Author: Wojciech Szczurek

Ditch the Overkill: How to Send WordPress Emails Using PHPMailer and Amazon SES

The WordPress ecosystem now hosts a range of fully developed email solutions provided by numerous plugins. Two of the most prominent examples are WP Mail SMTP and Easy WP SMTP. While I have no particular objections to these plugins, I believe that for experienced developers, they can be overly complex. Most of their features extend […]

How to Implement Server-Side Rendering for WordPress Blocks?

Recently, I was tasked with implementing server-side rendering for a WordPress block created with @wordpress/create-block package. Specifically, I developed a block that displays a page list based on a user-selected menu. The block’s functionality is straightforward: in the back-end, the user selects a menu from a list of available menus, and on the front-end, the […]

AWS Certified Data Engineer – Associate (DEA-C01)

Introduction What data engineers do? Data engineers: Data management challenges: Essentially, the role of the data engineer is to get data from sources, make is useful and serve the data to stakeholders. Data Discovery Data engineer responsibilities: AWS Data Services and Modern Infrastructure Basic workflow of modern data engineering building blocks: Orchestration and Automation Options […]

“Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things” by Adam Grant

Another great read from Adam. As the title suggests, the author explores self-improvement techniques by embracing the unknown and unfamiliar, overcoming obstacles by building support systems, and discovering inner potential—not through the end result, but through the growth that happens along the way. Why does Finland’s education system consistently rank among the best in the […]

How to Fix JetEntityFrameworkProvider Registration Error in EF6 Projects

Are you trying to install JetEntityFrameworkProvider for your WinForms project and encountered the following error? Ensure the provider factory is registered in the app.config or web.config files for all projects that use EF6 in your solution. If your solution consists of just one project, adding the following snippet to your project’s config file should resolve […]

“Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don’t Know” by Malcolm Gladwell

My intuition told me this book would be a practical guide, filled with tips and examples, aimed at people who struggle to initiate conversations with others. However, it’s not. Instead, the book uncovers a few fundamental yet eye-opening misconceptions and mechanisms within human behavior that hinder our ability to understand others. For example, the idea […]

Cybersecurity Related Jobs Decline

According to following LinkedIn post: “… the share of cybersecurity-related jobs posted on LinkedIn in the U.S. dropped 5.4% between 2023 and 2024 … “. Here is my opinion on the subject. First, macroeconomics. Between 2023 and February 2024, despite a strong job market, the tech sector laid off around 300,000 people due to what […]