I’m so happy to have you here. This is where you’ll get to sample a taste of who I am and what I do. I currently live in Ceres, South Africa with my fantastic wife, Lauren, and four champs, Judah and Hosea, Avah, and Ariah.
I work as a problem solver in the software industry with 15 years remote work experience.
| dwain.maralack@gmail.com | Github |
Recent Posts
Farewell WooMattic
I was unfortunately affected by the recent Automattic layoffs. We had a tradition at Automattic to post a farewell message on a special message board called farewell p2. I thought I’d share it on my blog as well as many people that I’ve worked with in the last 12 years have moved on already or were part of the layoffs.
My productivity system
I’ve had this post in draft for over a year. I kept the draft to keep notes and to remind myself of my commitment to a new way to work. After learning about the new system, I jumped in head first and tried it out for a few months,but after discovering the shortcomings I stopped using it.
Converting HTML entities to UTF-8 in VimScript
I wrote a small script to fetch a web page title, inserting it as amarkdown formatted link: [title](URL) One of of the issues I ran into was that some titles contain HTML entities and Vim has no built-in way to deal with this.
On the fence about Neovim
I’ve been using vim for the last 5 years. I’ve written about trying this out 5 years ago and stuck to it. It’s a fantastic experience and I truly enjoy working with this editor. I’ve been rethinking it this week though, as I was updating my configuration to get auto-completion to work.
Small town, big internet
Fibre finally arrived in Ceres! It was a dream to have city-like-speeds in our little town.
Vodacom Fibre Support Headaches
Vodacom is the best mobile operator in the country, period! However, the success doesn’t translate into their Fibre offering. They don’t own all the pieces of the puzzle and I think their processes aren’t geared toward this. Especially with how their support teams are setup. I’ve had two long-standing marathon support interactions over two months and it was not a pleasure.
Long term paternity leave
It’s been five months since I last thought about work. My laptop is in its original packaging. My home office turned into a guest room and work goodies packed away. I’m currently taking a six month break from work since the arrival of Ariah.
The team lead path
Being a team lead at Automattic is not a promotion, but it is very challenging and after doing it for the last year, I understand why.
Easter reminder: Jesus died for you
Thinking ahead about easter/passover weekend, I’m reflecting on the reasons for observing it. I consider this to be the perfect weekend to consider who Jesus is, why He was born and died in such a gruesome manner.
Since 34
This blog has been idle for over a year! The last time I blogged was for my 34th birthday (January 2021). I’m disappointed in my lack of blogging, dropping a ball on becoming a better writer. So let us kick off with a quick update and some photos to match.