<p>This is my first blog post. This contains anything then a hello and welcome to my site!</p>


Hello World!

<p>I'm always looking into new and excited technologies to expand my knowledge and keep up to date with technology in general.</p>
<p>To streamline it a bit I decided to make a list with technologies that I'm planning to learn and maybe even master this year.
After this year is over I will be looking back on what I have learned that year and what I haven't.
It will be interesting what extra technologies I have learned and what the reason behind it was.</p>
<p>This list will be more of a guidance, and not a fixed list.</p>
<h2>Master React</h2>
<p>Although I know React, I do not master it.
Where I find myself searching solutions for common issues,
I find this quite annoying, so this year I will master React and understand its concepts.
Understanding its concepts will enable me to learn React packages more quickly in the future.</p>
<h2>Master TypeScript</h2>
<p>Similar to React, I know TypeScript, but I find myself searching solutions for common issues.
I want to expand my knowledge of TypeScript and its compiler.
So I can start and complete projects without too much searching.</p>
<h2>Learn Flutter or master React Native</h2>
<p>I want to be able to build apps for Android and iOS, but I don't want to be able to reuse elements between them.
I hate doing double work, so that's why I want to learn 2 interesting technologies which enable that.</p>
<p><strong>Flutter</strong></p>
<p>Flutter I find fascinating, because it enables you to build apps for Android, iOS, Linux, Windows, macOS and the web.
This enables huge re-usability in logic between clients.</p>
<p>Although I'm quite interested in Flutter, its built upon the Dart programming language, designed and built by google.
This means learning a programming language, which is quite exciting, but does require a lot of dedication.</p>
<p><strong>React Native</strong></p>
<p>React Native is like Flutter in where you can build applications for Android and iOS mainly,
with added support for Linux, Windows and macOS using 3rd party packages.</p>
<p>I'm quite convertible with React Native, I still have to search quite often for common issues.
The main reason I would learn React Native would be the possibility of sharing business logic between the server, web and app.
Which is fascinating and brings stability to the whole stack, because some piece and be build once and used across the whole stack.</p>
<h2>Master NestJS</h2>
<p>I love NestJS, it's like Laravel (PHP all-in-one framework) for JS.
It has everything built in you need for a modern application stack.
with features to build monolithic or distributed applications.</p>
<p>I have used it extensively myself and really want to master it this year.
Because it's so big, there are still some components that are fairly unknown for me.
So I want to learn these components myself.</p>
<h2>Learn GraphQL</h2>
<p>I love the idea behind GraphQL, where you decide in the frontend which data you get and not in the backend.
This is reason enough for me to learn it.</p>
<h2>Expand my home lab</h2>
<p>In the beginning of 2021, I started with a small home lab consisting of a desktop and a switch.
Although I can run several programs on it using Proxmox, I still want to expand it.</p>
<p><strong>Current setup</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Desktop<ul>
<li>4C/8T i7-4790</li>
<li>16GB DDR3</li>
<li>1TB HDD</li>
</ul></li>
<li>Switch Netgear 16 port switch</li>
</ul>
<p>I currently use it to run a pi-hole VM and to test concepts with Proxmox,
but I already bump into some limitations of the current hardware.</p>
<p>Although my current setup is decent, I have some bigger plans for it.
Which requires me to have more storage, something the current desktop does not really support.
So I'm looking for a server rack to host some servers,
where I will be running a Proxmox cluster, with at least 2 (ideally 3) nodes.</p>
<p>I also want to set up a Steam cache, which actively caches steam, and other launchers, game updates.
So I don't have to download updates over the internet, and it can be downloaded before I need it.</p>
<p>I want to move away from Google based products.
So I want to have an Owncloud instance running on it with email support and off site backups.</p>
<h2>For fun</h2>
<p>Although I have quite a few items on this list, I want to keep the mastering and learning fun.
This will help me to keep motivated in whatever I'm learning.</p>


Technologies I'm learning in 2021

<p>Recently I got major interest into the dying media called teletext.
I'm really interested in it because how it was one of the first,
widely available way of sharing data.</p>
<h2>Research material</h2>
<p>First I needed some research material before I write a line of code.
I started looking for some teletext viewer for on my machine,
but than stumbled up on online teletext viewers.
Where I found out they are quite a few online teletext pages available for some TV channels.</p>
<p>The one that gave me a lot of inspiration was one for how to structure my website was the <a href="https://nos.nl/teletekst#100">Dutch NOS teletext</a>.
The way they handle the connection between website and teletext I really enjoy using.</p>
<h2>Navigation</h2>
<p>from what I remember the pages range from 100 to 999,
which was indeed correct.
What I didn't remember was that evert page has sub pages,
so every page can have a sub page like 100-1 to I guess 100-999.</p>
<p>So I have about 899 pages available for my website. Which I think is enough for the foreseeable future.
I always can Modify the numbers to allow up to 9999 if I really need additional pages.</p>
<p>The sub pages I'm going to use for long articles,
and I'm planning to handle automatically.</p>
<h2>Design</h2>
<p>I see the use of 6 colours: red, green, yellow, blue, white and black,
where black is the prominent colour.</p>
<p>I also see that the UI exists out of either squares or text where the squares are used for UI elements.</p>
<p>Mono fonts are also the ruling font type of this landscape, which makes sense for a square based UI.</p>
<h2>Final words</h2>
<p>Although this research was quite simple, it gave me a lot of idea's about the implementation.</p>
<p>My next steps are creating a design for the UI and its elements, this will be a challenge, because my design skills are lacking.
Where after I can start making some component library for the different teletext styled elements.</p>
<p>One upside of going wit the teletext theme is that its dark mode by default.</p>
<p>A challenge that I already can foresee is the mobile first way of designing. I already have some cool solutions for this,
because I want to have some sort of remote control for the site.</p>


Ian's blog

Posts

Hello World!

Technologies I'm learning in 2021

Teletext research part 1