Filip Frącz

CppCon 2021

Tue, 26 Oct 2021 03:00:00 +0000

This year I am very lucky to be able to attend CppCon 2021. Last time I went, the conference was in Bellevue, WA but it now held in Aurora in Colorado. It’s indeed a nice change of scenery, with the Rocky Mountains just a stonethrow away.

Covid travel restrictions mean that there are only about 230 in-person attendees, and many sessions are online-only. On the flip side, face-to-face presentations feel more intimate and it’s easier to ask questions and mingle.

As always, I’ve seen many familiar faces and was to reconnect with friends and former co-workers. Shoutout to all the CTC peeps :-)

YMDK Wings keyboard

Sun, 19 Sep 2021 20:00:00 +0000

I recently built an ergonomic mechanical keyboad using the parts below:

Main kit: aluminum case, hotswap PCBs and USB-C cable from YMDK
Tactile Brown Kailh Box Switches for most of the key from Flashquark
Linear, clicky Gold Kailh speed switches for arrows, esc, enter, space, etc from Flashquark
SA Retro Beige Dyesub PBT Keycaps from Flashquark
Accent SA keycaps came as part of PimpMyKeyboard’s grab bag
QMK configurator for customizing layout

This message made my day

Wed, 02 Oct 2019 03:40:18 +0000

I had a stressful day today. Lots of random things happening; my mind was rather restless.

Suddenly, my phone buzzed.

A Facebook Messenger message.

I was lost for words… Very humbled, honored and… happy 😊

This random message has definitely made my day! Thank you, Nicholas.

I ❤ Mechanical Keyboards!

Thu, 12 Sep 2019 05:28:18 +0000

One of the great things about working at a start-up is meeting passionate people. My gig is no exception, as there are so many colorful personalities here. My jaw dropped to the floor when Kevin Wojkovich brought his Atreus keyboard to the office. I mean I myself was sporting a Goldtouch Go!2, but Kevin’s beauty was simply on another level. I asked him about it, and little did I know that this would be a beginning of a very fun, but expensive hobby for me.

Kevin opened a whole new world to me. He introduced me to the ortholinear key layout, and showed me his other keyboard - the Infinity ErgoDox - which he built from a kit.

ErgoDox EZ

After a few weeks of intensive research, I finally decided to take a plunge. Since it would be my very first mechanical keyboard, I reckoned I should skip the whole soldering part and just purchase a pre-made product. My choice was the ErgoDox EZ. I went with the white, tilted model, with backlit keys in cubic profile.

In addition to the rather classic Kailh brown switches, I purchased a small set of Kailh thick gold speed switches. They are super fun and emit a crisp, high-pitched click on the down- and up-stroke. I use them for all the modifiers. Now my co-workers can really hear my enters and backspaces ☻.

Customization

The folks at ErgoDox EZ really make customization a breeze. Switches are hot-swappable, so no soldering required. There are also thousands of keycap options. I couldn’t help myself and ordered a few color keys from eBay, AliExpress and Flashquark.

ErgoDox is all about customization - it supports up to 32 layers, and every single key is programmable. I devised my own layout based on my preferences and habits. I especially like that there’s ability to change backlight of individual keys based on a layer. For example, I highlight all the numeric keys on my num layer. Same with function keys. Very useful feature!

It took me a while to get used to the ortholinear layout, but nowadays I am as productive as ever. Having the two halves spread out improves my posture, and minimizes shoulder strain.

DSA Keycaps

During the first few weeks of usage, I found myself constantly glancing down and searching for appropriate keys. Needless to say, it was very counterproductive. I also would get headaches from moving my eyes from one half of the keyboard to the other. To mitigate this, I decided to get rid of labels on keys altogether. Flashquark had a good deal, so I purchased a set of translucent DSA keycaps. I actually like that profile much better, as the keys are shorter and easier for me to press. Transparent keys forced me to just embrace my inner typist and now I never look at the keyboard (unless to mess with cool animations, that is (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧).

Hot Dox 🌭

It’s nice to have a cool keyboard at the office, but what about those times when I work from home? Sounds like a perfect excuse to purchase yet another mech! This time around I went with ErgoDox "Hot Dox" by Alpaca keyboards. No backlight, no tilting, but still hot-swappable switches and way cheaper!

I’m using red linear switches for the alphas, thick gold for common modifiers, and white for the remaining modifier keys. It’s actually surprising how different each kind of switch feels! The whites are especially difficult to accidently press. Some day I will get a more stylish set of keycaps, but for the time being I’m stuck with the camo look.

Migrating to Jekyll

Mon, 10 Jun 2019 02:28:18 +0000

My website has been running under WordPress for a few years now, and I have been mostly happy. Every once in a while, my docker container running MariaDB would die rendering the WordPress website unusable. I needed to ssh into my cloud server and bounce the containers. A lot of hassle all for nothing.

I decided to give static content generators a try. Jekyll seems to be the most popular one, and has the added bonus of being the engine behind GitHub Pages. With the help of WordPress to Jekyll plugin I converted the old posts into markdown files. I am now hosting on GitHub itself: all my content is automagically versioned via git, site is always up, and I’m saving cash ordinarly spent on running docker containers. Win-win.

During migration I found this image extreamly helpful. It made the whole process much easier.

$ docker run -it --rm -v "$PWD":/usr/src/app -p "8000:4000" starefossen/github-pages

Game of Thrones Finale

Mon, 20 May 2019 04:00:00 +0000

After eight years, the famous Game of Thrones series is finally over. The last season was a wild ride. I don’t feel satisfied at all! Why didn’t any major character die during the Battle of Winterfell? Why didn’t the Night King just bypass Winterfell and go straight for the 1 million strong King’s Landing? How come Gray Worm allowed John Snow to live at the end?

Reddit seems to agree that the last GoT season was very inconsistent.

Tweet: November 4, 2018 at 14:45

Sun, 04 Nov 2018 18:46:18 +0000

Reddit wisdom. #SoTrue especially in today's American society pic.twitter.com/xnAzREgSr4
— Filip Frącz (@itsff) November 4, 2018

Take care of you; because if you died today, your job will be posted online before your obituary.

Tweet: November 12, 2017 at 01:48PM

Sun, 12 Nov 2017 17:04:35 +0000

Chicago #UnionStation getting some #Christmas decorations http://pic.twitter.com/6F7AmT5Q4F

— Filip Frącz (@itsff) November 12, 2017

from Twitter

Tweet: November 06, 2017 at 09:41AM

Mon, 06 Nov 2017 11:43:00 +0000

My #Hacktoberfest swag has arrived 🤗. An awesome t-shirt and more laptop stickers! #Woot Thank you @digitalocean and @github 😊 http://pic.twitter.com/XsiHo6BwNt
— Filip Frącz (@itsff) November 6, 2017

Tweet: October 31, 2017 at 10:16AM

Tue, 31 Oct 2017 12:18:18 +0000

Published a simple #Excel #RTD server showing how to consume @GDAX #websocket #cryptocurrency ticker feeds. https://t.co/yfPItD5GbZ #bitcoin http://pic.twitter.com/lflkVcpcef
— Filip Frącz (@itsff) October 31, 2017