technical challenges, feeling that we're part of the same team, and without/or with the least need to handle situations that are out of my preferred culture-zone.

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not much to munch this year, but some crumbs are always better than none.
here a quick recap of things that caught my interest, in this roller-coaster year.

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collaboration

nl

the usage of number lines of files, is a simple trick to drive conversations

$ ls / | nl
     1  bin
     2  boot
     3  cdrom
     4  dev
     5  etc
     6  home
     7  lib
     ...

patat; markdown-based presentations

i'm pretty aware that most presentation spectators prefer a dynamic, image/meme-fulled visualization, with nice colors, formats,... but since i tend to advocate for usability, patat has become a good friend.

Presentations Atop The ANSI Terminal is a feature-rich presentation tool that runs in the terminal.

as a huge fan of markdown format, just feel that patat drives the conversation.

ok... if you're going for a sales pitch, it may not be the tool of choice, but for small meetings where you just need a topic guideline it gets the work done.

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diaxtasis

Diaxtasis is the documentation framework used in my current company, and although its adoption is something that may take some time, it has been nice to learn that there are indeed documentation frameworks :)

i totally acknowledge that doing good public documentation, that serves all purposes, is very tough. keeping it's content valuable requires not only the proper tool (collaborative and easy to manage), but also the proper culture where everybody is engaged in certain way (yes, engineers too).

having a technical-author role, as the owner of it, it's a practice i'm starting to learn about, and as a documentation freak, i discovered it's a role i might want to try someday :)

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pomodoros

we all struggle with concentration at some point in our career, either from excess or defect.

already started using pomodoro technique last year, but this one i'm really soaking into the habit.

• do you feel unmotivated? eat the cake one bit at a time! set small pomodoros of 15 minutes and have breaks of 10 minutes if needed.
  anything you do, is better than none at all.

• feeling over-motivated? i sometimes end the day with headache, due to the lack of breaks to get hydrated, stretch, pat you pets...
  set 50 minute pomodoros, with 5 minute break. allow yourself some more time, every other pomodoro.

there are many pomodoro tools out there, pick your flavor.
just one advice; be true to yourself, don't over-gamify it, and just learn to identify when you need to start the app to drive yourself into a good working day.

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workstation update

standup-desk

On 2022 i got myself a Jarvis standup desktop, and my body is really enjoying switching between standup up and sitting down.
I'm still getting used to being standup, which is something i do more when i'm tired from being sit, but not early in the morning or after lunch 🤷

Yeah... funny chair setup. I need to change my sit posture very often, and sometimes in non-conventional ways, so regular chairs do not suit me.
I tried several ergonomic stools but they don't fit my style, so this year i want to invest on an Ikaria SoulSeat.
After having it for several years on my eye-sight, and even trying to unsuccessfully convince some handcraft friends, to make one for me to avoid the long cross-country shipping route, i think it's time to retire my stool+puff setup.
I will repurpose them, no worries :)

Will report on it next year!

week-day-based auto-login

as part of my working setup (i use both a laptop and a workstation), i got tired of having to manually log-in into either my personal or work profile on my workstation.

mainly during workdays (mon-fri) i would go for work profile, and use my personal on the weekends.

$ sudo cat /etc/gdm3/custom.conf
...
[daemon]
AutomaticLoginEnable=True
AutomaticLogin=user1
...

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$ sudo cat ~/.local/scripts/autologin_user.sh

#!/bin/bash

PROFILE_1=user1
PROFILE_2=user2

# Get the day of the week (0 = Sunday, 1 = Monday, ..., 6 = Saturday)
day_of_week=$(date +%u)

# Define users based on day of the week
case $day_of_week in
    1|2|3|4|5)  # Monday - Friday
        autologin_user="$PROFILE_1"
        ;;
    6|7)  # Sunday
        autologin_user="$PROFILE_2"
        ;;
    *)
        autologin_user="$PROFILE_2"
        ;;
esac

# Write the autologin user to the lightdm configuration
sudo sed -i "s/^AutomaticLogin=.*/AutomaticLogin=$autologin_user/" /etc/gdm3/custom.conf

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$ sudo cat /etc/rc.local 
#!/bin/sh
/home/work/.local/scripts/autologin_user.sh
exit 0

inspired by thelinuxcode

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Advent of Code 2024

yep, another year into the challenge. this time i went for python and though still clumsy, pushed myself a bit into gettin an extra star before time started to be more consuming than what i wanted.

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Funpics

downtime servers caring

/me pats server...

set your travel arrangements... captain