
Quick update! So I got the worker service working! There was a lot of things I learnt while working on this and my goodness I really do like Nestjs. It gives a lot of options to use and the modularity is bliss to use. Knowing how the microservices system works for RabbitMQ, allows me to in some way, know how it's going to work for Websockets, which is something else I'm going to have to learn, which is something I should have known a lot sooner when working with Shockbyte. 

### RabbitMQ troubles

I was quite sure I was going mad or something was trolling me, whenever my configuration for the microservice wasn't working correctly. My handlers weren't working correctly and I was wondering, the hell was going on. It turns out I didn't really understand microservices as well as I should have. Basically I had created a RabbitMQ service which I thought, managed all of the queues. In this case, video_queue. Then I thought I had to create another microservice and then use the same queue, so to connect to it. I write this thinking I'm stupid I am but I'll continue. Anyway, so sometimes I was able to get my messages to go through, many of times, the messagepattern or eventpattern just didn't exist and it was making me go mad. I tested out MQTT as a result to a completely different problem which I didn't even know what the craic was there. ANYWAY, I return back to RabbitMQ, making pure play microservice, maybe it was that? NOPE, still got problems.

For some reason, I stumvbled onto a post on the Nestjs github talking about the problem with someone saying,  "I made a new queue for all of my microservices", and I thought this was really dumb but a few seconds later, it dawned to me. Wait a second, am I going to have to call something video_queue and then video_queue_test. Then it really dawned to me. I don't need a dedicated microservice to handle all microservices, that's handled in a application to application basis. In other words, my worker could handle the video_queue, my API could be a hybrid app with both HTTP and RabbitMQ, making the api_queue. 

As soon as I figured this out, everything worked really quickly. It occured to me that this now allowed me to create multiple instances of the worker app, with the already created video_queue and if a lot of jobs comes in, it's round-robin distrubuted. I was so happy when I figured this out. 

### It works

The great news is, it works well. You put in a link and then the worker app grabs all the information it needs, downloads the audio version of the video, gets the audio transcribed and then we throw the audio transcription into a prompt so we can breakdown the validity of the text. 

With this, I have a fairly good idea how to work with RabbitMQ now and understand the idea of this microservice. The horizontal scalability is so fantastic and something I'll need to add to Explorer Plus really soon. This would solve all my race condition issues. It's good stuff. 

After a good bit of effort and head-banging, the worker works as intended. WOO HOO

Alan Reid

The worker microservice is made!


One of the weaknesses I have is to lose interest in a project if it takes too long. Okay maybe it's not that bad but it's hard to keep up with projects and ideas when you have so much going on. I wanted to keep working on Codewars and it was a huge motivation as it's hard to keep thinking of the logical puzzles all the time, and it's something I should certainly go back and work on in the future. 

I'm currently on the sofa in my living room, Franky Wah on the background with his latest set, after watching some anime and I decided, it was time to get back to my old coding ways last year, and code when I feel like it. It's nice just to be able to code whenever you want, and spam the text like I am now. 

### Current progress?

So we've got the worker basically working well. It was a bit annoying to get sorted, some problems occured which I'll talk about briefly but thankfully, everything worked without having to look at different libraries. There's no doubt, planning makes things faster and so for the next thing I'll make, I'll certainly do much better in the planning, so it becomes easier to figure out the best way to code something. I really should do it now but I've already kind of started so I'm just going to keep working in iteration and figure it out as it goes along. Planning for success is certainly the way in my opinion. 

The worker works pretty well. We can go from a single link to getting the video set as a mp3, to getting the transcription and lastly, to use ChatGPT to analyse the text. I'm hoping to deploy one of Meta's LLMs as it'll be cheaper in the long term to use it but for now, ChatGPT4 is going to be used. When it starts to get too expensive to use this, I'll have to move on asap. For now, it's for testing purposes. 

#### I've been very surprised

Originally I wanted this to just check the facts and to be honest, coming to think about it, this would have been a very boring app. For some reason though, I started thinking of what would be a good prompt to build out of and I figured something pretty good, thanks to ChatGPT. It feels a little more organic as a result and I'm very happy with how it's come as a result. 

#### What to do now?

The next thing I'm going to do which is very new to me, is get the RabbitMQ server working properly so communication between all the parties work seamlessly. I think this will be the hardest part. I haven't done this before so I'll do something simple without trying to do something too complicated. This feels like the best idea. 

{/* ![ChatGPT Response](/public/assets/chatgpt-response.png) */}


We've got a wee start. Now it's about to get it working as soon as possible!

Factsbolt has been started!


I must be honest, since Andrew Tate and Brexit, I've taken the opinion of controversial people quite lightly and as a result, take no account on their advice or insights. It some way is the safest to operate because the information they give in my opinion, is not trustworthy. I think I've got it right with this but I'm compelled to make something that checks if possible, the accurary of the claims being made and if needs be, have a conversation. While most people aren't willing to have a conversation, having a conversation with myself isn't a bad idea, for me that is. Funny enough, we have LLM's to have that conversation now. Therefore I can actually test out this idea!

