Oh the times, they are a changin'
The past month has been crazy.
In the past month, I’ve started a new role, my son has started crawling, I’ve helped launch the second season of Overtime on a brand new technical stack, they only thing that hasn’t changed is this blog, I’ve been neglecting it. Work has slowed down a bit before christmas, so now seems like a good time to post an update.
Leaving Spark Ventures
I left Spark Ventures after working there for a year. They supported me in the first full time role as a software developer that I’ve ever had, I’m extremely grateful for the opportunities they gave me, and I’ll miss the team and the work. I left on great terms and (if it’s in the cards) I look forward to returning in a more senior role. Before I left, my team was working on continuous integration and deployment. We successfully transitioned Bigpipe from a completely manual deployment process to an automatic one. It was a really enjoyable task, and once it was complete, I wanted to keep doing that kind of work.
Enter Healthlink, stage left.
I was made aware of an opportunity at Healthlink to continue doing work like the work I did for Bigpipe. The situation here at healthlink makes the Bigpipe automation simple! Healthlink runs a product that enables health practitioners to send documents - referrals, letters, medical certificates, test results and so on - digitally between providers. It’s the reason that you can get a non-funded drug approved by Pharmac in three days rather than three weeks. It’s behind your rural doctor getting results back from that specialist lab in the big city as soon as the results are done - without having to wait for the rural post service to deliver the mail.
It’s an complex system of java applications, web servers, auth servers, databases and APIs that have got loads of tightly coupled moving parts. I’m helping them work through that system with a view to achieving CI/CD - completing this process will hopefully reduce the degree of coupling, consolidate technologies and generally refresh the tech too. It’s the biggest job I’ve ever attempted, and I’m glad that I’ll be working alongside some incredibly clever people - all of whom will be able to teach me a great deal.
Overtime Season 2
Overtime season 2 has launched!
We’ve completely rebuilt out tech stack! There’ll be another post coming with the specifics on what we did and how we did it, as well as some challenges we had to overcome. We’re looking at returning to the NZ eSports scene bigger and better then ever before, and I think we’ll start to see some traction this season. We’re more organised, more experienced and have better technologies behind us. The team is expanding - more people working on more things mean we can just do.. more!
Watch that space, season 2 is going to be excellent!
Toby has started crawling!
I’m pretty proud of that little guy. He’s ahead of schedule for all of his developmental milestones, he was born on the wrong end of the scales for average head size, body size, body weight and a bunch of other stuff. At 8 months old, he’s now in the 97th percentile for head size (aka big ol’ brain) and is above the average for his other growth indicators. My wife is doing a great job being a mum while I have to leave for work every day. I’m very proud of them both.
Things are looking pretty positive.
I’m in the proess of writing a whole bunch of posts, and will be hopefully publishing a bit over christmas. TTYL. Beer to drink.