Hello! My name is Eduardo, and this is my blog (as you can probably tell by now). I just want to make a quick post explaining who I am, what I've been up to and will be up to in the near future, and talk about why I decided to create this blog and what is the content you can expect to see here.

I have almost no experience when it comes to writing or blogging, so this post may not be very well structured but I think it will get the job done. Let's get started 👌

So... who am I?

My name is Eduardo Ribeiro, I'm 20 years old and I'm from Porto, in Portugal. I am currently in university, doing a MSc in Informatics and Computing Engineering at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto, or FEUP. At the time of writing this, I am starting my 2nd semester of my 4th year in university, out of the total 5. I am also currently a research assistant at INESC TEC, having a project related to big data and electricity/energy markets.

Since entering university and learning more about programming and software development, I fell in love with this area, and it is without a doubt what I want to be pursuing for my career (at least for now... we never know what the future holds 👀). Despite of that, I still don't know exactly what I want to be doing, but I am interested in various areas and topics like distributed systems, web development, AI, IoT, cloud, and others.

So... what do I do apart from software related stuff? I am a big fan of sports, mainly football and tennis, and I've recently started to follow the NBA (kind of). I also love chess, being one of the things I want to get better at this year. Another big hobby that I've picked up last year is learning new languages, and I am currently learning German. Other hobbies include your typical "gaming", "traveling" and "music".

What I've been recently up to

In mid/late January, I finished my 1st semester exams in university, with good results overall, which was a big relief as I could finally rest a bit and focus on some personal projects.

I spent these past two weeks basically at home all the time (I could complain about Covid here, but to be honest I probably wouldn't want it that much different... maybe just a little). A decent amount of time in these past two weeks have been spent gathering ideas and building this personal website/blog.

Regarding my work at INESC TEC, my current project is supposed to be concluded in late January/early February, so I've also been working on that and wrapping that up.

I have also been preparing some workshops and projects for our student branch, NIAEFEUP.

Apart from that, I've been practicing and learning German every day, exercising at home, and practicing my chess here and there.

What I will be up to

As I've said, I am starting my 2nd semester of my 4th year in university (out of 5), so that's going to be my main occupation for the next few months.

I've also said that my current project at INESC TEC is coming to an end, but I am now starting a new project, still related to electricity/energy markets, but this time covering areas and domains like blockchain and smart contracts, which is very interesting to me and is definitely an area I would like to research about more.

I also signed up for a German language course, in order to take the thing to the next level, as I've only been using Duolingo so far (which by the way I highly recommend if you're thinking about learning a new language. Sponsorship? Maybe too soon...).

Last, but definitely not least (and one of the main reasons why I've been learning German), I am going to be a Software Development Intern at Amazon in the summer, which I am really excited about. Hopefully I'll be relocating to Berlin, Germany for the duration of the internship.

Why I decided to create this blog

The main reason is to get out of my comfort zone, expose myself out to the world and tell people a little bit more about me, my interests and what I've been up to. I think it is a great way of sharing information that I’ve learned along the years, regarding SWE and tech related stuff.

I also feel like it is a great way of interacting with people, so it is also a good opportunity for me to learn new things and expand my knowledge on this field.

And lastly, this is kind of my entry point into content creation, something that I've been wanting to try out for a while. So we'll see how it goes.

What to expect from this blog?

I'll keep this blog mainly for tech and software related stuff: activities that I've been doing, projects that I've been working on, and topics I've researched about or just found on the Internet. However, be ready for occasional sprinkles of random stuff that I might chuck into this website 🤩

And that's about it! Hope this post was not too boring/badly structured/long, maybe it was all of the 3, I don't know. I promise I will get better at this. Also, if you have any recommendations, feel free to contact me or open an issue on the website repository.

Anyway, if you have stuck until the end, I thank you for your patience, and I hope you tune in for future posts. Until then!