### How I'm going to try to do this

So with Explorer Plus, I made the worker app, it looks at the database and then executes a job. This isn't a good idea because it can lead to race conditions and also, it's just generally not a good idea. The manager would spawn workers based upon the jobs needed and we would go from there. The issue is the job management was a bit of a mess and I never really got around to fixing this. 

With Factsbolt, I think this will be a lot easier to sort. I'm aiming to employ an Web API using Nestjs, the worker also using nestjs and then a message broker, RabbitMQ, also using Nestjs. I'm not too sure if the worker needs to be Nestjs, but I'm going with it anyway for simplicity. 

### A simple idea of how it'll work

The WebAPI will deal with managing all of the information. If a user puts in a link which already exists, it'll give the information which already exists. In the case it doesn't then we'll create a job to the worker which will then download the audio, transcribe it and then fact check it using ChatGPT. I can always use another LLM if needs be that does the job better. At the end, the user will have the chance to have a conversation. I might be able to save the conversation in some capacity but that's not something I'm interested with.

### Where to start

I'd like to see if I can make the worker first. Originally I was thinking of putting it all on the API and let it do all the work, but this was a very silly idea and thankfully I never got to the point of wasting my time. The API is somewhat ready. I'm using TDD for this also! Mega hard. However I should be able to get it working by this week and then all that'll be needed is then getting the API created, setting up the RabbitMQ server and that should be that.

I could do something with a bot to check the page and see if I can grab information, but I don't think that'll be needed. If it is, we'll figure out something for that in the future.

I'm getting bored of having to second guess Youtube shorts/videos. Let's make something for this!

Factsbolt, a site which takes a video and gives us facts!


Firstly I fixed my blog which is awesome. It needed done, at last, it's back and working the way I want it. It wasn't even that hard to sort but beforehand, I lacked the self confidence to think I could sort it out. I'm using Git for goodness sake I can break stuff and fix it afterwards. Sometimes I'm not that smart.

### A reset was needed

I didn't think it but it seemed to be the case that I was very runned down. At the time, I didn't realise it but as the holiday went on, I felt a lot better. A lot more relaxed. Was it all the sun? Being with fun, good people? Was it the food, the anime binge. It's probably the combination of all of these things. It's great to be among fantastic people and while I would love to keep traveling but reality kicks in. Not the reality that we have to get back to work but really a self reflection of myself.

### Some form of competition

I do enjoy competition in some capacity. I don't know how I'm going to get that. I usually got that from gaming but I kind of want to somehow tie my competition with programming. Therefore I've decided to somehow use coding for more than just building things but for the competitive side of it. I'm not sure how I'm going to do that but right now, I'm going to try to start it off with using Codewars again. It feels like a good idea. 

### Codewars

Talking about codewars, I'm starting to play on codewars again as it's a good way to figure out code which I at least know, look at code which other people have used and try to figure out why they've used it. It's been fantastic now with ChatGPT because I can ask it what or how the other code works. I be honest, it's hard to just sit down and get the code done but I should try to at least put in an hour everyday. Right now, if I don't understand the queston, I skip it and I'm only doing very simple level 7 problems. A lot of the times, it's hard to figure out how to sort out the problem. While sorting out the problem is good, I need to figure out some plan where if I really am stuck, I try to get hints so then I can figure it out. Maybe I'll use ChatGPT for that. Maybe a three hint situation and then afterwards.

### I'll be writing a lot more again

I have a lot more to which I can talk about and I didn't even talk about my holiday much here. Really I just wanted to say that it was the fact i went on holiday, that gave me the push to start aiming higher again and wihle I've always tried to hit higher, the holiday helped to kick start it again. Let's see what the craic is in the future!

I said I would and I did it. I returned back to Croatia and it was proper fantastic

From Slovenia to Croatia


One year ago, I was probably making this website. I should probably look at the first time there was a commit on this site. I remember seeing the design of my previous site and thought, that's just not goot enough. I therefore made this website in an attempt to showcase myself. I think it was maybe March or April when I thought to work on MidFactor, something that I'd like to work on again for the laugh but for now, effort is in Explorer Plus to work on getting that it to TypeORM and also to refactor terrible parts of the site. Who knows, maybe I'll look to use Playwright. It seems to be the rage now. 

### So what's the craic

I'm not too sure what to think. I decided to come to Eindhoven because well I can be. One of the dreams of being a developer was to travel and meet new people, talk to people, go to new places, see what the world has to offer. As a developer, that chance is here and I'm living it now. I do want to buy a house in the future, but I need to live and be excited about life, so why not travel. 

### JS Belfast and London. Now Eindhoven

I thought why the hell not. I've met a lot of people in Belfast because of JS and the same is for Dublin. This will be the 3rd JS event which I've went to and I think it'll be a cool thing like with LANs, to start getting all the badges to showcase all the meetups I've went to. Given that we're JS developers, it's probably a really good idea to go to events like this to meet up with people. Is there anything I'm interested to listen to about to, I have absolutely no idea of what the speakers will be talking about today while I have no idea if they'll even speak English. That'll be a laugh if they don't. 

### The main reason why I'm here!

Per like the esports days, it's important to meet your team and to get to properly know them. While Discord is something, it's not enough and so meeting the team to have a laugh and experience something, big or small, I think is mega important. 

