The beginning of the year is a great time to start new habits that can help you to achieve your personal and professional goals. That’s why I decided to share one of the most important habits I developed in the last years which considerably impacted my health and productivity as a Software Engineer. Very straightforward: Drink Water!

Several software products and applications had bugs related to Brazil’s time zone recently due to Bolsonaro’s arbitrary decree that ends the DST (Daylight Saving Time / Summer Time). Many people are still using browsers operating with daylight saving time. You may have noticed this if you use WhatsApp or Telegram in your browser. At Peerdustry, we also faced an interesting bug in our platform which we affectionately named it Bolsonaro’s Bug that deserves to be discussed in more detail.

Since I started working as a full-time Software Engineer at Peerdustry I’ve been having a lot of trouble finding the time to do everything I wanted outside of my work hours. Consequently, I have contributed to FLOSS projects less often than I would like and I have not been able to write a single blog post this year. However, I have had some progress recently in organizing my time. Regarding the writing habit, I will try a more minimalist approach to improve my frequency by writing short texts with some quick notes or tips that are useful to others and myself in the future. This is my first post where I apply this approach. It has a little tip about how to initialize your Ruby objects passing named arguments with a Hash.

Last week I was attending my first DebCamp which was an amazing and enjoyable experience. In a nutshell, I was in the right environment to leverage my GSoC project since I was able to develop new features for Distro Tracker while interacting with other experienced Debian contributors who provided me highly valuable feedback and ideas. However, in this post, I will focus on reporting my main activities during DebCamp and presenting my early impressions.

I recently became an active contributor to the Debian project, which has been consolidated throughout my GSoC project. In addition to the great learning with my mentors, Lucas Kanashiro and Raphäel Hertzog, the feedback from other community members has been very valuable to the progress we are making in the Distro Tracker. Tomorrow, thanks to Debian project sponsorship, I will take off for Hsinchu, Taiwan to attend DebCamp and DebConf18. It is my first DebConf and I’m looking forward to meeting new people from the Debian community, learn a lot and make useful contributions during the time I am there.