It may be already more than two years as I try to deliver this project. I had to start it from scratch as the environment changed. Had to rethink the approach and learn more about publishing, writing and the subject itself. But it seems I'm on the right course to deliver this year. Becoming a Software Developer is meant to be a testimony to my journey, baked in a way that could show the path to the others. During over twenty years in the trade, I trained multiple developers, succeeded and failed. I had a chance to learn from great mentors and see those not worth following. I noticed that many books for people who aspire to work in software engineering focus only on the technical aspects. Few that try to tackle other areas seem to be soulless career self books. I still miss something that you could relate to, which helps you choose your destination before the deep dive. People who enter #100daysofcode or similar challenges this way burn out very fast. They miss the point, as often they have no idea what the skills they learn will be used for.

I have encountered a problem with my Create React App. Our app is quite big and custom. We don't have a benefit of rewriting it from scratch in Next.js or similar. We have a server that delivers static HTML, session data and an API over standard HTTP port. On production, we load all frontend scripts from the CDN, but on the development we have CRA running in parallel. Server router proxies HTML files, but assets are being loaded from CRA port, 5000 in that case.

This year was a massive challenge to everyone but also brought a positive change. Don't remember any such eventful year before, so to sum up everything I will make a bullet point list.

1. Turn off notifications on the phone except work or productivity related
2. Turn on Do Not Disturb between 6:00 PM and 7:30 AM except for calls and calendar reminders
3. Turn off all Chrome Notificatons
4. Add site blocker extension to Chrome and block social media between 9:30 and 5 PM
5. Add site and app blocker extention to phone
6. Put the phone in the cage when not using 2FA
7. Keep phone in the cage after work until children are not asleep

Experiment worked for two weeks. Was a success. Then I left it. Need to start again now as it's really working.

It may sound like I wanted to complain about the lockdown, but it's more a coincidence in words. I don't mind the lockdown now and understand the cost and damage of it. But I even like it. It's more difficult to keep fit, but easier to look after the close ones. I mean, the closest ones. The family unit. With other connections, it's a bit different. Well. I've always been a bit of loner. I had loads of connections and in some environments were quite recognisable. But I never had too many very close people around. It's not their fault. It's mine. Very rarely I find people interesting. I respect them and care about my collective, but when it's dismantled for some reason all fades away. Even though, I don't feel to a bad about it. I respect that people have their lives and loyalties. I'm here for them, but I don't like to push into their lives.

What I write here may sound bad for some people, even offend them. I understand and tolerate movement towards "body positivity". Anyhow, I also see the dark side of it. Body positivity often hides or even promotes a lifestyle that leads to disability and premature death. As a person who lost very early a parent to an unhealthy lifestyle, please allow me to oppose that movement. I respect it but consider wrong and harmful.

(I use Mac, so whenever I mean Ctrl+Shift+F I do Cmd+Shift+F)

Martin has started primary school, so thoughts about education and the future began to gather in my head. Luckily instead of panicking and Googling, I've turned towards some literature. Thanks to a brilliant book by Steve Biddulph - Raising Boys in the 21st Century I realised that our progress so far is far better than we should expect. As for trilingual four-five year old, he picks up phonics and numbers pretty well, can use various devices, tell stories, learns to describe emotions, shows compassion, empathy and care. Despite still weak English, he manages to build strong relations with other children. He even can perform simple "programming" with Scratch and CodeSpark.

Added dark mode. Simple small tweak with Tailwind CSS. You you like it? Disqus aligns itself as long you set the theme to auto in admin.

Week or so ago Svetlana Tikhanovskaya gave an ultimatum to the regime. For the last few weeks, people walk out on the streets of Poland. The United Kingdom is torn and terrified of a new lockdown starting on Thursday. Next few days will show if the USA will be normal again or fall into an authoritarian abyss. It seems that 2020 gives us a deadline between getting normality and an Armageddon.

There has been a lot of chaos recently. Don't take it as a Pre-New-Years resolution, but I feel like I need and I can come back to a bit more organised lifestyle. And yes, it's because our lifestyle has changed a great deal. It's clear that at least for next month we will spend most of our time at home and working remotely may stay here for longer. It required some amendments, especially home became a bit tighter. It also turned out that without the office environment, I need far more organised routine. Otherwise, I'd keep failing behind with most of the things I wanted to achieve.

I continue my series reviewing press take on events in Belarus. I aim to determine the most reliable sources and call out any fakes, unfair judgements, stereotypes or sometimes even lies. Belarus at the moment receives carte blanche in public opinion, so their image mustn't be skewed by bad reporting.

For a few months I both follow how British public, media and government reacts to the situation in Belarus. Sadly despite alerting about growing issues already in June hardly anyone paid attention. Even after seven thousands of detainees and two people killed there, the government failed to make any comment by a high ranking figure. Media even after today events collecting possibly over 200 thousand people near Stela in Minsk are walking in the dark. For some time on my twitter profile, I wrap up of how Belarus topic performs in the British newspapers. Because the events grow and more journalists try their take I decided to move to the blog to provide wider comment on their work. Sometimes good, sometimes appalling. I will also add retrospectively posts about previous days.

I see many people learning to code struggle with understanding some concepts, which prove to be essential in daily work. When I run interviews I always talk about arrays (be prepared) and their methods. I do that as they open discussion to many possible situations and problems. They also allow debating complexity, optimisation, abstraction, mutation, and many many more. Without spending too much on introduction, I'd like to simply move to real-life examples. Yep! Real from code we recently wrote!

On May 6th popular blogger turned presidential candidate, Sergei Tikhanovskiy is being arrested for 15 days (remains in the custody). Except for Reuters, DW and few typical outlets, world media stay silent preferring to write about Belarusian Football League or joke about Lukashenko approach to Coronavirus. On Thursday, June 18th, Victor Babaryka, a former banker turned presidential candidate and his some Edward are being arrested as well.

Before reading this article it's worth to check great work of Tadeusz Giczan explaining complex history and position of Lukashenko regime.

There are two things I'd like to mention in this blog post. First - how much fun is to play with various static page generators, including both Gatsby and Eleventy. Second - how senseless it may be. Let's start with the second.

Before I dig into the problem, I need to admit that to some extent I'm a hypocrite. Where I'm totally against and disgusted by call-out (or cancel) culture I may be responsible for participating in it. When I publish a video on YouTube of a driver (cyclists and pedestrians don't have number plates, therefore they stay anonymous) I kind of name and shame them, call them out, even if I'm fully sure they did something wrong, dangerous and worth pointing out. Tho I may have to rethink that, even while writing this entry.

That may be the main question. It would be quite valid if we spoke about past events in my life (as mentioned in Priorities blog post). But this time I mean my 600-mile cycling challenge in August.

What and why? ¶

Another year, another challenge. After cycling 300 miles for University or Liverpool Pancreatic Cancer Research Fund in 2017 and walking over 50 miles for 11-year-old Szymon in 2018 I continue my journey by cycling 600 miles from Cornwall to Kent (and back to London).