The personal report for the previous year can be seen here…

This is another report for one more failure year, but, I hope, for the last such one (as I’m doing very serious things to prevent this in future). In this year, I finally realized, that I got into a comfort zone (again), which did not allow me to move forward and which, eventually, appeared to be not really comfort. Now I understand, that this could be seen just by reading my previous reports (for 2015-2016), but I was too “blind” (that’s, actually, how the comfort zone works).

Anyway, this year became a breaking point and that’s, probably, an achievement.

Achievements in 2017

• I left Kayako. You may wonder, how come, that it’s now under achievements, while in 2012 joining Kayako was an achievement. Things change. Last years, my work at Kayako was taking more and more of my time: eventually, I did not have time to update my Redmine plugins, to maintain my websites and even to process my digital photos. Certainly, I did not have time to work on any other projects either. So, I started to feel locked. Back in 2011 I decided to write public reports exactly to prevent such things. Before 2011 I spent many years in a stagnation, and in 2017 I left Kayako less than a year after I realized, that I got stuck. Therefore, I believe, it’s an achievement.
  • This, however, does not mean, that Kayako is a bad company. No, Kayako is a good company, but it’s just not the one, in which I personally can have a future. It would be a great place to work for many developers, but not for me, who needs to work on something own. So, the problem is rather in me, than in the company.
• Having realized, that I need to leave the comfort zone, I finally revived the project, which can become my future unlike Kayako. It’s the project, which was mentioned in each my public report under the name #MyNotStartupProject (for now) and which I wanted to revive all this time. It’s a very old idea (around 7 years old). In 2017, I have rethought it and finally finished its full specification. It’s not a big deal, but still a strong start, what makes me treat it as an achievement. This project is going to become my main job in the near future, until I finish it and until it will be ready to go public. So, stay tuned.
• After I left Kayako, I also revived my old project CD-Index (a console (for now) media cataloging tool). It used to stop working after I moved to 64-bit Linux. Now, I not only ported it to the new Linux system, but also added many new cool features such as saving image and video metadata and thumbnails. In particular, this allows me to easily browse and make search in my huge media collection, that includes almost all the pictures, that I made during my life (so, I was able to find even the pictures and videos, that I forgot about the existence of). This project can be checked here. Unfortunately, it’s more a “script” (in C), than a customer-ready product. But, it’s working very well and I’ll be happy to assist, if you’ll want to use it.
• During the past year, I also set up a home cinema system. It consists of many parts, including a dedicated local server, where I’m running Emby (by the way, I will also use this server to test #MyNotStartupProject). I learned many things (which are not related to development though) to be able to set up and configure this system and I’m quite happy with the result. So, it’s definitely an achievement, at least for me.
• When I was in Kayako, I needed to develop some things for front-end, so in the past year I also learned Ember.js (not too deeply though). I can’t say, that I liked this JavaScript framework, but it helped me to understand, how modern web applications work. This is helpful, as I’ll need to use something like this in #MyNotStartupProject. Therefore, I believe, it’s an achievement too.

Failures in 2017

Unfortunately, the failures are still there and they are almost the same as for the previous years:

• I failed to release a single plugin during the past year. I did not release updates of my many Redmine plugins and did not prepare a couple of my not-yet-released Redmine and WordPress plugins for release. I did not find time for this even after I had updated their code for new versions of Redmine and WordPress in 2016 (so, there were not really much things to do, actually).
  • To be honest, I can’t say, if I will be able to work on these projects in upcoming years. Now, I have another big primary project and will need to look for some job, to earn some money to live for. Probably, I’ll continue to work on some of the plugins, and will drop some of others (the ones, which I don’t use personally, for example).
• While I created the website for my book “Mastering Redmine“, I failed to maintain it properly. Thus, I planned to review each new version of Redmine there and to write instructions for upgrading previous versions to the new ones. But, I failed to do this too.
• Orangutan is still dead. I did not have time to work on it during this year again. However, I plan to revive it right after CD-Index (this one is already done) and after clean-up/reinstall of my computer (working on this right now – actually, I needed CD-Index to be able to index DVDs after moving some of the data to them).

The respite

I left Kayako one week less than two months ago. During this time I was trying to rest, to work on tools like CD-Index and to arrange my working environment (CD-Index is actually helping with this too).

During these (almost) two months I did not really look for a new job (yet). As there still too many things to complete at my home office (CD-Index and Orangutan are among them). Anyway, I plan to do this. I will be looking for a part-time remote job. I can do PHP, Ruby, C, Perl and many other things (check my profiles on LinkedIn and on Upwork). So, if you a looking for a developer like me, contact me (e.g., using the Hire button in the top right corner of this page). If you have some short-time project, like a Redmine plugin, I can do this too.