My extended leave, status updates and other stuff

So….. last blog post was in December of last year. Does that mean the blog is dead? Well I’m happy to report that is NOT what it means! In this blog post I’ll address why I’ve been on an extended leave and I have some exciting news to boot!

Good news always comes first!

Before I start on my rant about being away for so long I’d better tell you all some exciting news. And boy do I have quite a bit of it!

First of all, if you hadn’t noticed yet, the personal website has gotten a facelift! I have added a new “Software” page, this page will contain software I made without a contract and open source projects I’ve worked on. Furthermore, I have updated the CV with some new job information and a couple of snazzy logos. The Portfolio page got trimmed down a bit (moved some stuff to Software) and the contact page has gotten a nice new look with an actual form instead of just social buttons. Lastly, I added an “Other sites” drop-down menu. This menu will house links to various other websites of which I am the owner / co-owner. As some of those keen-eyed people among you will have noticed I also upgraded my “Disclaimer” page and added a new “RSS feed” to the footer of the site.

All in all, quite a few changes which will allow me to further separate Mi-soft.nl from my personal website. (update to Mi-soft.nl expected somewhere later this year hehe)

More good news!?

Oh yes! I have recently started working on Three, yes Three, new projects. I will probably blog about all of these projects but in case I don’t here’s a little overview:

First up is a new Python (Flask) REST API which makes getting Linux OS information a breeze! I started this project because I wanted to recreate my old hardware info system (written in Java) and generally improve it overall. I started out working on this by myself but soon joined up with my old friend Janco (more on him later). We haven’t done all too much about it but in its current state it can already serve most, if not all, CPU and Memory information. Though the best feature of this new API is arguably its name. I named it after the person I have cherished for over six years now, Sammy.

I also finally bit the bullet regarding “Linfinity”. For a while now I’ve been wanting to create a “software install script generator” for Linux which I can use to install Linux software easily on a multitude of systems. Linfinity will be a web tool which will be able to generate software install scripts for various different distributions (aiming for at least: Arch, Ubuntu and Raspbian).

Lastly, I have some “maker” news. A friend and I have decided to try our hand at creating a Raspberry Pi workplace for the masses. We found an absolutely perfect display to use in combination with the Raspberry pi and have devised a way to mount it and the Rasberry Pi in a single chassis. Cables will be mostly routed within the unit and it all can be powered by a single standard 2.1mm adapter! More news about this soon!

Moving away from Digitalocean

As of today I no longer have any Digitalocean droplets. Not because they offer a bad service but because they are too expensive for what I was using them for. The only real purpose my droplet still had was handling go8.nl and it’s traffic. I have since moved go8.nl over to Sohosted purely because it is a lot cheaper :).

The rekindled friendship?

As some of you might know Janco and I completely split up about a year and a half ago after a rather lengthy fight between us. In this year and a half apart we both calmed down a bit and after a good talk we’ve decided to pick things up again. So far everything is going well and we are working on keeping it that way. Even though programming together will certainly add to both of our stress levels , and probably lead to a couple of smaller fights, we have decided to team up to create Sammy, my new REST API for extracting Linux OS information.

One of my other good friends (Jelle) also happened to come by some extra free time these past months and we’ve been using that time to explore the magical world of Tamriel (ESO online) and kick some butt (Awesomenauts) together.

So all these things combined have been taking up most of my free time and motivation. Which leaves none for writing blogs unfortunately. I will try to improve upon this though.

Well that’s it for me folks, Have a great day and may happiness surround you :)