Internship Journal

Week 1

Just a little background story. I am a 3rd-year student of Software Development course in Carlow IT in Ireland. At the end of year three, all students need to find themselves an internship or they need to do a project. I was lucky and I landed myself an internship as the Open Source Developers Advocate. I will use this blog to hone my writing skills and also to document my journey for the next few months.

Day 1

Monday the 4th of April was my first meeting with my mentor - Lukasz who is on the Technical Steering Committee(TSC) for the oversight of the AsyncAPI Initiative and Developer Relations Manager at Postman.

During the meeting, he explained how we are going to work and in the end, I got my assignment. I need to research “How fast and for free you can set up a blog using Tailwind CSS and GitHub”. When I finish researching then I need to set up my blog and write about it.

I forgot to mention that this is a remote internship so it is somehow tricky. It requires preparation and self-planning which ain’t easy.

After the call, I was thinking for a second and decided that I want to start fresh.

My laptop is 5 years old, dual-boot Windows 10 and Lubuntu, which over recent months accumulated loads of important stuff(Windows) and other not so important things(Lubuntu). I concluded that I will replace the Linux partition with some fresh and modern distribution.

Well… That was some experience. During that day, I managed to install and get rid of a few distros like ArcoLinux, Linux Mint LMDE 5 “Elsie”, and EndeavourOS.

Each gave me some issues with my graphics card. All those who are familiar with Linux, know that NVidia is not good at supporting Linux. Great Linus Torvalds had something to say in that matter before 😉. Anyway, after further research, I installed Pop!_OS and it just works like a charm. I must say that it works even better than on Windows.

After installing all required software - Slack, Discord, favourite browsers and Visual Studio Code I finished for a day. BTW, if anyone of you dear readers, are fans of dark themes(I like it dark, like my soul 😈) I recommend you to check this cool website https://draculatheme.com which will help you to go to the dark side with all bells and whistles.

Day 2

Today I started researching the first part of the assignment which is how to build a blog with GitHub.

While doing the research, I noticed that I need to cool down my expectations. In my head I already imagined my mentor tapping his fingers on the table and looking at the watch expecting a good bit of the assignment done. I know he isn’t like that but this is what is projecting in my head.

I started writing my journal which I will be sharing on my blog. I am using VSC and markdownlint extension to highlight any issues.

Day 3

What a start to a day! After all that praising first thing I had to deal with were the graphic card issues. When I booted my laptop this morning only my secondary monitor was working and my laptop screen was blank. So after deleting and installing drivers, and a few hours later I have a working system again. I have rebooted it a few times just to make sure that this is not a fluke and it looks like that the issue is fixed.

What caused it? Remains a mystery. Thanks, NVidia 😠.

Day 4

Today I was able to experience and appreciate remote work. I had a few unexpected things to do in the morning and… No problem. I did what I had to do and then I just started working on my assignment. I still trying mentally switch to that way of work.

From “Am I allowed doing this?”, “This feels weird” to “ This is a cool way to work!”. As long as I do my job I am ok.

Blilliant 😀.

Day 5

Not much was happening today. Spent most of the day taking screenshots and writing my blog on “How to use GitHub Pages to host a blog.” To be honest it is taking longer than I was expecting. It is almost finished. Hopefully, I will post it tomorrow 🤞.

Week 2

Along with this journal and writing a blog, I am doing #100DaysOfCode. I understand that I should be logging some activity every day but I am a dad and weekends are reserved for my family so.. No entries over the weekend.

Also, it was my birthday so there is no way that I would be doing any coding at all. Here is the delicious cake I have enjoyed yesterday 😋.

Day 6

Today I had my weekly call with my mentor. Just to make sure that I am on the right track( and working 😃). I have advised him that I am almost finished with the first blog. I have raised my concerns and he gave me a few handy tips. Fingers crossed that today I will share that post. Tomorrow I will start exploring Tailwind CSS.

Day 7

So my yesterday’s planning went out through the window 🤷‍♂️. I wanted to work on Tailwind but instead, I have spent the whole day trying to share this post on many platforms. Looks like the easiest way so far was LinkedIn and Twitter. I tried Reddit and Hacker News. Reddit wasn’t too bad but HN… Jesus wept as they say.

Look, I understand it is personal preference and some people may feel offended by my observation but I must say HN has one of the least intuitive UI that I have encountered. Sure, there might be others and maybe the worst but for now, this is my nr 1. It is probably my fault, I am not Hacky enough 😏.

