2020 was a great year for me — this little annoyance of a global pandemic aside. I moved out of the city, have five months left at my job, automated my life, sit here now with an uncertain future and all the freedom I could wish for.

Life’s a tumble, but overall I kind of like it — and having the mind space that automation affords me plays a great role in that. So here is what I automated this year to save me hours of time, effort, menial work.

I automated my automations

The most important thing that I did in 2020 was to go one step further and made sure to run all my scripts at system startup. Having automations is nice and all, but if you still need to click the script, worse even need to navigate through the console and run a python script you end up wasting time — and more importantly you waste mind-space. …

I’m sure you have seen this interesting rift between programmers that goes beyond the friendly competition about who favors which IDE or which programming language has the nicer syntax — the rift that extends to the very core of how we navigate the systems in front of us.

In essence, there are two kinds of people when it comes to computer navigation: Those who rely on the mouse and can’t understand why anyone would rather type text and on the other side, there’s us few who have seen the light and prefer using the keyboard as much as possible.

Using the keyboard is MUCH faster once you get used to it

There isn’t anything inherently wrong with using your mouse, but given you know what you’re doing, the keyboard is undeniably the faster choice. …

Over the past three weeks, I went through a host of job interviews, ten in total and the only one where I immediately said to myself “nah, I’m good thanks” was this one that I want to talk about today.

The interview started off in a pretty standard fashion, we made our introductions, I talked about my current job, the technologies I know best, making sure to include where I struggle to give the impression of a guy who’s not afraid to mention weaknesses (I mean room for improvements).

That was my forth or fifth interview of this little application marathon and by then I was aptly entertained by the routine-yet-not-routine of sitting through an hour-long skype call with people with bad cameras and shitty microphones. …

I write this post on my trusted, beloved Microsoft Surface Pro 7, for me it is the near-perfect device. I have it coupled with not the default keyboard cover but rather the Logitech MX Keys that is just sublime to type on and this setup has earned me thousands, given me hours of enjoyment.

I can also prop it up by my main monitor and use it as a companion device or to scroll while stuck in non-important meetings — it’s just a joy to use.

It also runs Windows which to me is so much faster than trying to use Mac devices that appeal to a different kind of user than I am — it basically combines the functionality of a tablet with that of a laptop. …

I believe that one of the hardest parts about programming is finding the problem, not the solution. We go around, trying to find a cool project for our portfolios, maybe even something that makes us a lot of money — but it’s not easy.

You can learn coding more or less easily using online resources, but I have yet to see a course on “problem finding” out there in the wild.

So let me show you a problem I discovered recently where I see common problem, a common solution and a gap where nobody has yet jumped on the chance.

First off: Why am I not building it myself?

I asked myself this question before I set out to write this post: Is this something I actually want to build? The answer is both yes and no. …

For many of us 2020 has been the year where we let our hair down, figuratively and literally. I have been in some pretty important meetings this year where the CEO, the important this, important that transmitted their messages from inside their basement bunker, sweater and funny hat and messy rooms in the back.

Children crashed more than one exciting meeting and nobody minded, a dozen people waving into the camera to entertain them.

Did my productivity drop? Not at all, but 2020 was the first year that I spent right at the forefront of fashion trends. …

This morning I went to YouTube’s recommended section, originally planning to watch the latest late night show episodes and get my update on what you guys across the big pond are doing to your country.

Instead I ended up watching a soccer goal compilation, which has to be the first time in my life that I did that. I never liked soccer, whenever our news casters went on to talk about sports I switched off the TV.

In the same ways I learned to like the simple pleasure of comfortable pants, not quite to the point where I would wear them in public but I do wear them while working from home most days. …

I grew up in my local library as much as my own home as a kid — but in 2019 I did not read a single book even though I tried several times. I dabbled in reading, turning a couple pages of what I assumed would be fascinating reads — but then I could never concentrate on them, become invested, finish a single book.

I read maybe a hundred, two hundred pages in the full year, of at least twenty books and they all ended up at the side of the road for free picking by anyone with an actual interest in books. …