What I'm doing now

(This is a now page, and if you have your own site, you should make one, too.)

Work

I am working at Arena Flowers as a Senior Ruby Developer. I work on supporting our existing customer-facing apps and websites as well as our internal production systems. I also mentor a junior backend developer.

I get a good split of adding value to legacy systems, and working on greenfield projects using the latest version of Rails and other new technologies where applicable. Recently I’ve been playing with Hotwire.

Raising a family

I have a happy, if slightly chaotic, existence in Mid Sussex with my wife, 2 young children (aged 2 and 4) and cat. Raising children has been altogether more challenging than I could've imagined, but incredibly life-affirming. Whilst time to myself has become a precious resource, I can't deny the resultant sharpening of my mental focus.

On the side

I am continually chipping away on my personal site: samdking.co.uk (this site). This site is built on Eleventy, a Javascript static site generator, and replaces my old and ageing PHP blog previously on samueldking.co.uk. I ❤️ trashing old code. I use this site as a playground to try new visualisations of my personal data.

Since I began journalling in early 2021, I've started systemising more and more parts of my life in Notion. Spending, reading, socialising, dental hygiene, and meal-planning are among some of the things I now record.

I’ve also been tinkering with my long-running Monday Night Football stats site with my good friend Davs. This site collates and displays results from our weekly football games as far back as 2015. You can find this at mnf.davshoward.com. Davs handles most of the frontend, and my site powers the backend, and is written in Laravel.

The “On the Side” Slack community has provided a great space to find motivation and a welcoming group of people to help keep side projects ticking away. If you're struggling with accountability or inspiration on your side project, join in!

Running

In the last few years I've started taking my running more seriously. Consistency is key. Races keep me interest piqued and competitive fire burning. Regular Parkruns lend a helping hand too. But really it’s an escape for my mind. Regularity, good nutrition & listening to my body allows me to stay largely injury-free. Which has been a big help to my football too.

In the summer of 2023 I finally achieved my goal of a sub-20 5k (19:45). Earlier in the year I registered a 10k PB of 41:59. In September I ran a Half Marathon PB of 1:32:00. In 2022 I hit my milestone 50th Parkrun and am well on my way to the century.

Reading

I have a recurring target to read more. I have a mental block which stops me dedicating more time to reading. Something about the passivity of the activity I think. In 2024 I have a goal of reading 1 fiction book a month (for entertainment), and a non-fiction book every other month (for knowledge).

Writing

I’m trying to build a regular writing habit on my blog. Currently I’m documenting the systems that make up this website, reviewing things I've found interesting, and other general musings.

You can find out what I’ve listened to, have read, and watched this year; as well as what I'm up to fitness-wise. You can also check out my goals and my weekly stats for the year.

Page last updated: 29th February 2024