Top Nine for 2019

It has been a while since the last time I have made a year-ender blog post. There wasn't much stuff last year so I was unable to make one. This year, I decided to highlight small and big things that happened. Here are my personal top nine for 2019.

Church Wedding

Celine and I finally got married in the Catholic Church last July.

Twice in Manila

We were able to be in the Philippines twice this year: February while doing the wedding requirements and June-July for the actual wedding. It was both wondeful as we get to meet family and friends.

Tigcal Apps and Projects

There has been two updates to Sweldong Pinoy this year: updating SSS contributions and the other one was for updating PhilHealth contributions. The latter also included Dark Theme among other design improvements. We also released a new version of Budget Pinoy.

The repository for Tigcal Apps has been open sourced on Github. Tigcal Apps has served as my sandbox project for learning and working on Material Design Components, AndroidX, Kotlin, Dark Theme, and more.

Boto Ko was also updated for the 2019 National and Local Elections in the Philippines. I also added in my Tigcal Samples repository the Android projects I've worked with in the past few months and the Bill Calculator I removed from Tigcal Utils. A separate repository was also made for my Tigcal Utilities app.

Special Project

I am working on a special project. This is my first time to do this kind of project. It's still a work in progress so I can't share anything yet.

Vancouver Sun Run 2019

After more than two years, I was able to run again! On April 14, I ran at Vancouver Sun Run. I finished the 10k at 01:05:55.

Monthly Run

From April to December of this year, I was able to run at least once a month, with a minimum of 10 kilometers per run.

My Monthly 10k Strava Challenge Trophy

Weight Watch

Earlier this year, I managed to record my lowest weight since I started recording on Google Fit way back 2014.

Hacktoberfest 2019

I tried joining Hacktoberfest this year.

Hacktoberfest 2019

Le Français

I've been learning some French on Duolingo for some time now. As of December 31, I am already on a 924-day streak on the app. They had also implemented leagues and I am have slowly moved up to the Diamond League, the highest league (so far).

My streak, league, XP, and achievements

2020 Vision

I'm looking forward to next year! It's going to be another great year.

Hacktoberfest 2019

One night, while reading various tech articles online, I stumbled upon Hacktoberfest. Hacktoberfest 2019 is a month-long celebration of open source software run by DigitalOcean and DEV. Apparently, it's been running for years now every from October 1 to 31. They reward anyone who make 4 valid pull requests on any Github repositories with a cool T-shirt and stickers. The pull requests doesn't even need to be technical. Aside from code, they can be design, documentation, and other minor changes.

I found it interesting. While I have already made some small open source contributions before and plan to do more and better ones in the future, I decided to join it this year. Finishing the challenge would give me some minor acccomplishment especially at a time I'm a bit feeling down. It would also motivate me in the stuff I'm doing now and planning to do.

I was looking through the suggested repositories and issues. Some looks spammy while the others are a bit more complicated for me. I decided to just do small contributions to the group where I've been a part of for more than 7 years.

I did it!

I'm not sure if I'm doing it again next year. We'll see... It might be better if people can contribute to my Github repositories during (or even outside the month of) Hacktoberfest too but helping others in their open source projects is good too.

The Hacktoberfest 2019 shirt

If you haven't contributed yet to open source, Hacktoberfest is definitely a great way to get started. But you don't need to wait for another October to start contributing. You can start now.

Vancouver Sun Run 2019

It has been more than two years since the last time I ran. On April 14, I joined Vancouver Sun Run 2019 with my co-workers from Aequilibrium. Our team name is aeqcelerate.

Vancouver Sun Run is Canada’s largest 10K race and it's already on its 35^th year. Around 40, 000 runners joined the event. There were Wave Start Times and I was in the White Bib Wave (those with estimated time of 61-75 minutes).

The views in the route were great even if it was a bit cloudy. Almost midway in the route, it started to rain. All of a sudden, there was a hailstorm. I continued to run despite all the hail that fell. I finished the run in 01:05:55. During the run, I also used Strava. My record there is 10.51 km in 1:06:25.

After the run, we went inside BC Place for the Wrap Party. There were drinks, bagels, fruits, and snacks there. It was a great experience being a part of Vancouver Sun Run 2019. I am hoping I can run again next year.