Timofei Sablin

Jenkins can be quite tricky when you need to define conditional logic within the dsl, but not specifically in script {} block. The latter allows for any plain groovy code, so that’s quite easy. But sometimes you need team interaction; in such cases it’s useful to resort to the input() method. The most common scenario is when want a basic approve/abort, so there you just do:

For a software engineer, it’s extremely important to work in a collective of professional, enthusiastic and engineering-driven people. No matter of the business specifics.

Here’s why:

• Most evident: one learns from other’s experience, therefore becomes better implicitly. There’s always someone who’s better, faster, stronger, and that a plus for less experienced around. It’s true not only for specific areas of business but rather for life in general. If one recognizes this by reflection, it’s also almost enough to move forward educating.

  more →

Think of it — it sounds easy to leave the office for remote work when you work in IT: all things are done via the Internet, you have no stoppers, no barriers. If you’re not a pharmacist, in need to start serving clients at 9:00 at the counter - just pack your luggage and go anywhere. Nice when you also have no ties to time zones, but, to what I know that’s rare among client-facing engineers or developers. The reality is that things change when you actually get there and open your computer.

Some time ago there were some troubles with my wifi connection, since the workplace is located in the most remote part of my home. I managed to get a powerline adapter, after which my main workstation became exposed to the full ISP provided bandwidth. Then an idea came up to also connect the Xbox (in the same room), but it appeared inconvenient to do it with cables. So I decided to make a wireless access point on my Fedora 25, which would be bridged to the wired interface and share it’s traffic with the Xbox.

Setting up a Mikrotik as a wireless SOHO router at home is a relatively easy task for even a seasoned system administrator. Setting up 802.11 protocol to perform fast, fluent and adapted to the environment is an advanced thing that requires some in-depth knowledge of the field.

Some time ago I purchased a used RB951Ui-2HnD and set it to work in default mode. After making some basic settings such as the wireless channel, channel width and transmission power, I have noticed that the connection speed and latency in remote corners of the apartment is still awful. The signal is bearable, but I get only 5mbps out of 50mbps download speed over the air. 50 mbps is the tariff that comes from the ISP, but I get some sure 45-48mbps when measured in clear site with the router, over WLAN. My apartment is 70m2 and most of the walls are made of think concrete. Obviously, increasing solely the transmission power will bring nothing, except lots of extra signal noise. I needed a way to improve the situation without purchasing any additional hardware or cabling.

I recently changed my job and became suddenly exposed to a whole new world of engineering, with new standards, people, practices and tools. This overwhelming new world of information amuses me, making think about large problems for days. This, in turn, brings solutions which took hours to aggregate by collecting data, probing and analyzing how something works.