For my watch face, I wanted to choose a bright green colour, so I researched the supported options.

Now let’s transform them into something visual.

For now, I have chosen the brightest green possible: #00FF00.

Starting the year with some holidays. Discovering LinkedIn bots, our first development hire and bringing back some memories with buying a lathe.

January was a quick one. The first week, we went with family, the four of us, to a cabin in the forest. It was just plain nature, no internet, no fridge (just ice packs), playing board games, outdoor walks, barbecues, and a lot of rain. But one thing I always look forward to is lighting up the stove and creating some kindling with my mini axe – instant satisfaction.

At work, I started polishing our '24 roadmap and preparing for a lesser favourite type of work, hiring. The Exatom business is growing at a steady pace, so we'll need to make sure we can also keep up at the development side because over there, it's just me-myself-and-I soloing with some side-kicks.

Let's dive a bit deeper into that whole hiring process. We posted our job opening on LinkedIn, this is what happened:

• within 24 hours we had 100+ applicants
• also, within 24 hours, I got too many emails from recruiters and their bots monitoring LinkedIn
• adjusting the bar for our three preliminary interview screening questions
• starting interviews
• getting the hang of it and realising how quickly you can get that feeling of team-fit or not
• 1.5k post views, 350+ applicants, and numerous of interviews
• Development team expansion, welcome Marcelo!

🚀 A super handy piece of software tooling on this ride was Calendly. My sales and client services colleagues were already fans; now I am too.

Lastly, a super exciting item to share. After years of just looking around I came across a 1963 Schaublin 102VM lathe. I called my father, we jumped into the car, did an inspection, could not find any deficiencies, rented a truck for transport and now she's home.

This brings back so many good memories from my middle grade studies and I'm sure there will be many posts over here on my re-discovery and joy of working with it.