About
A Bit About Me
Welcome to my site! I'm Kris, a software engineer, tech enthusiast and person with a bunch of hobbies.
In my spare time, I love tinkering with the latest technology, learning about new things and more recently learning about how to be an effective leader. Occassionally, I actually write posts on this site. Away from the tech, people tell me I'm a coffee connoisseur and foodie.
The Tech Side
I'm a senior software engineer passionate in leading and growing teams in designing, delivering and supporting high quality software. I primarily work on architecture of backends and APIs. Recently, I was the tech lead for API and Integrations at EventMobi helping drive thethe open platform initiatives.
If you want to know more about that, you can check contact me at the at krisviceral at gmail.
About the Site
This blog existed since 2010. That's about 100000 internet years. In 2010, Lebron just left the Cavaliers, Apple just released the first iPad, Twitter and social media wasn't a word. In 2010, I couldn't have even imagined this world of personal assistants on my phone, internet streaming, virtual reality and self-driving cars.
Anyway, this site used to be a place where I can freely share whatever interests me. I wanted to share cool technology, tutorials on experimentations and the likes. I say 'used to' because the past year or so, I've questioned why this site exists. It's difficult, time-consuming and expensive to keep a self-hosted site up and running. Why do I still keep it up? What is my goal? I finally have an answer to these.
The goal of my site is to share knowledge and inspire people to do more and be more. While that sounds like BS, the most rewarding moment for me for this blog was when someone thanked me. As simple as it may sound, I just wrote articles for the sake of writing. There is no ads, there is no desire for fame and no intention for profit. There was some student from a country I knew nothing about that emailed me many years ago saying that a tutorial series I wrote was useful. I think that's my goal, I want to have that moment again. If I managed to help even one person somewhere out there be inspired or learn something new then this blog has been worth it.
What's the deal with all the cats?
I do not own cats. I am also allergic to them. I just wanted to learn how to draw and apply it somewhere. The art style is from the book Doodle Dogs and Sketchy Cats: Fun and Easy Doodling for Everyone
If you're intersted to check out the book, you can find the book via my Amazon Affiliate link https://amzn.to/2vmxsd9
While I was in a random art store, I saw a book about how to doodle cats. I remember as a kid that I loved to draw but I thought I was never good at it. With the whole growth mindset view on things, I decided to give it another go. I thought it was pretty fun to doodle and I wanted it to apply somewhere and I ended up here.
I've been meaning to revamp the site for a while now. I wanted to tackle more topics beyond tech. I thought the old theme and design (from a UX and UI perspective) didn't fit where I wanted it to go. After consulting with some UX friends, I decided to tackle designing the site from scratch. I did some UX design and UI work but I wanted to give my site some personality. The web is becoming overly minimalistic and soulless. I thought adding cats to my site gives it a bit of color and personality.
Privacy and Your Data
With the European Privacy law in place and the recent Facebook privacy fiasco, I wanted to talk about data and privacy. You should always try to protect your data. You should always understand when you give away your information. Ask yourself if it's for a good reason.
Companies exist to make money. They make money off your data by selling it to advertisers. The data you have online is probably a lot more sensitive and it can tell so much about you. Protect it.
This site has no ads, there is no desire for clicks and no intention for profit. There is no newsletter or email subscription because I do not want your email. There is tracking in place. I use Google Analytics (GA) to occassionally check how many people view my site, what posts are popular and so on. I do not see personally identifiable information. GA annonymizes IP addresses. I've set GA to delete data every 14 months (I can't set it any earlier). You can read more about how GA uses your Data here
If you want to disable tracking, why not try ghostery? Ghostery blocks not just Google's but Facebook's and most trackers that exist. If you're interested in protecting your data and keeping it safe, a good place to start is EFF's (Electronic Frontier Foundation) site.