### On my way home

Wasn't expecting to add to this post but here I am! On my way home and as per always, I'm apprehensive to do new things though wanting to do new things. On reflection, my travels here and meeting the dev team, I can certainly say I'm working with some really good people who also are fantastic developers. While the business world pushes a narrative that your work life and normal life should be seperate, I see it a bit different. When you can meet your colleagues at the personal level, to have a drink, to eat pizza and to go to the cinema to watch a scary movie, that is when you start to really trust in your team. In esports, as much as one could game online and meet people, it wasn't the same until you met someone. It's probably why I'm so fond of my 2013 days, meeting the IPG guys. 

That being said, I heavily enjoyed my 2020 days with Viperio also. I think I did a great job getting the team to bound together and go for a dream. Here at Shockbyte, I feel more connected to the job. I understand Orbit a lot better, I feel a need to get studying and working and while I might be putting time to this blog post, just being involved in the development level of anything, is a great idea. 

One year ago, I didn't think this would be the craic but here we are. Good hot chocolate here.

I'm at Eindhoven for JS Eindhoven


I've been working with Shockbyte for 'two' months and it's some of the fastest, greatest and nervous times. In my last post, I didn't talk much about what I did in Shockbyte but rather the process of getting the job. As I've worked with Shockbyte for two months, I wish to talk about this now, however long or short.

### Coming into Shockbyte

Working on your own projects, helping friends and working as a short term contractor in a company is very different than working 40+ hour weeks at Shockbyte. When coming in, after passing the test, I thought I'd be coming into something that I would be fairly understood with. It was like getting a hammer to the face the shock I had of the scale of the job. I thought Skyscanner Plus was big but as soon as I understood the scale of Shockbyte, Skyscanner Plus is a very small, manageable app to work on. As I said to my friends and family after the first week with Shockbyte, 'you'll never be prepared enough, and you just have to jump into it.

I had only learnt how to use Nest and to be fair, I'm still learning how to use Nest. It's a great framework, one which has so many featuress which I will use in future projects. The scale of the complexity of use which we use here at Shockbyte, is mindboggling. Then looking at Vue and going 'this is some funny looking syntax.'

One can never be prepared to join something like Shockbyte in the position I was in. That's ok. The skills which I've developed is in the knowing of what to learn, the issues I have and correcting them. As Scott Galloway said, the only way to get better, is to spar against people that are far better than you (Video)[https://youtu.be/1T22QxTkPoM?t=77]. As a competitor, I know about this but as a programmer in a workplace, the drive to have to do better is fantastic. 

### That's some filler Alan but what's the craic?

A lot of learning and grwoth. I know that I want to remake Skyscanner Plus "to be renamed" with NestJS. Generally being better with Nest is the thing I want to develop. Given the constraints I've put myself with Skyscanner Plus and now the confirmation they aren't interested to work with myself, Skyscanner has an API I'm going to directly access and use for private purposes. Friends and family will have access to thsi in the future and hopefully I'll have something ready by the beginning of January. I really want this to be ready by then and I make need to take time out of my week to get this sorted sometime int he future. Maybe Christmas Week. 

In relation to work, I like using Nest and I want to get better with it. Vue on the other hand, I thought was a lot harder than it needed to be but it's not actually that bad. It's probably just my inability to understand web design and so working on this site will be awesome. So we'll see more updates on this website in the future. 

One thing I really should be better at is making functions and components more reusable. This will be something I work on. The bigger thing that I want to work on is logic puzzles. I've noticed that I'm not as sharp as I once was and I want to put in a couple of hours a day in them so I can figure out better ways to get over problems and create solutions. I'll start from really simple to really hard again and go from there. 

### I don't really have much more to syntax

It's been a blur the last two weeks. The emotions of success and stress I remember very well. The major lesson I learnt with this job isn't that one can code well. That is one part of it. The big part is writing and figuring out ways to come to a solution to a problem and to figure it out. That can only come with practise and so I want to practie and practise and slowly get better rather than just jumping to hard questions. I'll be using Codewars quite a bit and I might find a way to connect it to this website. I think I should expose for who I am on this website and so, it is in my best interest to keep myself crediable to myself. 

Programming everyday is certainly going to be the answer but I need to make sure I still have a life. This is important and so Skyscanner Plus is going to be that answer. I want to travel the world, work and get smarter and have the motivation to become something amazing. I'll find a way to integrate Codewars to this site in the future. 




It's crazy how fast two months go. I'm surprised it's already been this long at Shockbyte

Two months at Shockbyte

I'm going to talk about how I got here, if you're not interested in that, follow the headings and you'll find where I talk about Shockbyte

###

One of my dreams was to get onto the LEC stage as a manager and to be there for my players. Unfortunately I never made it to true professional gaming. I'm very happy that many of the players I did work with, achieved that. My second dream, which I can easily remember back at 2011, was to program. I remember looking at Codecademy thinking, this is the thing for me. I remember also seeing Riot brought out their bug bounty program thinking, this is something I wanted to get involved with. 

