Quick updates for March
This blog has become more broad-reaching in terms of topics. It started out as a programming and machine learning-focused blog but writing about those topics often feels exhausting nowadays. I might also start posting some occasional travel-related writing.
In order to make it easier for people to subscribe to just the stuff they are interested in I've now added a subscription dashboard where you can control what articles you get emails about. By default, everyone is subscribed to everything, so I encourage you to go in and fine-tune your preferences. The only drawback at the moment is that you won't be subscribed to new tags automatically unless you keep the "Everything" option selected.
The link to the dashboard should appear in the email that notified you about this article. If you aren't subscribed via email and instead use RSS, do consider switching to email, it's much better and allows me to put in this kind of customization.
Also, I have to thank Alexey (guezy.com) for pointing out to me that I don't have a "subscription confirmation" email and that this is confusing and weird. I added one and doing that prompted this whole refactor.
I think this might be the last major update I ever make to the blog's code this year, though I'm pretty sure I said something like that after the last update in January
I've also added an "About" section that contains a blogroll, since it's way overdue that I include one, you can check it out above. If I read your blog (i.e. talk with you about what you write, leave comments, etc) but you're not in the blogroll it might be because it's 3AM here and I forgot to add you, so please email me to let me know, no harm in asking.
One thing I've considered is writing more tutorial posts, namely:
An intro to the fiscal and job-hunting bit of working remotely. How to reduce tax to single-digits, how to look for work, how to manage finances etc. I'm not an expert in this area, but unlike the experts, I'm at least trustworthy because I'm not selling you my services or a book. And I've done extensive reading on the topic in the last 3 years. The article would be an intro with appropriate links to more in-depth material.
An introduction to learning programming and getting into the "tech world" starting from zero (in terms of degrees, knowledge and connections). Basically, something aimed at 18 years-old me to help me speed up the process by 1 or 2 years. The main reason I don't want to write this is because generalizing my own experience and learning here might not be very helpful. The second reason is that I'm not sure the target audience would stumble upon it. The main reason I want to write it now is because the older and more jaded I get the less relevant and more diluted whatever advice I can give becomes.
Tutorials on "common" topics in programming that aren't covered or are covered poorly. I wrote two articles, one about testing and one about exceptions as control flow, both of them were kind of tongue-in-cheek, but to my surprise, people actually enjoyed them as "guides" to the subject. So I'm considering writing more articles on similar topics. But I have no idea what "similar" means, so I'm open to suggestions.
If you've got thoughts about wanting to see one or more articles in any of the above 3 categories, let me know. Other than that, it's business as usual, but I might change my release date from Monday to Wednesday.
Published on: 2021-03-05
