Jeremy Grifski – Page 96 – The Renegade Coder

Another week, another set of updates. This week the site is going through some major changes which I think are going for the long haul. I've decided to simplify my life quite a bit, so you'll be seeing those impacts on the site. Naturally, I wanted to share this little guide to minimalism. Automatic Updates with Jetpack I've been doing these update posts every week for probably close to a year. In fact, on The Renegade Coder alone, there have been 23 updates thus far. With every update, I typically talk about what I'm working on, if anything, and I always have a section on site updates. As of today, I am officially getting rid of the plugin tracking for the simple reason that it's taking too much time and effort. Instead, I've gone ahead and setup Jetpack for automatic updates. Now all plugins will update themselves which guarantees my website will always have the latest plugins. Moving forward, I believe the updates section will continue to be a place to showcase things I've been up to, latest posts, a song of the week, and things coming soon. The only bit that we'll be losing is the plugin section. With the extra space, maybe I can start doing something else. Let me know if you want to see anything weekly! Bug Hunting Series It's no secret that I've taken a break from writing technical posts, but that doesn't mean I'm done talking about code. Good news! I've decided to start a new series around bug hunting. No, not the creepy crawly critters. I'm talking about software bugs. In this series, I hope to examine some mainstream bugs and discuss their potential root cause. To kick off the series, I'm looking at doing a few articles on some of my favorite video game bugs like the SR wraparound glitch in Overwatch and the Kael'thas living bomb bug from Heroes of the Storm. If those sound interesting to you, stay tuned! Mental Health Awareness As you're probably all aware after my TEFL post, I've been quite stressed over the last few months. I deeply dislike where I'm at in life, and I'm trying to make some changes. Unfortunately, I don't really have the support system a lot of people have, so it's been tough. That said, I've been using the blog a lot as a way to vent. In fact, I have about 21 articles now ready to post. But, not all of them are appropriate right now as the topics range from bad working conditions to general rants. In addition, I'm just trying to spread my content out a bit to protect myself from burnout. My workaholic nature is something I can't break. It seems American culture encourages it, so I have trouble just sitting around doing nothing. Instead, I tend to fill my time with anything I can to feel productive. It doesn't help when those efforts seem lost (like this website). So, I often find myself frustrated and torn when I used to be a pretty happy person. As a result, I think I am going to step away from the site once again. I haven't raised a single dollar since I've started which is depressing in its own right. I was hoping to eventually use this site as a way to make some money, so I could transition toward a more fulfilling life. Instead, I feel like I just wasted my time. Goodbye External Services As someone who has been stressed out a lot lately, I've decided to simplify my life. As a part of that process, I intend to use this website as my sole provider of funds. That means I am getting rid of my Patreon and Teachers Pay Teachers accounts. Instead, all my goods and services will be hosted here. In addition, I've given up on free content. I have closed my free GitHub page, and I am slowly moving that content to my shop. Eventually, I plan to offer tutoring services where you can receive many of my materials at no extra costs. I can't afford to give away my materials anymore. Song of the Week This week, I'm pitching it back to anime with one of my favorite songs from Guilty Crown. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2jpHcq5lMk Definitely a must watch if you haven't seen it yet. Coming Soon to The Renegade Coder! As of right now, I'm just focused on writing articles and making money. I don't want to deal with external services, site maintenance, or even SEO. I just want to get back to what I enjoy which is teaching, so that'll be the focus of the site moving forward. As a result, you can expect to see more content, but the site will stay relatively fixed for awhile. In the long term, I plan to leverage this site to do some freelance tutoring. I've tried getting a few online tutoring gigs before, but I figure I'm just going to start doing everything myself. So, if you know someone looking for a tutor, send them my way. I'll be offering services for Java, Python and even C, C++, and C#. In addition, I'm offering my services bundled with materials from the store as well as a resume workshop. Stay tuned!