Teochew Thunder: Year Six (Part 2/2)

As with all other blogging years, there were some standouts. Some were outright astonishing.

The undisputed winner was my accounting of the GovTech recruitment process. While it wasn't exactly a literary masterpiece, it got shared, and re-shared among actual GovTech employees, which contributed to a high view rate. Unfortunately, it was the only blogpost to hit those heights.

Another often-viewed post was a piece I wrote during the Singapore General Elections. It was meant to remind voters to keep an open mind, and not be slave to their biases. And true to form, I used JavaScript to illustrate my point... though I don't think I did it extremely well. In fact, I happen to think this piece I wrote about silly rumor-mongering during the Singapore General Elections was more worthy of attention; alas, it garnered a miserable amount of views.

A sharp spike.

Coming a close third was my rumination on whether or not the Singapore General Elections should continue to be held during a COVID-19 outbreak. This was a topic on which few citizens can truly remain neutral, and it was reflected in a spike in viewership. I blogged about this because the situation strongly reminded me of the perennial tech headache of having to strike a balance between system security and user convenience.

These topics were close to my heart, and the language I used might have been a little strong. I don't regret that; not in the least. Sometimes language needs to be strong.

Finally, there was a short piece on how I mounted the learning curve on automated DevOps. I didn't think it was all that interesting, but it appears the statistics disagree with me.

Slipping back into bad habits, the profanity I have used in the past year, especially in the tail end, has been somewhat gratuitous. As was the case for Five Stupid Things Tech Bosses Say, which seems popular only because it's so expletive-ridden. Also probably somewhat relatable, considering the subject matter.

In conclusion

Blogging remains one of my life priorities. Not because my blog is so damn popular, because it isn't. But because this is my industry and as such there is absolutely no good excuse not to have a blog, or at least a demo site. I try to keep content varied, and for the most part, that endeavor is manageable.

Any chump can cobble together a few words and put them online. I'm not even that great a developer. If I can't do even that, then what good am I?

A calming effect.

Blogging helps to center me. It's a side-project where I can focus my thoughts and condense them into a sharp blade. Six years from the day I committed to this endeavor, I'm still at it. Have I mentioned that it's a labor of love? Well, it is. Very much so.

And for all those who've stuck with me thus far, thanks so much.

Thundering on ahead,
T___T

Teochew Thunder: Year Six (Part 1/2)

2020 has been a turbulent year, not just for me, but for just about everyone on the planet. It will forever be known as the year COVID-19 ravaged the world, and the scary thing is, it's far from over. At least not if USA and India have anything to say about it. As befits such a world-shattering event, many of my blogposts this year revolved around COVID-19 as a subject. Not only did this unprecedented crisis give rise to much technical innovation, it also forced changes in the way many people do things, thus forcing even more innovation. The effects were far-reaching and felt even to this day.

Somewhat closer to home, the Singapore General Elections were held around this time. This also gave rise to a series of writings that sometimes coincided with views on COVID-19. This wasn't done on purpose, I swear. COVID-19 just got its hooks into everything.

As it stands, I've just lost my job last month. Long story. As of the first day of this month, I landed another job (though goodness knows how long that will last) and I'm scheduled for yet another stint in school starting this month. The yearly blogging break could not have come at a better time.

Here are some notes about content on this blog...

Web Tutorials

The web tutorials have mostly focused around a whole lot of JavaScript. What can I say; I'm a severely limited programmer and JavaScript happens to be an old friend. There's been new stuff, obviously - D3.js, ReactJS... yes, it's all still JavaScript, but it's different ways of applying the JavaScript ecosystem. You can be a good or bad programmer, but above all, have fun.

My love for learning new stuff has never been put to the test quite as severely as the past year. Everything I learned challenged my assumptions and showed me I know a lot less than I thought I did, and that I have a long way to go before considering myself even mildly accomplished. Which is fine by me; ego is overrated.

A long, long climb.

Despite writing about Ruby just two months ago, I've not actually had a chance to touch it much. It's the same with QBasic. This year has been almost exclusively JavaScript and PHP. All in all, my grasp on tech has evolved. Though, it has to be said, I'm still trying to keep the web tutorials at levels that are accessible to beginners such as myself back then. In many ways, I'm still that wide-eyed kid playing with stuff.

Reviews

Thankfully, unlike last year, I managed to tone down on the overwhelming number of reviews, and actually varied the kind of reviews on offer. There's a recent Reference Review I did on The Mythical Man-month: Essays on Software Engineering, for instance.

No time to play.

I've not had much time or inclination to play or review mobile games, which is a real pity. The mobile game makers seem to be getting more innovative by the day. I guess they have to, with all the competition that's out there, and the notoriously short attention span of their target audience.

Rants

As mentioned in the very first paragraph, there's been quite a few rants on this blog involving either the Singapore General Elections or COVID-19, or both. Regrettably, I've used more vulgarities than was absolutely necessary, and while I don't apologize for it, I acknowledge that things could have been worded a lot less offensively. Could.

Having things to say.

All in all, though, I've been way less of a windbag this year than I've been prone to being the past few years, even though COVID-19 has given me plenty to rant about. Maybe it's because I got most of it out of my system. No point repeating myself.

Or possibly, I'm just getting old.

Others

As mentioned, there's been considerably more diversity in feature blogposts - a good balance of reviews, listicles and what-not. I will strive to maintain that balance.

That tends to be hard because daily, there is tech-related breaking news and I need to decide if I care about it enough to include it in TeochewThunder. And if I do, I need to make hard decisions about what to post now, and what to post later.

Next

Examining what resonated with readers, and what didn't.