Also, I have updated the blog thanks to constructive feedback. And I like the look of it now. It is here (in case if you missed it).

Currently, I am researching the best way of sharing your blog post so you can reach the most of the audience. Another blog is on the way.

Holy smokes! If I keep this up I will be a pro writer at the end of this internship 😀.

Day 8

Today there was really nothing except reading 📚 and researching 🔎 for the new post.

I used that opportunity to go through all my favourites and bookmarks on my Twitter to look for some interesting articles and I found few 💎.

I was planning to do it for a long time and today it was a justified excuse to do that.

Tomorrow I will start putting things together for another post.

Day 9

Not much to report today. Just watching YouTube and reading articles. Today was the worst day of the internship so far .

The only bright side was that I updated my original blog due to great feedback.

Hopefully, tomorrow will be a better day 🙏.

Week 3

This was a busy Easter break. List of home chors was as long as my hand 😉. Almost on top of everything. But I must admit that I have enjoyed past few days without sitting on front of the screen.

Our axolotl was the happiest because we got him a “roomie”.

Not sure how he feels now as she is quite faisty 😂.

Day 10

Today was great. I missed working on my blog so I was quite happy to start working on it. I was in the zone. I decided to try ghostwriter, a distraction-free text editor for Markdown. I must say that I enjoyed it except for one point when my laptop froze and I had to reboot it.

I didn’t give it a second thought. I was expecting to pick up where I left but within a few seconds, I realised that the auto-save didn’t work and I lost everything.

I had to start from the beginning. OMG!!! 🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬

To be honest, all energy just evaporated from me. It took me over an hour to get back to it.

I eventually finished my blog on Increasing visibility of my articles and posted it but it took me longer than I expected.

Overall good day, maybe except for losing the whole document. Lesson learned 🤷‍♂️.

Day 11

So today I started researching Tailwind CSS. Researching is a skill in itself. There is so much material out there so it takes some time to find something relevant.

The keyword is relevant because there is loads of interesting stuff that can take your time in a split second.

It is time-consuming.

‼️ Lesson of the day - I change YouTube video speeds to 1.25 so I can still follow instructions and save time 👌.

Day 12

Today I experienced what is not so great about being in a home-work environment. Seasoned remote workers may have a way of dealing with distraction but I am still trying to figure out what is the best approach.

Some days I am using Pomodoro to keep myself on track, other days I have a goal and just stay “on target”.

Today nothing worked. I just could not get into the zone. I was getting easily diverted the whole day and I spend the day doing everything and ended with nothing 🤷‍♂️.

I need to learn how to approach days like today 🤔.

Tomorrow is another day and I will do a lot better than today.

Day 13

Nothing done…

Last night I learned that one of my mates from the course passed away. Initially, I couldn’t believe it. Loads of memories were just popping into my head. Later that night I decided to write something for him. If you wish to read it then it is available here.

Today was not a great day.

Week 4

Can’t believe it is four weeks since I started my internship. Time flies. I guess there was an Easter break as well. All is good so far. I think.

Day 14

I actually can’t believe it!! 😡😡 I was starting my laptop this morning and I had a weird pop up saying something about my first boot up. I was like “Hmm?” 🤔 but then I clicked ok and … I got info about checking disc. That very moment I knew that something not nice happened and I was correct. My Linux partition “evaporated”!! It happened to me sometime before but I was messing with my machine at the time but now I was good, no funny stuff🤷‍♂️.

Ehh… Thankfully I had my Windows partition functional so I could attend my weekly call with Lukasz. I have told him about the issue and we talked about the progress of my newest blog.

The whole afternoon I was reinstalling stuff again🤬🤬.

One of my college mates created a script that he runs after reinstalling his Linux distribution. It installs all his programs. I must look into that.

Day 15

Yesterday I realised during my call that I was researching Tailwind CSS but I should be checking Tailwind Nextjs Starter Blog 🤦‍♂️. Miscommunication at its finest. Happens to everybody. Also, I will be using a different host for it - Vercel. But all at the right time. That will be the last step for my blog.

Day 16

Ok, so the blog is slowly writing itself😀. Today I installed Node.js. It was slow going as I was also taking screenshots for the blog. I am quite happy with the progress. I learned why best to use nvm to install Node.js. Next, I need to fork out a blogging template and document it.