The plan was that I could do both. Be a developer and a hobbiest manager but this never came to be. Managing players takes a lot of time or at least, I put a lot of time into it. This time last year though, the fun stopped and I decided it was time to do something new. I decided to go full into programming. 

At this point, I knew my frontend alright. I was probably working on roster.lol "RIP, cba with lol" and it was a good project to understand GraphCMS and figure out what I had to do to get better. I learnt there was way too much manual work going on but I didn't really have an answer to that other than automation of some kind. 

### Thank goodness for Puppeteer

Now I can't remember exactly what came first. Was it web scrapping or what is Puppeteer. I can't remember but I do remember while watching guides, NodeJS kept coming up. This was because Next uses Node and I was not understand Brad and his tutorials very well, so I decided I had to learn Node. All I remember was, as soon as I looked into Puppeter, I knew this was something I wanted to get involved with. Now that I think about it, it was Puppeteer that I found first, because I remember working with Mongo and Mongoose and having a fair idea of it quickly. Then I did the Node course thinking "I've done this before" and was able to refer to the guides on the bot course. I'm not too sure why I went into Puppeteer. I think it was purely luck or I had some sort of interest to web scrapping. I can't exactly remember but thankfully, it leveraged upon Node which gave me a way to get into Node. 

From there, I went to learn Node which then led to learning Express and with the limited understanding of Mongo, I had enough to start building things. I could see progress being made. 

### Then Shockbyte came along

I was taking care of my mates house, Soc. He needed someone to make sure that his house was safe and to make sure his step son wouldn't be an idiot. Who you hang around with, determines who you might become. I got a message from Shockbyte that they wanted an interview so I agreed and I had a screen with Scott. To this point, I still couldn't remember who Shockbyte were and I don't recall applying to them, but fate be it, I had the chat with Scott and it must have went well, because I was talking to Damien, my line manager, supervisor and brilliant source of help. 

With making Skyscanner Plus, I had a really good idea of how to do the technical test, however it was to be in Nest and that was the issue. I had never used Nest and my typescript understanding was limiting. So I decided to prove to myself that I could do the task, I did it in Node/Express and I got the task technically completed. At this point, the challenge was to learn Nest and then to do the same thing. After reading the test and looking at the things that Nest helps with, the structure of the interview was to test if I could learn and use Nest. I had seen that I wanted to use Nest previously and seen it to be a good way to enter Typescript and with Express being... expressive, I didn't like the lack of structure. Sure we know MVP but looking at a lot of opensource, there's many ways to go about this. Nest forces a form of convention and I seen good reason to it. 

### The test was rather, can I learn fast enough?

This test that Shockbyte had given me, at the techincal level, I understood and already completed but it wasn't in Nest but I could see why it was needed. While this was a test to prove if I could work for Shockbyte, this was more about if my systems of learning and grasping things, were going to work. I unfortunately don't learn well initially from reading documentation and need guides to help with getting used to something. The process is something like this,

* Find a crash course. Grasp the most important information that I need to understand right at the start.
* Get a Udemy course which allows for comprehensive understanding of the subject. The course course helps with understanding some concepts from the get go. 
* Where the Udemy course only glazes through, use a Youtube video to go into more depth or another Udemy course. 
* If I can understand just a little bit of the subject, read the documentation to grasp a far better understanding and start crawling "SEO TERM" through the documentation, using information I grasp to connect the dots. 

In the case of the coding interview, as I understood a lot of the concepts from Express and the MVC model, a crash course helped to get understanding what Nest was doing differently. Then a course was used to get into Nest. The crash course helps cement understanding of what the main course gives. Then I used a couple of youtube guides to understand deeper concepts which wasn't used in the guide which is fine, getting the fundamental understanding and then knowing what else needs learnt, is the key thing here. Afterwards, documentation starts to make more sense and as soon as you understand one point, you can start grasping other parts given information you grasped beforehand. 

I believe this process is my way to getting to learn something from the core concepts, to the most important things a course wants to give, to then expanding where I need to and then being able to get into the documentation, the meat of it. It gets me learning something which is all I really want from it, and it's what I'm using right now, to learn Vue. 

### The news

So on the 6th of October 2022, I was offered a job with Shockbyte. While my dreams of being a manager on the professional stage never happened, I can hold my head up high and say, I did everything for my players and players from years ago that made it, retired and new players which are trying to aspire to become the best, speak to me to ask for advice. I will always help players/staff I've worked with. It's a promise I give each one of them. You can rely on me. 

It has been a hell of a road to get here. It's very possible that if I had never tried with esports, I would have been here years ago. But I don't think I'd have nearly one quarter of the stories that esports gave me. It's even possible that I would have given up with the programming and regret never trying with esports, because at that point, at 2013, if you missed it, you had a really hard time getting in and luck helped me get into the positions I was in. Trust me on that. 

### So what now? 

Funny enough, I haven't really talked much about Shockbyte and I'll leave that for another day. To be short, it has been a fantastic place. My manager, Damien, has been extremely patient with me and has helped me where needed. Pair programming and reviewing code and being straight to me. I don't need sugar coating. I need honesty and he has been great. The team at Shockbyte have also been fantastic and it's a place I'm happy to be in. I hope my position as a contractor changes soon so that I can have some more security as an employee. It's something I really want and will be talking to Shockbyte about but for the most part, I will be taking this chance, I will be making this my own and I will keep growing. 

