2020

Published on January 1, 2021 (ā†» February 5, 2024), filed under (RSSĀ feed).

2020 has been a strange year, a year of challenges, but overall aā€”good year.

Personally

With leaving Round Table, joining Jimdo (see below), and facing the pandemic my personal life had early been put upside-down. Itā€™s still not nearly asā€¦ vibrant as it was pre-Covid. (How could itā€”Germany is in another ā€œlockdown.ā€)

For the first time in I-donā€™t-know-how-many years I didnā€™t leave the country. Beatriz and I also went on only one vacation, a 10-day road trip through Germany. That we used, however, to finally explore the Rhine region (including the Lorelei) as well as the Alps around Berchtesgaden.

Jens, Beatriz, Wartburg.

Figure: From our improvised road trip, then at the Wartburg (Eisenach).

After 10 years of being a vegetarian, including 2 years of contemplation, I finally became a vegan. The impulse came from Earthlings, but then again I was ready. If youā€™re acting like a speciesistā€¦ reconsider whether that is really you. Speciesism may well be at the root of the -isms we see around us: sexism, racism, ageism, &c. pp. Help stop this madness.

I picked up kart-racing as a new hobby. Iā€˜m about a second away from the track record at my ā€œhome track,ā€ Mega Kart, an ekart fun racing circuit in Norderstedt. I still have much to learn, including what to focus on for my next milestone. (Since the last ā€œlockdownā€ in November racing has been on hold, however.)

I purchased a small apartment.

(Iā€™m grateful.)

Looking into making my life more adventurous again I triedā€”too little. However, I finally got to donate blood. And I donated blood. Twice. And will continue to do so.

I was not sick a single day of 2020. No matter the Covid-related home office work, having established a new workout routine early during the year Iā€™m in fact more fit than the year before. As a vegan Iā€™m feeling even better.

I worked 9.5 months from home.

Professionally

I joined Jimdo as an engineering manager, to build and guide our newly founded Marketing Tooling team. I could write an entire post, perhaps a small book about our work, but Iā€™ll keep it short and just say that I love the Engineeringā€“Marketing challenge, my teamā€”muchā€”, and Jimdo. Join us.

The Jimdo office.

Figure: From the only (weekend) visit to the office after the initial six weeks I had worked on site.

I released The Web Development Glossary, based on an idea that first felt strange, that I then wanted to try out, and that now, in my view, has turned into a pretty cool book project with a lot of long-term use and potential. The glossary is alive and I intend to establish it as the glossary for web development. No matter whether a beginner or an expert, reading it will boost your industry knowledge.

I also published Upgrade Your HTML II (yes, thereā€™s a first part, even a bundle). This was book and booklet #15 for me. I used to liken writing books to having children, where #1 is probably most exciting, but I feel like I canā€™t say this anymore.

Humbled to join the team, I wrote a good part of the HTTP Archiveā€™s Web Almanacā€™s Markup chapter for 2020. I also reviewed and added to the CSS chapter. This was much more work than I had anticipated, but I deem the Web Almanac an invaluable project and am very happy to have contributed, as one of many, many contributors who have created this great resource.

Fueled both by a thirst to try new things but also to learn I made several certifications, including Professional Agile Leadership (PAL I), HubSpot Service Hub Software, and HubSpot CMS for Developers (I evaluated HubSpot and felt the certifications would be a nice way to get to know the software while also getting something tiny to show for it). The last couple of months Iā€™ve prepared for AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner, but the certification is going to fall into 2021.

Statistics

Of the photos I took, I kept 1,210. Of the videos, 12.

I watched 118 films. According to my IMDb records, the worst rating was 4/10, which I gave two films, the best rating was 10/10, and Iā€™m not sharing which one; eight films I rated 8/10, of which Iā€™ll document five: 1917 (2019), Die Nibelungen: Siegfried (1924), La isla mĆ­nima (2014), Incendies (2010) and Gruppo di famiglia in un interno (1974). I found these to be pretty good films, for different reasons.

I sent 2.860 personal emails and 617 professional emails. I receivedā€¦ innumerable personal emails and 12.273 professional emails.

GitHub saw 1.724 contributions; I did not count the 100s of commits in private Bitbucket or the 10s in GitLab.

I wrote 28 articles for my own sites and 3 articles for other sites. (2 I know of got featured on Hacker News: A Short Guide to Minimal Web Development and Ignore AMP.)

I read 87 books (Goodreads has all my favorites) and wrote (started or finished) 4 books: Apart from releasing The Web Development Glossary and Upgrade Your HTML II I completed a short HTML book that I decided to hold back for now, and I started another containing kind of an HTML and CSS snapshot. (Stay tuned!)

ā§ There was more. Sure. It was a long, monotonous, exhausting year, too, but I amā€”and we here at home areā€”healthy and grateful.

Hereā€™s to 2021!

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About Me

Jens Oliver Meiert, on September 30, 2021.

Iā€™m Jens, and Iā€™m an engineering lead and author. Iā€™ve worked as a technical lead for companies like Google, Iā€™m close to W3C and WHATWG, and I write and review books for Oā€™Reilly and Frontend Dogma. I love trying things, not only in web development, but also in other areas like philosophy. Here on meiert.com I share some of my views andĀ experiences.

If you have a question or suggestion about what I write, please leave a comment (where applicable) or aĀ message.