Day 17

Today is the funeral. I decided to push this earlier today just in case I will not be in form to do it. I must admit that I dropped the ball this week. I wasn’t updating Twitter and #DaysOfCode.

I think that if I was in the office I would be able to deal with it differently but because I am on my own in my office space my thoughts are wandering between the tasks at hand and Keith.

From “Ok, why nvm?” to “Ah, Keith..”

A whole week like that, maybe except Monday (Day 14) where I was too bloody angry to think 🙂.

Tomorrow I am starting my holiday so there will be no entries in the journal for a week.

Week 5

This was a great break. I am rested and wrecked at this same time. I know it doesn’t make sense but let me explain. I am rested mentally. This break helped me to put behind me the events regarding Keith and just to be away from PC for a while. I am wrecked physically. I was really enjoying myself at the wedding and my better half 🥰 and I danced 💃🕺till morning hours 😀. Also trying to visit everybody in a short space of time (eight days) is not great for sleeping.

Day 18

Tough going. Trying to come back to it but struggling big time. I think that the past week’s lack of sleep is catching up with me. Damn you “old age”. I can already feel that today will not be productive 🤷‍♂️.

Day 19

Okay, so today I have cloned the blogging starter template and trying to figure out what goes where. I must admit that I am struggling. I guess it is expected when you are at the beginning of the programming road.

Day 20

😁 I am running my development server. It gives me a better idea of how things work. Apart from discovering stuff and documenting it for the next blog, I noticed two things:

• I am still adjusting to the remote style of working. In my head, if I am not starting at a particular time and don’t sit at the desk for so many hours then I am not working. I guess it will take time to switch after working so many years in that one certain way. I am institutionalized like “Red” or “Brooks” from The Shawshank Redemption(a great movie BTW). I know that it is an exaggeration but it is a bit similar.
• I am afraid of breaking stuff. Can’t understand it 🤷‍♂️. I keep checking things a few times before I try and that slows me down. I should be able to just dive in. I can’t break the laptop and if I break the code I can always start over. I think it happens because I don’t trust myself programming-wise and I am afraid that if I screw up then I am proving the point that I am just not good at it..🤔

Ah well… Tomorrow is another day. Onwards and upwards 👊 💪.

Day 21

Transferring my internship blog onto my “new look” blog. Some things don’t work and I am still trying to figure it out but I am starting to understand( well, I think that I do) how things work.

Some links and pics not working but I think this will be just a matter of updating paths.

I forgot to mention that yesterday I diverted from my work and spend some time designing a logo for my new website. Priorities, eh 😉.

I was so happy with my idea and how it looks. I send it to my brother for evaluation and… He did not like it 🫤.

I am not going to lie, I was not impressed and I might have sent him some of these 🖕 but in my defence, I thought that it looked good 🤷‍♂️.

Later my friend (who is a great designer) looked at it and between the lines, I sensed that she thinks that my logo is “meh”.

My friend and my brother… Shocking 😂.

I love them for their honesty ❤️.

I guess that tomorrow I will keep transferring and fixing bits and leave designing logos for professionals 😁.

Week 6

Nice weekend. Done few bits and pieces around the house. I also feel that I have managed to catch up with holiday sleep depravation. Ready to rock 💪.

Day 22

First of all, I am well aware that this is not day 22. “What about last Friday and this Monday mate!?”🤔

These two days were not that interesting. I was transferring bits from the original blog onto the new one. Fixing errors and broken links, etc.

But today… I have managed to deploy my “new look” site. I would be lying if I say that it was easy.

Maybe some of you who are much better than me would finish it a long time ago. Well done! Good luck!

There were moments of struggle but I succeeded at last!! Some bits still not working, like comments, but everything in time will work as expected🤞.

Something funny (in retrospect) happened today. I was getting errors when I was running my

npm run build

My “new look” website is running locally already despite these errors.

So, after some reading, I decided to check if maybe packages need some updating and if you want to find something to fit your theory then you will😉.

I installed the npm-check-updates which is for updating a new and major version of the packages and then I run the command:

ncu

which will list all the global packages which have new releases.

And what would you know, it found 49😁.

Like a good boy, I run this👇

ncu -u

for upgrading all the version hints in the package.json file, so npm will install the major version.

After that

npm update
npm install

And… The website stopped working 👀.

