I am very excited to write this post.

The name is fitting. This truly feels like me greeting the world as a writer for the first time.

As far as I can remember, I have always wanted to write. As a kid, I day dreamed about being a writer of novels and as I grew older I entertained the idea of becoming a journalist.

In the end, I became a software engineer instead.

Now that might sound sad but it is not sad at all! I enjoy my craft and I am very good at it. If you think about it, I did end up becoming a writer - just a writer of code.

I don’t write books, or novels, or news articles. Instead, I write hundreds to thousands of lines of human-readable code that result in software programs used by millions of people.

I enjoy writing - and reading - which is why I am excited about my new writing project.

This blog.

Thoughts on blogs

I do feel that blogs are a bit out of fashion these days. Most people opt-in for short form media on platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube shorts. I don’t have the personality, nor the time, nor the care to write, film and edit a short form video.

The tech I am using for this blog is also a bit outdated.

I have opted for a Jekyll website. Why? A couple reasons:

  1. It is supported by GitHub Pages out the box.
  2. It uses markdown which I fully enjoy.
  3. It is not a NodeJS project - I am somewhat tired of NodeJS projects.

In terms of the actual writing, I use Obsidian. Obsidian is a great tool to write markdown files. The editor itself seemed a bit, too technical for me. I really want to embody the writer persona. Make a cup of tea, put on my glasses and type away at my typewriter.

So I built an Obsidian plugin that transforms my Obsidian into a writer friendly app.

So about AI

I probably spent a good 15 minutes writing a piece on AI but I decided to CTRL + Z on that one for now.

It wasn’t very positive.

What to expect

There are a couple topics I plan to write about.

The first two topics are Doinfine and Teamtjie. These are my two flagship projects, if I can call them that.

Doinfine is an app that let’s you create a group, invite your friends and fine each other for various things. You must share and complete challenges to pay the fines off.

Teamtjie is a web app that helps managers understand how their team is feeling with features like team charter, posting wins, tracking daily sentiment and capturing team health checks.

I say flagship, because they are treated as businesses, with closed-source repos on Github and payment solutions built in.

I then have smaller projects that are not as serious. The three latest ones are:

  • Jequill - an Obsidian plugin that makes writing Jekyll blogs much nicer.
  • Nuwetak - a VS Code extension that displays the git blame for that line right in your editor. Nuwetak means New Branch in Afrikaans.
  • Sock Drawer - a VS Code extension that helps you manage VS Code extensions from Github repos. I built this because I couldn’t get my Nuwetak extension published to VS Code Marketplace.

Then I want to learn Rust, continue building my homelab, cloudflare tunnels, kubernetes, docker, AWS, native app development and so much more.

Its a bit overwhelming to say the least.

Last sip of tea

The main purpose of this is to write more. Improve my writing skills, share some knowledge and just scratch that itch in my brain to type away at a keyboard. Put words on a piece of virtual paper.

Something like that.

Well as I take the last sip of my tea, I want to welcome you. Thank you for making it all the way to the end and please be invited to reach out if you want to have a chat.

My email is somewhere on this site.

Cheers.

P.s. I am leaving the default post by Jekyll in this blog. Why? I don’t really know. Just feel like it.