mkcert - crafter's local cert

If you're a seasoned developer, you must know that local SSL .. err, TLS, configs on your local development environment is some sort of art. 

That happens because of the highly technical details of low level tooling like openssl, keytool and other PKI related details that makes the https protocol work. 

Today I discovered that life of a developer got a little bit easier, due to the work of Filippo, here's his article: https://blog.filippo.io/mkcert-valid-https-certificates-for-localhost/

mkcert repo https://github.com/FiloSottile 

An excellent tool that most probably will (if not already) be part of the full-stack developer's toolbox.

we need to plan for more highways. Extend, already !

I was travelling this week, starting from Bucharest to Satu-Mare, then back. As we're in a pandemic and I don't trust border crossing, this year (and most likely the next one, 2021) we'll have loco holidays. Break from work, go visit some of our relatives.

No, we'll not spend money on the seaside, nor at the mountains, and to be honest some of the hosts where we had experiences past many years, I hope they go broke this time, and start fresh to have more consideration for their tourists, and not trying to rip-off at every corner (but that's another topic)

To better understand, past 3 or 4 years, from Bucharest, we mostly escaped to the South during holidays (either Bulgaria, or Greece) ... and so I was rather disconnected from any kind of progress with the highways in my country. I know everyone complains, we also had protests and all that, but myself I was not a driver to the north, to experience the ordeal on myown.

This week, I did. For the most part, it was an OKish experience. Driving through Europe on several occasions, I was rather surprised that I had so many km on the highway in my country. But then, we stopped. Aiud - Sebes, 45 km, a segment that is the current nightmare for anyone that choose this route. Unless you plan to reach there in the middle of the night, or on week-ends, you'll be holding for at minimum 1 hr. Not acceptable.

Which is to say, at the next elections, I will vote with the party that will convince me to these points:

1. when this crappy segment Aiud - Sebes is ready (we're rather delayed, so many wasted resources ...)

2. when the two highways over the mountains are ready: Pitesti - Sibiu, Comarnic - Brasov

3. are plans already being considered to extend these highways, already constructed, or the unfinished ones ?

The last point above is for any long-term planning for any party in this country. I have a clear feeling that what we have now is already not enough, from the infrastructure requirements. And I'm a software engineer, not a transportation one, but I'm pretty sure I'm right. 

my 2020 focus area(s)

Past years with my blogging breakup, I went through some transformations. One is age (uh, he passed 40 ! ... he must be expensive ! ... no he's not).  The second is that I realized that I'll be continuously learning for the rest of my career, and that's a given. The third is that my daughter will be 18 this year, so it's time for daddy to get back to writing some potentially cool stuff. Or not, that remains to be seen.

With a new assignment starting at the beginning of the year (pre-pandemic ... :facepalm:), I am returning to the role of Integration Architect - the formal name  is some leadership role part of a leadership team :)

I am not ashamed to admit:  I don't know everything there is to know. But right now I am focusing on some Microsoft technologies. Yes, that Microsoft :) ... well, time will tell if they're trustworthy of the FOSS community attention (don't think it will ever be love, there's no such thing in open-source). They grabbed github, they appear to have changed their mindset. 

So here's my focus areas for this year: ADO, ADF, Spark, Scala, Python, HDFS, ADLS2. By focus I mean learning, we're ok here, right ? Some I knew, most I did not. And yes, I will attempt to be certified by Microsoft, once that I can get to their learning testing centers (because pandemic restrictions, we're all WFH, and I assume all their testing centers are pretty closed). 

Ha, fun times ahead.

Google Blogger ... still on. good.

I'm seeing ppl ditching medium and embracing git like static generators for their blogs. 

While I do appreciate markdown, I do know my way around terminals and am using it all the time, there's the hosting issue that requires extra money, and effort to set up.

You might have seen that past years my thoughts are mostly under twitter, @raducadariu, and I have stopped blogging that much (no facebook, thanks, nor other crappy social media)

But I also see that blogspot is still active and sound, and in fact I can write this post from my older tablet. 

And so, hopefully I will continue to share my thoughts, at least those longer than a tweet.

macos - my list of apps for day.to.day work

Over the years I learned to share things. Switching my OS to the fruity company, back in 2015 (so by now running macos 4 years, daily), I was looking at what tools and utilities could make myself productive (read: to stay in focus and not get annoyed by stuff caused by the operating system)

Probably this is a habit I got from the previous 6 years of running Ubuntu on a daily basis, where OSS taught me to look to fix things, or search for solutions (or utilities).

Below, you have my list of apps (free or not !) that I find useful to my daily activities (beside other regular business related ones, that's another story). I'm also adding some comments and I won't link sites, you'll have to search for their names on Google v2.0 in order to check them out.

If you don't know what the comment is saying ... not my problem :) Some of these are payable, but not excessive (I'm cheap), so in an alphabetical order, here they are:

1password - you do use a password manager, right ? I also had LastPass, but for the moment I think this is the best. As alternative (free), you might look at Bitwarden.
Alfred - better spotlight.
AppCleaner - for app remainings after uninstalls.
Apple Music - something has to sing when focusing on stuff.
BetterSnapTool - window resizing on macos made easier.
Boom2 (or Boom 3D) - sound enhancer, nice to boost an already good sound on mac.
CudaText - nice editor.
DaisyDisk - cruncher for what takes that space.
draw.io - diagrams, sharable with teams via SCM (read git, these days).
Eclipse - coding, but for me it's mostly looking, these days...
Github Desktop - go figure ..., terminal just as good, but hey ...
iTerm - life in terminal is fun, sometimes.
LightShot Screenshot - consider Retina oversized screenshots, and default Cmd-Shift-Ctrl-4 not enough when you want to send it to other humans using PCs.
MacPorts - alternative to Brew ... :)
RDM - nifty utility to change resolution on my screen, depends if I have my glasses on ... or not :)
Quiver - note taker. And SimpleNote, and Google Keep.
SimpleMind - mind mapper.
TinkerTool - tweaking more macos settings.
VSCode - another coding IDE.

If this list will change, I will update this post, but the reason I publish it is my feeling that now I have a system on which I no longer have annoyances (well, after 5 years of mocking apps and crunching the net).