When I started working as a developper almost 10 years ago, there was so much to learn, and using books or the web was so useful it helped me progress quickly through my different tasks. It was hard ot find the right information, but once my knowledge was so small, it was easy to find it again later on. Then I moved from C to C++, did some PHP, then focused on Java, then Python and now Javascript.

Now that I work remotely, I have more control about how I setup my “work station”. I had a few bullet points to check: Minimum of câble, everything portable (except the second screen of course), powerful computer, high resolution for both screens. For now, I work in my living room, but I will find a new flat in the next months (once my 3 months trial is finished, because France), and my new flat will have a dedicated room for my office, to clearly define a space dedicated for work.

I’ve been coding for a long time, my first steps were in the very late 90s. I became serious about it only around 2004. I started being paid for my work since 2008, and working full time since february 2010. I started by being heavily invested in C++, then move to web development in 2012, and still going at it today. And what’s awesome is that I’m still having so much fun.

Two weeks ago, my 3 months notice came to an end, I left LumApps after 5 years and a half. I was the first employee back then, but it was time for me to go see something else. I just signed a new contract with a new French startup as a full remote employee. Since remote jobs is still not the norm, I want to share how I organized my search to find one, since I really wanted to go full remote.

Recently, I had to use Redis for the first time. I heard of it, but never really played with it. But this time I had no choice, and I don’t regret it at all, Redis is awesome. But having a new component means that I had to discover from scratch how to test it. I tried a few libraries, but one seemed really easy to use, at least to the point where I wanted to test that I was correctly using the expiration time for my data.

As I said in an earlier post, I’m currently working on a Node/Preact app to manage my Hugo blog without having to use my computer & editor. Since I’m alone on this, with no deadline, I can take my time, try different things, etc. At first, I was going to use a database to remember the files on the disk, make searching through them faster. But I decided to test if it was viable to manage everything without a database.

I’m always losing track of what I have to do, and even sometimes what I want to do. I can forget because I was told to do something while being deeply focused on something, or because too much has happened between my decision to do something and the moment when I have time to do it, or any other reasons. To stop forgetting things, I’ve been using Todoist for a few weeks now, and I love it more and more.

Trying to use a library to encrypt your data can be a lot to handle when you have no experience or knowledge about their inner workings. There is more than just selecting a cipher algorithm like Blowfish or AES. You also have to chose a mode, manage an initialization vector, and sometimes even more. As a memento, but also to help others, I will try to explain some of those concepts, and how to use them with PyCrypto, the main encryption library in Python.

To host this blog, I bought a VPS SSD 2 server on OVH. It’s 7€ per month, has a decent amount of storage for my current needs, and I will be able to build some apps on it. I could have gone with a classic shared hosting, but I wanted to be able to build my blog directly from my server. To do that, I dockerized everything. But why? First, for a simple reason: To be able to test my configuration locally before deploying it.

Some years ago, I wrote a custom git prompt with bash. I upgrade it a few times to fix bugs or add some features, but more and more I was discourage to rework it only because it was in Bash. My knowledge of Bash is slowly decreasing as now I make most of my scripts in Python or Javascript, and having to remember everytime how to do simple things like doing a loop or extracting values from a string demotivates me every time.

For the last 5 years, I’ve been working at LumApps with AngularJS. I’ve done lots of projects, from simple websites to powerful applications like our products. I also built LumX with the help of our lead designer. But after all this time, I now want to switch to another one. Why I want to stop using AngularJS AngularJS is a great framework. It helped me become a better Javascript developper, helped our business grow at LumApps, and has awesome features.

I open sourced my theme, and everyone can use it with their Hugo setup. I think it’s also easy to port to another blog platform if you want. Here is an example of all the styles available. Headings A h1 header A h2 header A h3 header A h4 header A h5 header A h6 header Text Full sentence Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas.

I created lots of blogs in my life, about a lots of subjects. I did movies & video games reviews, personal, company & technical blogs. I used a lot of blogging solutions. One of my last blog, already hosted on my current domain, was I think my best blog. Maybe because I know more about my subject, but also by its technical aspect. Built with Pelican, it was a static site.