Eventually, I gave up and asked my mentor for help.

I explained what happened. He was very complimentary regarding my approach but then he helped me to understand that:

• read your errors a bit better(turned out that my errors were just warnings and my updating packages created errors 🤦‍♂️😂). Beginner’s mistake🤷‍♂️.
• when updating packages, do it one by one, test it and then repeat the process if necessary.

Eventually, we fixed all errors and now you are reading this journal entry on my new website🥳🎉.

The very rewarding feeling was when the website was successfully deployed.

Tomorrow I will fix the comments section 🗣️.

Day 23

Typical😡. I planned today to start working on the comments section on my new website and …👎 The first few hours I spend investigating why the most recent build was not deploying correctly.

I was getting plenty of errors but I could not make any sense of them. Eventually, I caved and asked Lukasz to maybe have a look. He was also puzzled. I was trying to recall what I was doing and he draw attention to one of the posts. When I opened it I realised that it was missing the metadata part. Once I have updated it everything started working 🤦‍♂️.

After that, I was polishing my newest blog about how I replaced my old blog with a modern look website. It is available here. It was late afternoon before I posted it and then I updated my social media as well.

Looks like I will work on it tomorrow 🤷‍♂️.

Oh…I just realised I need to update README page as well.

Day 24

What a day! I am still buzzing 😁.

I meant to work on comments for the website and update README. So I started with the second task because it is easier 😉.

When I was doing that, my friend send me the logo I have asked for and… I was blown 🤩. I absolutely love it.

Automatically, the whole planning went to the bin 🫢. I started copying, pasting, trimming, editing, the whole shebang.

Based on her design I managed to create favicons, and change the logo and the banner for the repository.

I did not even realise that the whole day just went by. I guess it is true that time flies when you are having fun.

I understand that this was not a priority today but it feels so good at the end of the day. I did something that gave me satisfaction plus I have learned other things.

What I did today means that this blog is no longer generic. It is mine and it is slowly starting to feel like I expect.

It is still far away from what I have in my head but I am on the right track.

And that logo… Wow 👏. Ok, I understand that some of you may think that it is just a logo but when I saw it was just as if she somehow read my mind 🤔.

Sadly, Jola doesn’t have a website where you can acquire her services (yet)😉.

Today was a good day. Can’t wait for tomorrow.

Day 25

Another good day at the office. I have managed to activate comments on my website. Very happy with it. I was also documenting this, so material for a new article is growing.

Confidence growing with each day 📈.

Week 7

Damn. It was so close 🤏. In the end Manchester City won the Premier League.

I guess we, Liverpool supporters should be already happy. LFC have already two trophies and potentially one more - Champions League 🤞 (next Saturday).

Day 26

Ohhhh…Monday. Thankfully it is over. It was a meh day😐.

I had my weekly meeting with Lukasz 🫡, and I blame him for this Monday 😀.

I was absolutely fine until we had the meeting and he said that today is dragging for him and this somehow 🤷‍♂️ spread onto me 😉.

On the serious note, I’ve got a new assignment. But first, I have to finish the article (that is what I was doing after the conference call) which I already started and then I will focus on the new goal.

I think that I am up to date with everything so no panic stations for me.

However, I am starting to feel a tiny bit of anxiety as we are approaching June and this means that I should know the results of my exams soon.

Not looking forward to that 😬.

Hopefully 🤞 everything went as it should 🤞.

Day 27

That is it!!! From now on I am writing my posts in VSC.

It feels like I must have done something to someone at some stage because these things keep happening.

So, today I log into my laptop, happy that I have only a few bits to iron out with my article just to realise that somehow my draft is no longer available on dev.to…

I mean 🤬😡🤬😡🤬 REALLLLLLYY!!!!????

It happened to me at the beginning of my internship so I am quite careful but this is ridiculous 🤷‍♂️.

I understand that some of you would say “Well if you save it then it would be there”. It is a fair observation (not helpful at all 🤫) but I do remember clicking on Save draft. Ah well…

I actually had a weird feeling before I switched off my laptop to save the copy locally 🤔. I guess that is another lesson learned - listen to my gut and keep a local copy.

Now, back to the beginning of the article🤦‍♂️.

Eventually, I managed to finish that article 😮‍💨. Everything is uploaded to the repo and deployed 💪.

Day 28

Hands down the least productive day of my internship 🫤.

