PJM - March '22

Howdy! 🤠

It's June...and yeah I'm writing a glorified blog about March...cuz that's how March/April/May went...work, work, work, and more work.

At the end of February I started a new job at Wilshire as a Software Engineer. Why freelance when most companies are offering remote jobs now 🤷‍♂️

The company is still adjusting and not as efficient as remote-first companies like Gitlab or Buffer - but it's been a great experience working with a financial services company during a time when personal investing is crazy, the stock market seems like a gambling machine, and a new form of money (crypto) is looking to disrupt it all.

I've still been keeping links from the best content around the web so over the next couple weeks I'll be sending updates on Sunday's to stay consistent and play ketch catch up.

Here are the updates and the best content from March...

PROJECT UPDATES...

NOTHING!

I was absolutely swamped starting a new job in March so I was working some weekends as well to stay ahead.

Still have a lot of backlog but sometimes in tech things work out by simply being patient and waiting for new releases/tools.

Once I get comfortable in the job and prove myself I'll be ready to put some time in on the side projects again :)

CURRENTLY LIVING IN...

BALI,INDONESIA

March had the Balinese New Year - known as Nyepi - during which there is a day of silence. No light, no sound, and you must stay in your home (even the international airport is closed). It's a beautiful day of reflection and even though it's a Hindu holiday I think everywhere in the world would benefit from it.

I also got to go to my friend's traditional Balinese wedding - epic!

...And snuck in a quick weekend trip to the mountains too ;)

CONTENT FROM MARCH...

Ukraine/Russia

An open-source project to block Russian traffic to your website - instead present a page on how to support Ukraine.

A site to connect Ukrainian people who seek shelter with people in Europe willing to help

A list of different ways to support Ukraine - support, donations, hire Ukrainians, etc.

Well that's not good...

If you're wondering where China stands - even if they don't publicly say they support Putin's war...

An appeal for help in Ukraine from a fellow Rubyist.

Crypto

A Central Bank Digital Currency would enable a totalitarian nightmare. A good look into what the world could look like...

If you're confused about the Gold, Fiat, PetroDollar, Crypto talks - this is a MUST read. A great article about the history of money.

"The four most expensive words in investing are: 'This time it's different.'"

Hal Finney (one of the suspected creators of Bitcoin) writes about working with 'Satoshi'.

Ummmm 🤔 f*ck web 2? 🍞🍞🍞

Cryptopia? Or the next Fyre Festival

These days, an app is “decentralized” if it uses the blockchain. As you probably already know, this is part of the so-called “Web3” which hopes to be the next version of the internet. I’m not the first person to tell you this, and certainly not the last, but Web3 is in fact centralized, just as Web2 was. Web3 is just a worse version of Web2.

Sky Mavis reported its network has been hacked, with thieves taking 173,600 in Eth and $25.5 million, taking a total of $620 million. #cryptoisnotready

Remote Work

This is a new territory we're coming into...In person, comforting each other in times of loss is something we all have experience with. Doing it with an all remote team across 5 timezones where we've never met each other is more challenging.

In a Tweet, Parag Agrawal, the new CEO of Twitter, who took over from Jack Dorsey, announced that he’d continue the option of working remotely “forever,” as other tech companies are calling for workers to return to the office.

An interesting study - we can't ALL work from home.

I just started one of the first salaried jobs I've had in awhile and burnout has been high. Software engineers love to solve problems - and usually the faster the more impressive. And managers only know how to say 'more'. This is an interesting read on how much you should actually do.

Business | Marketing

What is Elon's history with Russia? How is Starlink working in Ukraine? Is SpaceX a national security asset?

These chips are getting wild 😳 sell those Intel Macs quick before they're deemed worthless 😆

Long before controversies in Canada and Russia saw financial services politicized, porn star Cheri Deville warned about payment processors having too much power over speech

Heinz ships roughly a billion squeeze bottles every year. Heinz says it has put 185,000 hours and 45 prototypes into reinventing its squeeze bottle cap to improve recyclability. Heinz’s reasoning is understandable. Looking at the existing design with an industrial CT scanner, we see that it’s a complex assembly of multiple plastic materials, making recycling difficult.

The Federal Trade Commission claims Intuit uses "bait and switch" advertising that markets TurboTax as free but charges most users when they file their taxes.

A great thread on today's learning environment.

Design | Development

This looks epic!! It's like using real-time Figma design but for devs. Very excited to keep an eye on this... http://projects.codesandbox.io/

In the US everyone expects Software Engineers to be high paid individuals - that's not necessarily the case around the world.

PDF's are notoriously annoying to deal with. Here's a great resource for editing, splitting, etc.

“I don’t care, I have nothing to hide” - censorship is coming for all.

Enemies is the latest project by Unity’s award-winning Demo Team. The Graphics - Reality gap is closing 😳

Travel

Wow...what a legend. I wish I could learn to be a surgeon solely for situations like these...

With the invasion of Ukraine pushing oil prices higher than they’ve been in over a decade, here’s what it could mean for airfare.

The northern European city with 300+ miles of bike paths

Science

In May 2021 I took a sabbatical to take care of family, but things did not go as planned.

Be conscious of the scroll!

New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings - Lao Tzu