Introduction
Well well well looking back at 2023, what a year it was. I’m going to talk about some of the things that happened to me this year and what I’m looking forward to in 2024.
Blogging
I started blogging in 2020 and I’m happy that I continued it in 2023. This year I started deep diving into lots of system design concepts and I’m happy that I was able to share my learnings with the community.
Other than system design, I have also been writing a lot about Linux and Networking which are two topics that I’m really interested in and still exploring and learning.
I’m looking forward to continue blogging in 2024 and continue sharing my learnings with the community.
Work
I started working at Postman ↗️ in 2022 and I’m happy that I continued working here in 2023. I am part of the Workspaces Squad ↗️ and have been working on some really interesting problems.
I have been tinkering on a lot of backend systems and improving observability across many of our services and also exploring the postman’s backend architecture which is spanned across multiple different teams and services.
I have been part of some of the crucial releases that we have done this year including features like Guest Users ↗️, Workspace Templates ↗️ and enabling templates on Create Workspace flow ↗️, Introducing Workspace Management for Enterprise teams ↗️ as well as helped cross functional teams by contributing to Team Data Governace and Team Merge.
Overall I have enjoyed working at Postman and I’m looking forward to continue creating impact in 2024.
Migrating this blog
I started this blog in 2020 for which I had used Gatsby ↗️. After that I switched to Next.js ↗️ and enjoyed exploring the tech.
This year I decided to migrate this blog to Astro and I’m happy that I did it. I have been enjoying using Astro and I’m looking forward to continue using it in 2024. (Unless I decide to migrate again 😅)
Home lab adventures
I started the year with exploring the home lab world when I was discussing something with a friend of mine and the idea of re-using our old systems into servers sparked.
Looking back from Janurary I feel like I came a long way in terms of learning and understanding how things work, while at the same time I feel like I have just scratched the surface.
I started with converting my old laptop and switching the OS from MX Linux to Debian in headless mode. I used that system to get back at learning about Linux. Eventually I started grabbing few Raspberry Pi’s as and when they started becoming available.
I started with a Raspberry Pi Zero 2W as lightweight server that I can keep up all the time and not worry about power consumption, and now also have got a Raspberry Pi 5 8GB as another server to run more heavier workloads.
Overall I have self hosted quite a few things and I’m happy with the progress I have made. I’m looking forward to continue this journey in 2024 and learn more about Linux and self hosting.
Self Hosting
This ties in with the previous point. My main motivation for getting into home lab was to learn more about Linux and self hosting.
I have been self hosting some apps which have helped me in my workflow but in the cloud or some other PaaS. I wanted to learn more about how these apps work and how to manage them.
I have a detailed blog post about my self hosting journey in 2023 and I’m looking forward to continue self hosting in 2024.
Web Series / Movies / Animes
The list of pending media content was growing since quite some time but I’m happy that this year I also got to watch some of the things that I had been planning to watch for a long time.
These include some of the movies like Green Book ↗️, Django Unchained ↗️, Grave of the Fireflies ↗️ and more.
I also watched few animes like Jujutsu Kaisen ↗️ (watching the season 2 at the moment), and saying good bye to Attack on Titan ↗️ after 10 years of togetherness 🥲.
Lastly I finally finished watching Mr. Robot ↗️ and I’m happy that I did. I have been wanting to resume watching this show since last 3 years now and finally I did it and it was totally worth it.
Reading
One thing that I want to start doing is start reading books. Majorly because of two reasons - I want to learn more about the topics in much greater depth that I’m interested in and also because I want to reduce my screen time.
I have realised ever since I started exploring the home lab world, I have been spending a lot of time on my laptop and I want to reduce that. I have been reading a lot of articles and blogs but I want to start reading books.
I have started reading Designing Data Intensive Applications ↗️ and The Pragmatic Programmer ↗️, about which I have heard a lot of good things.
Apart from these I want to also read some non technical books as well so if you have any recommendations, please let me know on Twitter / x.com ↗️ or any other social media platforms 😊.
Onto 2024
Overall I have enjoyed 2023 and I’m looking forward to 2024. I’m looking forward to continue exploring the home lab world, self hosting, writing about my journey as form of blogs and reading books.
How was your 2023? What are you looking forward to in 2024? Hit me up on Twitter / x.com ↗️ and let’s talk.
Until next time 👋