I may not become the best progrmamer out there but I don't need to be per like esports. I just need to be really good at my job and I have a long way to make sure I'm at the level my peers are at. 

I have a lot to write about in the future and maybe tonight, when I'm at my own house again, I will write about more things. I'm currently at my fathers house taking care of him. He's not doing the best but I'm here to help him out but the story is a lot different now. This time last year, as the fun stopped, I had to make a choice. SEO or programming and I chose well. Nothing in life is easy to get. What esports taught me, was you gotta could pushing. While it doesn't work all the time, it's about seeing what you've done and being happy about it. 

I'm very thankful for the oppurtunity Shockbyte have given me and there's no way in hell I will let this go. It's too important. 




I've always wanted to call some place my workplace as a developer and I got it. Shockbyte has given me a chance to prove myself.

I got a job! Cheers Shockbyte


While I listen to my favourite track, Myon - Cold Summer, a tune I've listened to since I believe January 2021, I'm starting to realise how much of a different person I'm becoming. Since dropping the whole esports stuff, I've started to move my interest away from it. Where being good at games was a priority, it's not anymore. The yearning to be great at it, superceded by the need to do better at other things. I'm not too sure what to think of it. 

### Why does gaming matter?

In some capacity, I'm still a gamer and I don't think that's going to change. I know though I'm one of those people that plays a game to their style. The issue with me and everything it seems, is that as soon as I start to slack of, it becomes harder to maintain it. That's why with programming, I've kept at it constantly. I've kept exposed so my brain has no chance to look away. 

Gaming used to be my life. To play games at the highest level or to manange it as high as was made possible. Recently, the whole thing of esports sickened me. I know why. I believed in the wee guy having a chance to becominig the best. It's how some of the players I operated with, got to that point. I was willing to give them a chance. I got sickened by the whole scene and had to leave. It was all about the money and not the passion of it. You could just tell that it was money first, game second and it's not how I operated. I played to become the best, everything else second and it's how I still maintain the ideals. 

With esports/gaming being my life, I had plenty of time to put time into games. Being good actually mattered and I wanted to be good. It's not really the case with programing and while one should be able to seperate life and work, I find it that I don't have enough time. It might be temporary. I hope it is. I do like playing games at a high level but in the same time, I do enjoy making things but as my friends say, your work shouldn't be your life. I'm complexed by that. 

### You life shouldn't be your work. Doesn't that depend?

I think this depends. I find it that if I don't have something else like gaming, then it's all about the work, but why is that a problem. I enjoy making things. People wouldn't say that to a carpenter. I like to build things but even I in the side of my mind now, says I need to have something else. For someone that wants to go around the world and experience the world, while having a laptop capable of playing games, you'd at least hope that the person was good at games, but do I have enough time?

I think that's the problem. I want to build things. Programming has given me that chance. Before writing this, I decided I wanted to go to Thailand for January. I'm using Skyscanner Plus to do that for me now. I'm just wondering though, what am I going to do there. I always pictured myself coding and gaming, but as someone that's not great at games, I just don't enjoy it as much as a result. 

### So what's the craic?

I'm not sure. This is a developer blog for myself but I think it matters to write stuff like this. I want to become a hell of a developer and I've learnt Nest for an interview. It's great to learn new technologies to build with but the thing I need to do for myself, is learn more about myself. I listened to a podcast there randomly stating that traveling solo helps with discovering yourself. The one thing I know for a certainity, is I love dancing and I want to get better at that. That's just something that's not left me for the years I've kept to it. Maybe that'll be my new thing in the future. Who knows. 

### What's the future to hold?

For myself, I think I want to work on Skyscanner Plus for a good while. I want to build something which allows me to find the sun when I want. I know it'll find me something cheaper than what any other app can do and I'm happy for that. It's just weird that gaming isn't part of what I'm good at anymore. I know at one point I was amazing at CoD1, good enough at PUBG/LOL in the gaming house and now, eh now good. It's just weird. Since I was 12, I've been gaming at the a capacity that just went for it. No fucks given but now, with other things in life matter, I just find it sad I can't be at that level anymore. Oh well. I'll have a dance at Bettys Blacks in a bit. 




I've becoming a different person, which is the first time in many of many of years. It's weird

I'm changing to a new person


Recently I learnt how to build Docker Images and  do the basics with Docker. This wasn't too hard and I was able to get Docker and the check added to AWS, making a start to automatically checking something. The big problem of this was, what happens if more and more people starting using the service and it takes a while to get a response? I didn't want people to wait and I wanted a way to dynamically scale SkyscannerPlus to deal with more and more people coming onto the site, so I used Docker to solve this problem 

### Scaling with Docker

Originally I had a lot of problems with scaling and I'm still not too sure how it properly works. One of the main issues I was having was it was deleting tasks which were being worked on. This was a big problem as if there were scans happening for an hour and then it deleted that task, the progress that scan had made would be deleted. Unfortunately I'm not able to work with MongoDB at the advance level and transverse the main nested arrays I have, which is something I'll work on very soon. 

