What I'm working on #1 - October 2022
This newsletter, a tool for first house buyers, and my day job
Hi friends,
This week I want to update you about my current projects. Right now I am working on three things:
This newsletter
A tool (web app) for first-buyers to evaluate the economics behind houses they evaluate
My day job (which includes various projects within cybernetics/IT/automation)
Yeah, I am counting my day job as a “project”. Lets get into it.
This newsletter
I started this newsletter about two months ago, with the goal of becoming a better writer and to see if I can find someone who cares about what I write. I am learning so much through my work and my projects, and I want to share this with others. A newsletter gives me a way to reach people outside of my immediate work environment, and I hope it willbe a way for me to connect with like-minded people all over the world. So feel free to hit me up!
Anyway, I have currently only written a few short random newsletters trying to figure out how and what to write. And it helped. I have found out that I want to write about things I know best: web apps, software in general, explaining technical topics, and breaking down things I am working on. In a way, I want to write for my younger self, who hard a hard time connecting all the dots in this massive field.
To give myself some constraints, so that I will actually produce some newsletters, I am submitting to publish a newsletter every week until I have reached 100 posts.
The reason for publishing once a week is that I want to force myself to consistently produce newsletters, keep a momentum going, and I think readers would prefer a regular schedule. I also think I will learn more by consistently finishing smaller newsletters, than bigger ones every now and then (also, bigger pieces always seems to drag on and on, without an end, don’t you agree?).
And the reason for 100 posts is that I want to give myself ample time to both see improvements in my writing and if people can find and like my content. Only 20 posts would probably not be enough for either, but with 100 I will give myself a real chance.
In addition to this, I think it is important that the newsletter does the following:
Provides content that are useful and/or interesting for you, the reader.
The content is fun/interesting/useful to me to write about.
And the people that I hope will be interested in my newsletter are people that want to learn how to make apps, understand how to choose tech stacks, and understand how to architect software.
That’s it for the presentation of the newsletter. If, by any chance, someone actually reads this.. Thanks for reading!
TLDR;
Starting a newsletter to become a better writer and reach people outside of my immediate work environment
I will write one post every week until I have reached 100 newsletters. This will give me enough time to try this thing out without quitting too early.
It will be about web tech, making apps, choosing tech stacks, software architecture, and explaining technical topics in a simple way. In a way, I want to write for my younger self, who hard a hard time connecting all the dots in this massive field.
First house buyer project
I am developing this web app for evaluating house purchases for first-buyers. It’s a fun project where I am solving a personal problem and at the same time trying out Vue/Nuxt, Firebase (functions, authentication, firestore), and Bootstrap UI.
Right now I am in the process of creating a budget calculator where you can enter incomes and expenses. It will have an import feature where a web scraper gets house-related costs directly from the house advertisement site (FINN.no, here in Norway). In the end you will be able to see how much the house will cost each month, and see how big of a loan you can tolerate with the current budget.
I will probably write more about this in the future.
My day job: junior researcher at SINTEF
I work at a research organization called SINTEF in Norway, in a group called Reliable Automation. The people in our group have backgrounds mostly from mathematics, cybernetics, and IT. Most of our projects involve some sort of low-level system integration together with automation (robots, automated energy systems, real-time systems, etc.).
Currently I am involved in projects about fire alarms, space rovers, and vertical farming.
That’s all for now!
Just send me an email or comment on this post if you want to connect.
All the best,
Eric