I’m trying to work on more interesting stuff during my free time. But also something beneficial, that I myself would use.

Since I’m a fan of statistics and various metrics AND trying new stuff (Go this time), I’ve started working on this server status service - https://github.com/andriussev/server-seer. The basic functionality is.. 1) Define commands you want the information from (numbers); 2) Run the application to gather the data. Everything is saved onto an SQLite database.

Trying to make it as simple and as readable as I can. I’m currently working on making a simple local viewer of that data so the data could be actually used somewhere.

At some point, when I’m done with making the server-seer stable, I plan on making a small SaaS to show everything on there (with alerts and whatnot).

So I have things to do, which is good for the mind!

Working on a system that will allow programmers create bots to play simple games (board games) against each other. Currently, I have most of the API done so bots can communicate with the service, unranked matching, game resolving is done. So, it’s basically working with Connect 4 (planning to add more and more difficult games, different variations soon). But bugs do come up. The fun part is actually running the bots and making them play against each other and seeing everything work.

Trying to improve the WEB part of the application now, to provide enough documentation about the API for it not to be too repulsive to developers (since it’s already very niche, I am trying to make it as accessible as possible).

A lot of things are already working but I keep on finding things for myself to do because I know that making people use it will be the hardest thing to do. I have no idea how I’m going to ‘promote’ it or anything. I guess, I’ll have to figure it out soon :)

If anyone’s interested in the technicalities, the API service is running on Go (Gin) and it mostly uses Redis for data storage, until the matches are resolved, then it’s all saved to MySQL. The WEB part is running on Laravel because, for me, it’s the fastest way to get it up and running.

Not much is changing these days for me, unfortunately. I suppose, Pokemon Go takes up a lot of time :)

Day job - still working in an ‘iGaming’ company, which might change soon. But as of now, PHP code, some Apache configurating is pretty much what I do every day.

On other stuff, still doing some work with elsendo (https://elsendo.io). Most of the development stuff is done. Trying to contact some smaller startups that I like to see if they would like to use the service (free, of course). But that has been going quite passively so far.

I don’t think I can call it work (even though it’s programming) but I have been playing Human Resource Machine, which is basically Assembly programming. Pretty close to finishing. It’s fun!

Is “X in Y seconds” supposed to be a descriptive or meaningful these days? For me, it seems more like a clickbaity title. Sure, showing how simple is doing stuff with Docker (which would not be always true) is a good thing to attract beginners. But.. how often would you build WordPress with Docker? You can install WordPress in less than that (because you don’t have to do anything at all) with a one-click DigitalOcean installer.

I suggest teaching more complex things with Docker!

Recently (a few months ago) moved to Malta. For my day job, I’m working on iGaming stuff, mostly. Which is, I suppose, what 80% developers do in Malta. Current stack is a simple Symfony (PHP), Postgres with a lot of caching and load balancing mechanisms (mostly to just make PHP not that slow, I’m half joking here).

The current personal project I’m working on is elsendo.io. A simple news (you could say, blogging, in a way) platform for companies and projects. So, when I’m not enjoying the sun and/or drinking coffee somewhere, I work on the thing. Most of the backend functionality is there but I still need to create some assets and at some point create a widget so users could click on an icon and see a list of news in the company’s pages.

Oh, and then there’s also German which I’m trying to teach myself using Duolingo. It’s going well considering I was not really paying that much attention to German at school and did pretty bad.