Thankfully I did some testing and manually worked on scaling Docker and there wasn't any issue, therefore it had to be something with my code. Right now, scaling seems to do a good job but at the time, I had no idea if the scaling issue had something with communicating with the Docker API. Therefore a lot of coding contengencies were added if tasks broke. 

I've noticed how I'm using Docker isn't quite intended on how I should be using it, but it works and that's all I really care if I'm to be honest. 

### What I've learnt

What I wanted to talk about here, the the journey these two weeks of programming has taught me. At times, I thought I was going to pull out my hair and at times, it was easy to accept the issues I was coming against. So I wanted to write these things so I don't forget this for the future. 

* It's a very good idea to take a break. You'll somehow find solutions when you move away from the PC. 
* Don't rage code, it never amounts to much. Instead, step back and look at the full problem rather than what you're trying to code. 
* You learn a lot quicker in these sessions. Trust me I had no idea how to use the Docker API, how to open ports and the risks involved if you do. I learnt how to work more and more with AWS, Linux and JS as a result of this project. 

One of the main things which I've learnt about programming though is this. It's certainly about problem solving. How to transverse JS and it's tools is a learning game. How to write the code, how to structure it, that comes with experience. Problem solving and finding a way to get to the solution is a lot moer important. Being able to look at the problem and then figure, x and y will lead to z, is a good skill to have. You can write code, not get the solution but being able to be the bigger person and oversee the situation, is a skill which is absolutely needed. 

As you program and become more understood with JS in this case, the more it becomes a lot easier. For me, it takes for me to keep at it everyday to make sure I keep compounding on what I've learnt. Sometimes I forget that it's not the grind that makes me a better coder. While understanding JS is great and it opens doors, JS is only as good as the ability to get to the solution. JS in this case, helps me play the game and get to that point but long game, the skils to stick to the problem and manage the issue, will probably be more valuable. 

### Where do we go now with Skyscanner Plus

In my next post, I'll talk about the future of Skyscanner Plus. For the next week, I'll be figuring out what I want to do with the project. Today I've been thinking a lot of the project, most of the time to blank thoughts. As per the advice in this post. I think I'll not worry too much about it and do something else. Maybe a game of PUBG! I'll have this setup by the next post. 

Thanks Marta for allowing me to use this photo!

One of the harder things to do, I eventually got Skyscanner Plus to play nicely with scaling

Skyscanner Plus has dynamic scaling


One of the hardest things I had issues with, which I think still is an issue, is the cronjob and working with clusters. I'm fairly sure my code is still not 100% correct but for now, it works and that's what I want from it.

### Cronjob was hard to deal with

I'm not even sure what was happening before but from what I can tell, each job was starting up new cronjobs which would balloon the amount of being handled in any one time. I figure out a way to only fork a cluster when Skyscanner Plus basically needed it, creating clusters only when jobs are available and when a core was available. This was a breakthrough for me because I had a lot of difficulity getting past this point. I certainly need to learn more about PM2 but for now, this works, going to leave it.

### Headful Puppeteer

For Skyscanner Plus to work, I basically need to have headful Puppeteer. Headless doesn't work and is detected immediately. I'll have to learn why Puppeteer is detected but in this case, having headful puppeteer is the current solution. The problem with this is it doesn't play well with Docker or non-GUI instances, which is basically what I'm going to have to use. Thankfully I understood what Xvfb was and how it was the solution. 

### Building the Docker image

Docker wasn't too hard to use. I've created a Docker Image before thanks to (ZTM's Node course)[https://www.udemy.com/course/complete-nodejs-developer-zero-to-mastery/]. I would highly recommend it as this project uses all the principles I learnt from that course. 

After trying to use everyone elses Docker Image and finding complications with the images, it turned out far easier to make my own Image. The image is very minimal but it works. I was quite surprised getting Puppeteer to work and as a result, now I have Skyscanner Plus as an image. Brilliant. 

### AWS deployment

Again, thanks to (ZTM's Node course)[https://www.udemy.com/course/complete-nodejs-developer-zero-to-mastery/], it wasn't that difficult to spin up an AWS instance, install Docker and then it was off to the racers. 

### What's next?

I'm going to have to learn Kubernetes. I have no real idea how it works but as it gives me the ability to scale Skyscanner Plus, this is the last thing I need to learn so to allow Skyscanner Plus to run correctly. I need to learn it because if there's more than one scan needed at any one time, I want to spin up a machine and then deal with the scan. Afterwards, I want that machine to make itself redundant, therefore only paying for what I need to use. I'm fairly sure Kubernetes allows me to complete this. 

I write this in excitment, knowing there's not that much more that I need to learn and do to get Skyscanner Plus operational. I don't expect Skyscanner Plus to be a huge thing. I just want to say "here's a website you can use to get cheaper flights if you can be flexible with you holiday".

I got Skyscanner Plus to work on AWS and it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be!

