Software developer, Photographer, Dad

For the past 2 years I have been meaning to migrate this site away from its previous platform. I have been using Ghost CMS for this site, and while it's beautiful and functional, it's becoming unbearably expensive. With a virtual machine running on Azure, along with all the requisite services, and I had been meaning to move to a static web application to save on costs.

The biggest hurdle by far was migrating data. While it was fairly easy to obtain a JSON file that contained all of your Ghost entries, and with so little content, this was the easiest first step.

But what do I do with that data? I ended up having to take three more steps.

Read More

One of the major concerns I had when I shifted away from my software developer role was the uncertainty over the future.

Just like any developer I had aspired for a career that steadily progressed from junior to a senior developer, and beyond that I imagined becoming some sort of software engineering manager, head of software engineering, or even a CTO role. But the role shift that had happened threw me off of that track, and it was jarring, unsettling, and uncomfortable trying to, all of a sudden, reimagine a future far different from what I've envisioned in the past.

The stakes were also higher as I have a daughter entering university soon, and the financial implications of her schooling added one more thing for me to worry about.

Read More

A week ago, I announced my resignation from leading the Philippine .NET Users Group, after an 11-year run.

I wasn't really committed into making the announcement at that specific time, but I made the decision because making it official was the only chance for me to detach myself from the role. In those 11 years my name became synonymous to PHINUG. I didn't intend it to be that way, but I cannot blame people who told me that it was for thinking that.

After all, most of us, when asked who we are, tend to answer with what we do.

Read More