My 2024 Goals

I’ve been thinking a lot about starting my own website where I can write about coding and stuff. I’ve even begun a couple of times, but those attempts didn’t go anywhere. After some time, I ended up leaving them behind, but this time will be different.

The idea of writing on my own website came to me a couple of months ago when I was reading about Static Site Generators (SSGs). Then, I rented a Digital Ocean instance, put my Docker skills to work, and brought up a site using Hugo. Since then, I’ve been reading and building my site from scratch in my spare time. But then I realized that I need more than just code.

So now, with my New Year’s resolutions still fresh, is the perfect time to do it. My goal is to write two posts per month about something I’ve done or learned in my work or personal projects. By the way, I’m a software developer, but I also love messing with hardware, DIY projects, and configuring my own systems.

Future Subjects I Want to Talk About

Website Development

I have a couple of tasks on my to-do list regarding this website, so I’ll talk a bit about that. I need to design a good structure for my posts and manage post images separately, as I don’t want everything in the same project.

Dark Mode/Light Mode Button

I also want to make a dark mode/light mode button because I’m one of those people who hate when white webpages blast their eyes with the brightness of millions of suns. Maybe while exploring the Hugo documentation, I’ll come up with more ideas.

Network Setup

I also want to finish my network setup, where I need a VPN to connect to certain services when I’m away from home and to let my family access a multimedia server I’m configuring. This leads to my next topic.

Setting Up a Multimedia Server with Plex

I plan to use Plex to store all my movies and allow my family and friends to access them from outside my home. I have an old PC and a couple of 16TB HDDs, so I want to configure it to serve movies not just for me but for a few friends and family members as well.

Smart Home Automation

I’ve automated my house, but I hate relying on third-party servers/apps to configure and control my smart home. That’s why I want to set up a server, or maybe use the multimedia one, to host my own smart home system.

My Raspberry Pi Noir Camera Project

A couple of months ago, I bought a Noir camera for my Raspberry Pi, and since then, I haven’t found the time to try it out. My objective was to use it with some sort of AI detection tool for detection features, but getting it to record something would be nice too.

Returning to Coding in Python

I’m primarily a JavaScript guy, but I loved making utilities in Python. That’s why I want to continue programming in Python, and I have the exact projects in mind. I plan to create utilities to interact with different blockchains. Python might not be the fastest, but it’s the easiest for prototyping.

Conclusion

I know, there are a lot of different things that might bring a lot of complexities, but if I complete all this, I could say that I’ve accomplished all my New Year’s resolutions and also stop my friend Jesus from asking every day about when the multimedia server will be fully operational :)