Skyscanner Plus is on AWS


Yesterday, I was fairly convinced on the path that I wanted to go on. I was going to give it a shot with frontend and take up on more oppurtunities which would be made available. I've noticed when looking for work, frontend react is what people are looking for and it's probably the fastest way to get work. It was clear to me. Get more understood on design systems and a better idea of what it is to be a frontend developer and transistion to backend development. 

Today, I had a call with a recruiter. Jon played the middle man when helping companies who don't have proper recruitment systems in place. It was clear to him that I was not going to be the frontend developer he wanted. I had an arm with him to ask a few questions and while I didn't come to the conclusion in that conversation, it certainly helped me come to my new one. 

It's very easy to write and write on the keyboard. Sometimes we write so quickly, we're not too sure what we've wrote. It's why I go to the pen and paper when jotting out thoughts. Given how I've stopped writting as I would think, the majority of the world, writing fast on the paper looks like a mess. You are forced to slow down, to write correctly. Even if you want to write quickly, it's not as fast as what you can do on a keyboard. Personally, I don't write that quickly compared to many type racers. To the point you murmer, I shall move on. 

I got downstairs, found my pokka dot jotter and a pen and starter writing. Wrote the date per usual, Thursday 25th August 2022 (Happy Birthday Warren), and got to writing. Usually I can write for a very long time, drawing out my thoughts but I think I had already come to some sort of conclusion but wanted to get it in paper in some capacity. 

While frontend would help me get to a job a lot quicker than pushing on with the backend of work, it occured to me that if I went down this path, then my choice to go into development would have been a wasted endeavour. I moved from SEO so that I could make things. Yes initially it was to make websites a lot quicker, to rank the highest for websites out there. Gatsby certainly did this well and it's been fantastic. What I don't need to know is design systems, how to make something look incredible. How to make great UI systems or the perfect looking button. These are things that used to matter. Now they don't anymore. 

What I want to do, is make things for people and I. That's not even really true to be honest. I want to make things that I think is cool and help make things for others when I think they need a hand. Take this. I build a Web API so to grab posts from a WordPress site which had terrible elementor HTML markup and cleaned it. This allowed Phil to create all his posts that he needed for the project he needed, without having to do it himself. Ultimately I could have made this into an API that others could have used and I probably should have pushed on with that. 

I can't make a betting bot via making it look pretty. I can't make sure that it runs perfectly without good testing. I know that if I want to create things, being a better backend developer is going to be far more interesting and while the lure of having a job far faster is a lot more interesting, this is not the type of thing that I needed to have done. If I wanted to get a job asap and wanted to just be in development for the money, I would just stayed as an SEO and got paid well and master that craft. I didn't because it wasn't what I wanted. The money wasn't worth it. 

Money is great, do not get me wrong. It's what makes the world run and it opens doors. Legacy matters a little bit more to me. I want to build things that are actually useful for people but ultimately, useful for me. If I see something that I can make because it interests me and is worth my time, I want to be able to make that. I want to have just enough design skills that allows for the UI to be cool looking but in the same time, I might just employ someone to do that. "Make it look pretty". Maybe that arrogant. I don't think it is though. You can be a great SEO and you can be a great frontend developer. You certainly need them to build a great business. Ideas though, that's what I have. I have ideas which I need to act on and I can't really do that as a frontend developer and so as a result, the jobs that are available now as a react developer, well they can go fuck. 

I am going to be a great backend developer which has the ability to make things when I feel like it. Can I make a social media website? I'm not too sure where to start with that but I know other people have thought about it and could outline what exactly is needed and then I go from there. 

What I do know is when I want to make something that interests me, I want to have the skills to be able to make the hard parts of it. That's building out the idea to an MVP position. I say MVP and think Meteor but not, I'll be sticking with the MERN stack. I like it. I think it gets me to where I think I need. So yea, that's the direction. I'm going to be a fantastic backend developer that makes things. 

Now it's time to find the right resources to get me to that place. 

It's weird how one day, you think you've made the right plan but the next, it seems so daft.

Making a choice, which direction to go


Since Friday (19th August), I've not coded but on Monday, I just couldn't bring myself to code at all. For some reason, I had a lot of brainfog, a term which I'm hearing more and more these days. I'm going to guess it's a side effect of getting COVID and not feeling good as a result. It's either that or issues with my sleep coming back again. 

Ths matters. I want to be able to code as much as possible and not look like I'm only coding here and there. I want to code whenever I feel like it but in the last couple of days, I just felt so hazy to the point it was easier sitting down. It's not a great feeeling. 

Writing this post now, I still feel slightly tired, a bit dazed is the best way to say it. Ringing in the ears. This can't be a good thing. 

I hope to get programming more and more again. I do enjoy programming but right now, I just can't come to think exactly what I want to push on next. I do know when I feel my full, this isn't much of a problem. 

As much as I want to keep grinding when it comes to development, I had to take a break.

I needed a small break


Given that this is a test I don't want to write too much because well, this is a micro post test! Still I'll have something to say about this. 

#### So why do I want micro posts?

Sometimes I have something on my mind and I like the format of my own site, therefore I want to write it here. It also forces me to only write 200 words so you can read it in two minutes. That sounds about right!


I wanted a quick way to add micro blog posts to this site, so I added a test!

