Not a newbie anymore!

As all my 3 visitors/year know, I started a job at PrettyLittleThing.com recently. Well… recently meaning 6 months ago, give or take.

The reason I’m writing this now is that I recently beacame a full-blown “unicorn”. This means I passed my 6 months probation. So I’m “one of the gang” now 🙂 Anyway, the thing is I like this job even more after those first 6 months. I mean, really like. Really, really like it!

The role changed slightly as well, not only a “senior magento developer“, but now a “senior developer“, meaning that I’m doing so much more now, getting to play with a lot of new and cutting-edge technologies and getting the proper time to learn new things.

I will only mention a few – started to build stuff hardcore now using the Amazon Web Services stack, with the language of choice for the Lambda Functions being NodeJS and the data storage in DynamoDB.

As a new framwork to build the UIs, started to look into ReactJS and absolutely loving it. Javascript is not what is used to be, evolved so much while I was burrying my head only in Magento!

So yeah, in other words – love this job! 🙂

Peace out! 🙂

Gotta go and play chess with my boy (he just started going to a chess club in school and he’s really hooked!).

Bohemian Rhapsody

I know, I know, kinda late, but I finally went to see Bohemian Rhapsody. This really is one of those films you don’t want to miss.

Now, I can’t pretend to be the biggest Queen fan to ever walk the Earth, not even close. However, I do enjoy Queen’s music, quite a bit actually. I certainly recognise their place in modern music history. I do admit that Freddie Mercury was one of the greatest voices to ever come close to a mic!

That being said, I do think that the film was one of the greatest, epic biographies ever made into a film. Don’t know ALL the details from Queen’s and Freddie’s life and career, but for a “big screen” release, I think it was amazing.

Not to mention the soundtrack, of course. We established at the beginning of the post that I really do like Queen’s music. It was loud. It was sad at times. It was flamboyant. It was larger than life. In other words, I think it pictured Freddie’s life and persona really great.

On the other hand – I’m not a film critic, what do I know?!

Anyway, really enjoyed it. If you’re a big Queen fan and see the film, you will most likely start doing the “oh, that was so inaccurate!” or other things. It’s a film, take it with a pinch of salt.

So if you ask me – go out and watch it! If you like Queen at least as much as I do, don’t miss it.

PS: damn those onion-cutting ninjas around me in the dark there, at times…

My 90s Playlist

Ok, it’s no secret that I like music. Even more than that, big fan of 90s music. Of course I am, considering that’s the “era” I was growing up in, cool decade to be a teenager.

image (c) repeatedredundancy.wordperss.com

I wanted to add in this list songs that are triggering any kind of memory/feeling about those years. Some songs I love. Some I hate. Nevertheless, they are triggering a reaction, like I said. So some sort of a “guilty pleasure” playlist.

I’m well over that “oh, I hate that song, will never add it to any of my playlists” crap (comes with age, I guess…) so here it is. My 90s!

The 90s, in my opinion, is the last decade great music was made. All was downhill from there. Shitty music nowadays. I do realise I sound like an old fart now, but don’t really give a f**k 🙂

Enjoy!

Starting again, somewhere new

No, not leaving the country this time 🙂 And also, not talking about one of my all-time favourite songs. Just some changes. Big changes. Bigger than last time I said this.

End of an Era

Starting the end of last month (Sept. 2018 that is), I’m no longer a “Space 48”-er. It was a difficult decision to make, but I had to do it. When asked “why”, I replied that like most “Hollywood marriages”, it comes a time when “irreconcilable differences” needs to be called. Lately been feeling more and more that the company’s future plans don’t really align with my own. This, plus the fact that despite being with the company a bit over 7 years, was feeling more and more pushed aside, “out of the way”. Felt like it wasn’t “my Space 48” anymore. Not in the sense of “ownership”, of course, it’s a figure of speech. Also, the infusion of new people in the company didn’t helped me either. Let’s just say I wasn’t seeing “eye to eye” with most of them.

So as I said, was a difficult decision to make, but I made it, in the end.

Reboot

Found a new “home away from home”. Still in Manchester. I no longer work for an agency, I went “full-retail” starting this October. The company is PrettyLittleThing.com and is what is called a “fast fashion” retailer. They’re big! Really big! Or should I say now “we’re big”? And it’s pink! With Unicorns! 🙂

And “fast” it is, indeed! Love the fact that it keeps me challenged all the time, with new ideas to be implemented. For a really long time I heard things like “oh, it’s the worst, working retailer-side”, or “you wouldn’t like it”. Pardon my “French” – Bullsh*t! I love it, over there! Not to mention the people, everyone I came in contact with so far have been really friendly and very helpful. For the moment, I didn’t felt like there are any over-sized egos or something. I know, I know, I’m still new there, a “sping-chicken” but personally, I usually spot people that fit that pattern a few miles away.

Oh, one important thing I’m starting to realise here is that not everything starts and ends with Magento. I’m slowly starting to look into and work with other technologies. Not talking necessarily only about ecommerce platforms, but programming languages/technologies as well. Should’ve done this some time ago, really…

And by the way, (re)starting to get back into Python, fancied it when I was way younger, wondering now why I gave it up (I believe this is my mid-life crisis).

Anyway, that’s kinda it, for my autumn update.

See ya’ in my next post (probably in about a year or so, given my proven track record of posting here). My all 3 visitors/year will be so disappointed 😀

Peace out!

My first Magento 2 contribution

Ok, so I guess I’m stepping up the ladder now, become one of the “grown-ups”, in the Magento Universe?!

The issue

Of course not! Not with this one. However, I’ve just opened my 1st Magento2 contribution, in the form of a pull-request (found here: Pull Request ).

The problem was rather simple: the remote_ip field in both  sales_orders and quote tables was 32 chars long, and to store IPV6 addresses, 45 is required.

Hope it’ll get approved and merged, fingers crossed 😀

Update: automated tests passed for the PR.

Magento 2 Pull Request
Magento 2 Pull Request

Old laptop display brought back to life!

A long time ago, used to have a Dell Vostro. It was a beauty, I must say. 17inch wide display, 16RAM, Intel i7 processor, 500GB hard-drive.

On the downside – well… it was a Dell. Chunky, like old Dells were, back in the day. It served it’s purpose for me, for quite a few years, and after I was done with it, my son used it for… well – gaming. Most of them old “retro” games. That was until I introduced the RetroPie build in our household 🙂

Continue reading →

Almost new year

Whoaa! It’s been a while since I wrote something on this blog!

So, almost new year. I’ll try not to make the usual “my new year resolution is 1440x……”. Oh sh*t! Just did! 🙂

In “other news”, Santa got my son a PS4 this year, and it was a bundle with the “Uncharted 4” game. Maaaan, that was a really bad decision… The other night I stayed up until almost 4am to play. Haven’t done this since I was 20-something. Still recovering, but I think I’ll “temp fate” again tonight, let’s see what happens. Even more so after finishing the session last time, I thought “yeah, I feel like I’m close to finish the game” and noticed that my progress was at about 3% of the entire game! I mean… 3! THREE!!! Something must me done! Will try and stay up late tonight again! 😀 Continue reading →