Monthly Insights #001
Kicking off 2020 with my recommended resources on data science, software development, mindful productivity & updates on my latest posts and projects.
Hi 👋!
I hope you had a great start to 2020! Mine has been a busy one, getting stuck into projects, preparing for a new job and starting on some of my new year goals!
Over the past 2 years, I've been focusing on learning, growing and networking as a Data Scientist, developer, writer and maker and uncovering new passions along the way. During this time I have found significant value in various resources, communities and groups and am constantly discovering new ones!
I am excited to kick off this newsletter and share with you each month details of these incredible communities, my latest tips, tutorials and projects and to highlight my go-to resources that you too can learn from.
As part of my new year goals, I’m aiming to read 20 books in 2020 with the year off to a good start completing 2 non-fiction books as listed below, both of which I’d highly recommend checking out! 👇
I’d love to hear about what you plan to achieve this year and any recommendations for books or resources that you’ve come across!
📰Latest Posts
Build a Weekly Planning Dashboard in Notion: Follow this quick start guide to build a weekly planning dashboard in Notion to track your tasks, meetings and monitor your progress.
Create a favicon from an image file: Quick tips to create a favicon for your website from an image file on a mac.
Git revision histories: These simple commands can be used to edit your git history.
You can also find a selection of my articles on Medium.
🔍Top resources
This month’s recommended resources from across the web.
Waylon Walker’s blog: If you’re looking for top python, git and software development tips, check out Waylon’s blog. I came across his DEV article and was absorbed by the great amount of knowledge and details he shares!
Nesslabs: Another invaluable resource for makers. Anne-Laure provides productivity tips with daily articles and her weekly newsletter Maker Mind. Starting a regular writing habit, I found the article on overcoming writer’s block especially useful this month.
Do you have a new mac and are wanting to set up your environment for development? Check out Mina Markham’s formation script to quickly install all the tools you need. ⚠️ This resource comes with a warning: be sure to read and understand the script before running!
🚀Projects
Passion projects and challenges I’ve been working on in January.
#ProjectEuler100 Challenge: Starting 2020 by following the challenge set by FreeCodeCamp to complete the first 100 problems of Project Euler. There are some exciting puzzles and it’s not too late to join the challenge yourself!
My website: I’ve updated my personal website using Craig’s Jeykll tailwind template and migrated my medium articles so they are no longer only behind medium’s paywall. If you have any feedback on my site, I’d love to hear from you!
Writing: With a goal of writing more this year, I joined 200wordsaday (now The Cowriters) and started with a daily writing habit. Whilst writing 200 words daily was achievable, I quickly moved away from the platform to using my private Notion workspace and have been aiming to maintain a regular, rather than daily, practice for the past few weeks including writing draft articles, book reviews and collating useful resources to share with you here!
SpeakersLive: Over the past few months I’ve been working with Craig to build a platform for speakers to find new opportunities and connections in the North West. It’s been my first exposure to Ruby on Rails for this project and learning best practices and techniques from Craig has been invaluable. Launch date coming soon!
📚This month’s book recommendations
One of my goals for 2020 is to read 20 books, with a 50/50 mix of fiction and non-fiction.
I’ve given the first two books I’ve read a Goodreads rating of 4/5 and recommend checking them out… book reviews in progress! 👀
#001: The Moment of Lift by Melinda Gates
#002: Just Listen by Mark Goulston
📘 Currently reading: The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye by David Lagercrantz
Next month I will report back on starting at my new job, tech podcasts I’ve been listening to and my top resources for February!
See you then!
Kerry