Micro Posts added!


Recently I talked about wanting to [add typescript](https://alanreid.dev/project-typescript-update) to add Typescript to this site. The majority of this site has now been converted to Typescript using proper types.

#### What I had done with Typescript?

Previously, I had added Typescript to the site and added some types. What i didn't realise was a big thing was the strict mode. I was in the thinking that I was already working with strict mode. Turns out, I forgot to apply it from false to true. That gave me a wee bit of a wake up call. 

#### What happened after adding use strict mode?

A lot of errors showed up. Things that were warnings before become errors and it needed to be acted upon. My tests weren't able to compelte because the build process wasn't completing. It made me have to work properly with Typescript which I think has helped me in the long term. Think. I'm still getting used to this. I created a types folder to add all the interfaces so I could simply grab the types rather than copying and pasting. This was a far better idea. 

#### Will this help me become a better developer?

After talking to Phil Collins a couple of times, yes I can see the utility of Typescript and it's something that I know I have to get far more more used to. Will it make me into a better developer was the question though and I don't think that's the correct question to ask. Rather, will it make it easier for people to work with me and I believe it will. What this does though is it requires everyone to transistion to Typescript. Therefore I expect more and more content to push the need to learn Typescript and have a seamless transistion from JS. A lot of concepts are learnt from using Typescript. I hope to see more soon.

#### Long time look.

I will be using Typescript for the future. That means for the next components I'm going to be making, it'll be made in Typescript and now JS. As much as I want to use Javascript as it's natural to me, it's time to move away from pure play JS and now embrace TS and get used to it. Like chopsticks, it takes a while to get used to but after getting use to it, you'll never really want to move away from it. Don't get me wrong, I suck with chopsticks but one has to keep trying. The push to attain greatness wasn't made in a day. 

It's a little mountain to climb but slowly and surely, I do see the utility in Typescript.

It's Typescript time. Love you JS


I know how important testing is to building software and given my interest to Puppeteer, I decided to start working with Jest properly and place the theroy to practise. 

#### My experience with Jest?

Jest itself isn't that hard to use. For the most part, you can get by with simple end to end tests but I've come to learn there's probably a better way to do things than what I'm actually doing. Still, it's better to have a test rather than no test and then to improve on the tests whenever I get a better idea. I'm going to need to look at a proper Jest guide/course. I feel very confident using Jest but I also feel if I wish to improve in the immediate, it's probably best I take up the theory now. 

#### The actual difficulity!

The most difficult part was getting Next to play nicely with the tests. In the CI process with GitHub Actions, I had difficulity figuring out how to get Next to start the server while run the tests. I'm working with only one Node terminal but thankfully there was an npm package, "start-server-and-test" which saved my bacon. 

#### What am I currently testing?

Two things as of now.

* Test that all pages and posts are being rendered.
* Frontmatter from posts are being established without being missed out. 

I'll think of more tests in the future but for now, that's good enough!

Edit: Turns out testing is a lot harder.

Edit of Edit: Turns out the problem was to do with waitForResponse. This comes from a lack of ability to read technical documentation well and this is something I am going to look into for the next week as it's slowly down my ability to improve. God damit.

A wee test here and there keeps the wee bugs at bay. It's certainly made sure the builds are a lot more trustworthy.

Adding Tests to the site!


A small update for the website seeing as I want to always keep myself on the ball with the site. If you see a post with a sunset as the post image, it's probably an update.

#### What's happened this week?

I decided to start using a project manager to get better understood with website project management. I use this website as the test bed for anything I'm further learning to use. A project manager was a good thing to use because it allows me to figure out what I want to post on this site "hi", and it allows me to start figuring out what I need to expand on next. In this case, Typescript. 

#### What do I think of Typescript?

As I'm only developing with it now, I see it as a lot of boiler plate but the more I code with it, the more I'll start to understand the syntax as a natrual thing. Right now, as it takes time for me to understand what I'm looking at, that says I need more time to be exposed to Typescript, which is what I'll do now. 

This whole site will be converted to Typescript so I have a far better understanding of it. I want it to become more natural to me and find more ways to be exposed to it. 

#### The project section was made

Design isn't a strong part for me. In this case, I looked at a design which I liked and from eye, copied it. Since making this website, I haven't used much Tailwind. It's something I need to get more understood with. I created the Project Section and the projectItem component in Javascript but converted it in TS. This was a great idea and so now I'll be converting everything in TS. 

The Project section is live and in the next coming days, I'll add more projects which I feel should be added.

#### What's next?

Getting Typescript fully under my belt is required so I'll be converting this whole site by the end of the week. I was introduced to the creator of Heptagram, an all purpose Discord Bot and I was told some things they'd like for me to work on so this will be my first look into Open Source. I aim to add some testing to the platform.

Talking about testing, that's something else I'll be working on with this site. I'll add some testing to the site to make sure iteractions with the site work. I need to do more CI/CD development so I'll do that!

![Picture of myself in Split](assets/after-postira-post-picture.jpg)

Picture of myself in Split. It was a good holiday!

It's Typescript time. By the end of the week, this website will be fully Typescript ready. We've also added a project section.

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