For most of the day, I stared senselessly at my computer screen. I am not sure why 🤔. Just could not focus at all.

I don’t like when this happens.

Please let me know in the comments below 👇 if this has ever happened to you and if you found a solution. The more life hacks I learn, the better.

I had great last few days so for some balance I am probably due a 💩💩 day I guess🤷‍♂️.

I am not going to dwell on this. Done and dusted.

Tomorrow is another day and I will for sure do better than today 🤞.

Day 29

I spent today refreshing my knowledge on server-side rendering, client-side rendering and build-side rendering.

Re-watched some of the old recordings. There are bits that I think that I get so I just need to do more reading to be sure that I am getting it.

I need to plan on how I want to write it.

I guess once I will have the material and see how much space it needs then I will know if it is one article or a series of them.

It is all very interesting but also draining. Maybe it is the volume of the information 🤔

The main thing is that today was a better day than yesterday.

More research 📚 🔎 tomorrow.

Week 8

The weather was great, and it was almost the perfect weekend.

Why almost? It wasn’t wonderful because my beloved Liverpool FC lost 😢 in the Champions League final.

Nevertheless, this season was amazing. Club was involved in all competitions till the very end. Despite not winning all four trophies, winning two is still an impressive accomplishment.

Hopefully, next season will be as successful as this one 🤞.

Up the Reds!! YNWA!! 💪💪

Day 31

Last Friday I was doing my research and today I am still doing it. There is nothing else to report 🤷‍♂️.

I was thinking about it and I will not make entries into the journal just for the sake of it. That would water it down unnecessarily.

I have decided that in the future, if I will have to read, watch, etc. for a few days in a row, then I will make an entry on the day I started and then when I ended the research. There is no point in making an entry like “Still researching”. It makes no sense whatsoever.

However, if something interesting happens (maybe not even related to the internship), then I will write about it. For example 👇

Almost every day I notice that I was institutionalised to work in the “clock in, clock out” type of work.

Don’t get me wrong, I am still loving it but there are moments where I am finding it difficult to switch between work and off duty and I am not sure why 🤷‍♂️.

This mindset is that you go elsewhere for work and then when you come back it means you are home (you leave work behind).

Well, that does not exist with the remote job. Even though I have a designated area for work there are days when I feel that I am still at work even though I have finished.

I guess I don’t help myself. Especially when I spend a few hours in front of the computer and I have nothing to show for it. Then, in my head creeps in this thought that I wasn’t working hard enough and I should put more time into my assignment/task.

One thing to put extra hours in when you deal with an interesting topic. There is that excitement. When you do it because you feel that you have to…

There is another bit of remote work that I need to figure out.

When you are in the office then you can talk to someone, maybe bounce an idea or just for pure gossip. At home… Kids are in school(can’t complain about that one 😉), my better half is at work. It is sometimes very lonely and quiet. Maybe I need a pet that I can talk to 🤔?

That’s all from me today. I may be doing entries like that in the future. Just to get it off the chest, to help digest.

Whoever is reading that and has a solution or wish to bounce some ideas then leave a comment in the section below 👇.

Over and out ✌️.

Day 33

Damn. I am struggling with this article.

The sheer volume of the information out there is massive, but finding the one that fits my goal is the difficult part.

I started and scrapped my new article a few times already. I can’t seem to find a flow to it 🤷‍♂️.

A new draft was created today again and this time looks like a solid start.

As a break from the theory, I started to create diagrams for the post. I am using drawio. I was surprised to learn that I can download it from the Pop!_Shop.

Regarding Pop!_OS…

Recently I am not too happy 😒. The first issue is the Nvidia software. Even though it is installed, it is not working. It doesn’t allow me to select screens, so I have to drag to the right in order to get my apps to the left 🤦‍♂️.

I removed everything and reinstalled it a few times, but it is still not working.

I am not sure where to place my frustration; Pop!_OS or Nvidia, but knowing Nvidia’s track record with Linux, I am leaning towards them.

Another thing is that at least once a day my system will freeze without any reason and I need to reboot. If this happens when I am in the middle of something, then you can imagine that I am not a happy chappie.

I suspect that this might be related to graphic card software.

At this stage, I gave up. I wouldn’t do any of my work if I was trying to fix it. It will be one of these days when I will flip out and reinstall the system or even install a new distro 🤔.

Lets hope 🤞 that from now is it’s just onwards and upwards.