About

I am a software engineer <slash> TESOL adjunct <slash> python enthiast.

Thanks for visiting my page! For 10 years, I worked as a software engineer for large companies such as Citigroup and The New York Times. During that time, I primarily used Java and J2EE.

When my oldest daughter was born, I decided to stay home with her, while also using the time to pursue other interests. In 2016, I completed a Masters in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), and began teaching English to adults in community and academic programs. During this time, I also began teaching myself Python and completely fell in love with the language.

Currently, I teach English part-time and freelance on python projects.

This blog uses Pelican, a static-site generator, with the pelican-bootstrap3 theme. The static content is formatted using restructured text.

This blog is built using Pelican, a static-site generator built in python, and hosted using GitHubPages. In a nutshell, a static site generator is a library/framework/codebase that generates HTML files using rules specified in config files and content written in some type of markup language. Unlike a Content Management System (CMS), such as WordPress, the static site generator does not need to be installed on your web server. A CMS builds your website whenever a user visits a page using database rules and scripting rules (ie, it's a dynamic website). With a static site generator, the HTML files are generated on your local machine, and you push all the files (ie, the entire website) to your web server. Most websites we interact with today tend to be dynamic sites which are generated upon each visit and customized for each user (they might remember your preferences, username, etc). Static sites are perfect for content that does not need to be personalized for each user and that is relatively unchanging. There are many articles written about the benefits of static-site generators, so I won't rehash the pros and cons here. Essentially, I chose to use a static-site generator because it offered simplicity (no database, no CMS, fewer security worries). Additionally, there are many static site generators to choose from. I chose Pelican beause it is written in Python.