Happening now
January 2025
A lot of time has passed hehe. But weather is still awful here, albeit in a different way than in August. Autumn was nice though!
And a lot of stuff happened in my life, but I won't bore you with all the details🙃. First, update on stuff I mention in previous record. Work is going good! I still feel like I have a lot to learn (the code base is huuuuuge~), but so far I really like it. I already went couple of time to the office in Prague and man, I miss big city sooo much. Prague felt just like home. At the same time it's like Bratislava (similar language, familiar way of life, idk how to describe it honestly) and Kyiv (big city vibes). So, combo of two homes.
Situation with relocation became a lot clearer too. With some outstanding hurdles with docs solved (finally Slovak government decided to implement EU directive properly after 3 years lol), I can start preparing to move to Poland. Yeah, not going far really, lol. Slovakia headed in questionable political direction and I don't think staying here will be a good decision. Plus, I really crave living in bigger city (like Warsaw) again. Bratislava is lovely, but with trip to Prague I realized how much I miss this feeling. Oh, and lower taxes, lol.
In recent months I feel so content with my life. I just live, cook tasty meals, walk around the city, work on my day job, read in coffee shops, talk with people sometimes, practice languages, spend time on my personal projects, and so on and so on. It's so mundane, but I'm happy I can find hapiness in those simple things.
August 2024
Long time, no see, sweeties! Weather here in Bratislava is kinda awful. I get pretty used to heat, but it's still unpleasant. Hopefully, it won't continue for long!
Unfortunately, my application for a Global Talent Visa in the UK was rejected. But it's still a visa with great terms, and I plan to give it another try in a year or so. But for now, I'll be staying in Slovakia, I guess. From one side, it means I again can't make certain plans for more than a year in advance, which very much sucks. But from the other side, I like Slovakia (except a few things) and very much like the routine we and my girlfriend established here, and now I have some additional time to enjoy it. But for a long-term residence, I'm not really sure, Global Talent Visa terms are really hard to beat.
My prolonged vacation is also ending this month, as my new job starts. I'll be working on a notebook app for data scientists. I'm very excited to work in this field, as I'm sure there will be all kinds of different UI problems to solve. And finally, I don't need to go on interviews, I really hate doing them 😁.
While I didn't make much (if any) progress on Umako, I did a couple of other cool projects, including my frontend for LLMs I mention in previous post. But I'm especially proud of Emera, as it was one of the most unusual things I worked on recently but still very interesting. It combines Babel, Rollup, my whacky abstractions, and CodeMirror extensions to bring MDX-like experience to Obsidian.
May 2024
I left my last workplace at the end of March and decided to take it slow, and give myself at least two months before searching for new job. I did so last summer and it was great. Job market didn't look great at the time (still isn't probably?) and weather in Bratislava was good in April, so time well spent so far.
Still working on docs for my visa, hopefully I'll be able to submit everything at the start of the summer. And from there I'll be left to wait for the decision.
I actually made landing page for the 'crypto patreon' project. Decided to call it Umako. It turned really good in my opinion! But while I was waiting for illustrations I switched to other projects and now don't really have time or desire to actively work on this one. But I'm planning to return to it once I settle matters with visa. Maybe I'll be just in time for new crypto boom, who knows. Anyway, I should add it to projects page.
Recently I found myself working on another app, which is multiprovider frontend for Large Language Models. I wanted to use local LLMs through Ollama, but I didn't fully like any of available frontends so decided to roll my own, and add support for OpenAI and Anthropic along the way. I decided to pick new shiny stack for backend this time (Bun, Hono and Drizzle) and I must admit I enjoy it very much, maybe except small compitability issues in Bun. Maybe I'll be able to finish it this month and release as open source project. I'll need to pick proper name first though.
Gosh, first crypto, then AI... I don't chase hype train I promise.
February 2024
Heeeey, I finally got my masters degree! Still not sure if I will ever need it, and it was quite a stressful for the whole 1.5 years it took, but I'm very happy it's over now.
Caught myself thinking about that crypto-patreon project a lot, I guess it's time to put it into work. I spent a lot of time reading about EVM, Solidity and smart contracts to just make sure it's possible to implement. And it seems it is! There are a few more nuances, but I think it's time to start building landing page for it and try figure out if there is audience for it at all.
And I got myself really cute pin holder cloth last month. Planning to fill it with cool pins too.
December 2023
This was quite pleasant year. I left my freelance projects in the middle of year and had my two months vacation. After that I got job at quite big tech company. Though I still don't like working full-time (and I think part-time is one of the best things to happen to me) it was better than I expected.
Currently I'm concentrated on preparing all necessary docs for my visa in United Kingdom, and hopefully I'll be there next year. Besides that I actively work on posts for my blog. It turned out I quite enjoy writing and now my 40+ hours spent on building this personal site don't feel wasted haha.
As for pet projects, Anori is now in state of lazily-maintained (and been there for a few months). I recently got into crypto, idea of programmable money fascinates me so much and now I find myself thinking how I can turn this into projects useful for broader audience. I have this idea of crypto-patreon, but I'm still not sure how to best approach it.