What I'm doing now

Frankly, defining Work and Non-Work is a bit of a challenge for me, since I enjoy my work so much.

I’ll use Work to describe what I do most of the time and Non-Work to describe what I’m doing in-between.

Work

These days I’m mostly focused on consulting as a fractional Cloud Architect / DevOps Engineer. I enjoy working with small and mid-size startups, where I can leverage a mix of my technical and business skills. Depending on my load I can be available for 5-20 hours per week to help your project (reach out).

1. SRE & DevOps Projects

These projects occupy the largest chunk of my time on a regular basis.

I use my hands-on skills as an SRE, DevOps or Cloud Architect

• Event Management Platform (AWS, RDS, EKS, Terraform, GitOps, Ruby on Rails
• Transportation Management Platform (AWS, RDS, DynamoDB, Serverless, Terraform, GitOps, TypeScript)
• Scalable Browser Automation System (AWS, MongoDB, ECS, Terraform, GitOps, Selenium Grid, C#)

For the list of past projects see Past Projects.

2. Lab Projects

Since I enjoy SRE & DevOps so much (maybe too much) I decided to challenge myself and start building projects where I can stay away from anything DevOps-related.

I tend to code in Python, Go and TypeScript. I try to do my best not to get involved in infrastructure work as much as possible while doing my Lab Projects.

2.1. ScreenPear: Screenshot Privacy tool

• Stack: Python, EasyOCR, OpenCV
• Deployment: Local (for now)
• Description: A tool that helps you to string replace text on screenshots.

Still a POC. Currently, getting quality to a usable state.

2.2. Travel Expense Assistant for Solopreneurs

• Stack: Python, Flask, Supabase, TypeScript
• Deployment: Google App Script, Hetzner Cloud, Kamal
• Description: Tool that helps solopreneurs to track their travel expenses and maximize deductions.

I use it a lot myself, but there is no public version yet.

Non-Work

This is a hard one to point out, since the Work section is basically what I enjoy the most. Busy with projects, no significant progress in the non-work section. Although, some things are happening.

1. Languages

Been learning tiny bits of Japanese recently. Hiragana is getting better, very little Kanji is a small win too. こんにちわ!

Learned a bit more Estonian words too (mostly name of produce/groceries), also seems like I’m getting the melodic part of the language a bit too.

I love languages in general. At the moment I can communicate in English, Russian, German, Portuguese, Spanish, Croatian and Ukrainian and some others at varying levels.

2. Music

Back in 2000s I used Propellerhead Reason extensively, decided to give it a try again and downloaded Reason 12 Trial. WOW, it changed so much since then. Biggest shock: one doesn’t need a mixer anymore. We’ll see how it goes.

Finally, got access to my Jackson JS. Looking forward to play it, just need to change the strings!

3. Travel

3.1. Lisbon

A place to enjoy Pastel de Nata and buy really good dinnerware from Costa Nova. I always find myself enjoying these shady streets and the smell of the ocean.

3.2. Tallinn

Summers are wonderful here, 20C/68F - 25C/77F, long days and short nights.

I also enjoy a healthy mixture of high-tech and post-Soviet vibe here

4. Video Games

Last game played: Cyberpunk 2077. It’s alright, but I missed a more advanced stealth mechanics (vs Hitman or Metal Gear Solid or Deus Ex). Was super impressed by how well it ran on GeForce Now in 4k.

Finally, got access to my Xbox. Thinking to play Metal Gear Solid V again.

Looking into building a thin-ish client for GeForce Now on Ryzen 7 to play Steam Games.