Feel free to tell what you plan on doing this weekend and even ask for help or feedback.
Please keep in mind it’s more than OK to do nothing at all too!
Feel free to tell what you plan on doing this weekend and even ask for help or feedback.
Please keep in mind it’s more than OK to do nothing at all too!
Getting mentally ready for work on Monday after 5 weeks of vacation…
Continuing the project of rebuilding my blog in Haykll. I’ve gotten the basic setup working, ported my theme, and I’ve imported two pages to start. Which is to say the fun tinkering is mostly over and time to do the bulk of the work: import all the posts, checking each for for broken links, layout issues, or unbearable cringiness.
But mostly I’m spending the weekend outside biking or seeing family/friends.
Oh that reminds me, I wanna add RSS to my website/blog/portfolio thing.
Just work on https://mkws.sh/.
Starting my first newsletter! I started blogging and link curation/commentary as one of my pandemic hobbies, and now I’m obsessed. I tend to send to various different subgroups of my social circle, but I figured now was as good a time as any to consolidate all of that stuff to my “greatest hits” and start sending them out on a weekly basis. Plus, it’ll hold me accountable to continue to blog and learn in public :)
Wow. Great article. I hadn’t framed/considered blogging with this perspective in mind.
Many times, in fact, I have come across comments that deride many of the beginner-tutorials that are repeatedly created and shared, such as on Medium. That led me to believe that I should only create blog posts when I feel that I have sufficient knowledge on the topic.
Reading this, though, I guess it makes sense that it’s okay to share what you learned because the content may be new to others who read it.
Thanks for posting this! This gives me confidence in publicizing my writing :) and now I know at least one project that I’ll want to work on this weekend…
I’m glad you liked it! I’ve been noodling around with the concept of growth in the public eye as a good tool for accountability, and when I read that article it definitely made things click for me :)
Yeah, I’m not really a fan of dunking on people for posting beginner topics/tutorials – I understand that folks don’t want a quagmire of introductory information that can occlude search engine results and potentially offer conflicting best practices (hell, even the whole concept of “best practice” implies some sort of solved state for teaching and learning, which is a concept I don’t particularly agree with), but I’ve never been a fan of the gatekeeping that tends to accompany that desire. Of course, there’s a relevant xkcd about that sentiment, too.
I’m happy to hear that you found enjoyed this and that it helped you feel more confident about publicizing your writing! That confidence is something I work on for myself every day, and I’m happy to inspire it in others. Hopefully your project goes well!
What a great read about learning in public! This is something I have am now learning to do as well, started off with the little step of making my instagram profile non-private so I can share more photos of my journey.
I see you have a ton of great content about learning in public, which is awesome. My question to you is at what point do you package up what you have learnt to share with others? I’m a software dev and forming a habit of writing what I have done seems like it might distract me out of flow if i’m to take notes to share later when i’m working, consequently, I think i’m a little exhausted after coding to write something decent. That’s the little quagmire I find myself in at the moment, I wish to share, just don’t have the method. Any tips?
I’m glad you liked it the article! As I mentioned in another comment, I’ve been trying to wrap my head around the value of sharing “rough clay” and that article definitely helped solidify some of the ideas I’d been chewing on.
TL;DR: I take rough notes on my approach before coding it, then I take a break when I’m done coding to clear my head and note force myself to write when I’m exhausted. Later (either before bed or earlier in the following day), I use those notes as a way to re-contextualize myself with my solution and flesh them out if I feel inclined to write more about it.
Longer answer: Like you, I’m a software developer and I resonate with the sentiment of feeling too cooked to write anything else after coding for a while. While I occasionally find success in taking notes on what I’m doing as I’m working, I (again, like you) find that it interrupts my flow and it’s only something I do when I’m noodling on a problem, rather than actually working through the implementation.
The most successful approach for me, however, has been to write my ideas down before I start coding them (kinda like a scientific notebook; I’ll write a rough hypothesis of what I’m about to attempt to implement, and then my implementation almost serves as my experiment), and then when I’m done with my implementation, I come back and fill in the details later if I feel like what I just did is worth fleshing out in more detail. These initial ideas are intentionally pretty sparse; they’re more like a memory hook that I can come back to as I’m working through my implementation, but they’re helpful as a guide when re-reading my notes later.
Here’s some notes from my work journal about a task I did yesterday as an example:
Yeah, super rough clay, but the key is that when I read these notes later, it’s much easier to re-contextualize where my head was when I was working through this problem, and so now that I’ve taken a break from coding and don’t feel so exhausted, I’m more inclined to be able to write these ideas into a more detailed explanation of what I just did.
Anyway, sorry for the long response, but I hope it’s helpful! Even if my approach doesn’t work for you, hopefully having more data on the process is generally useful.
Thanks so much for such a detailed reply. That approach of writing the approach before makes quite some sense, at the very least it offers a basis for comparison even after one ends up using a different approach. (You can easily pit the two against each other and write up the rationale for changing). That’s super helpful and I think i’m going to give that a shot!
Happy writing and i will check your blog often to see how this is going.
I’m a cricket umpire, so … that. Every so often I think “wouldn’t it be great if I had an app on my watch to keep track of everything”, but then I realise that the mechanical counter that I’ve already got is a tried, tested, reliable solution that won’t run out of battery half way through a match.
rewriting my site (https://bkkaggle.github.io/) in Rust+Yew. I’ve got most of it done but i still have quite a few features that I want to add (markdown blogs, dark mode, a /uses page)
Traveling to visit friends and family that I haven’t seen since the beginning of the various coronavirus measures. After an appropriate period of self-quarantine, of course. I moved far away in January, telling them “Oh I’ll come back and visit after l settle in. Maybe 3 months or so?” Hah.
Haven’t written much code outside of work lately and I’ve been getting the urge to again, so maybe I’ll clean up some rough edges and implement some missing features in superfluminal, a UI for the Synapse torrent client. It has to handle a lot of data (I have 400+ torrents, ~100 of which are active at any given time) so I’ve had to do a lot of optimization to make it run fast on React.
On the non-tech side of things, the VR mod for Outer Wilds has just reached 1.0 and a few friends recommended me the game, both in pancake and VR mode, so the other day I bought it and started exploring its tiny solar system. It’s quite fun and the VR is pretty well integrated, despite being only a third-party mod. I’ll probably be spending a few hours in there.
Fleshing out the garage “workshop” with bright light, a pair of speakers and a mini amp, and finishing up the workbench. Also going out to get some lumber to start building stuff.
We have our first baby coming in 7 weeks, so we are preparing our place for the new person moving in :)
Fixing my sprinklers, maybe photographing my Apple Network Server prototype in more detail, and getting code together for some of the passive 3D hacks I’ve been working on.
How do sprinkler systems work? Just shorting leads to ground activates zones?
Most systems, at least here in the US, are powered by 24VAC and each zone is controlled by a solenoid with a common ground. Pretty sure I just need to rewire the iffy zone. Waterproof caps usually aren’t, or at least not indefinitely, and the gardeners often bash into things with the edger and the mower so stuff gets loose. I only call the sprinkler guy for broken pipes and threads; at that point it’s enough of a bother for me to pay someone else to do it.
So if I send 24 VAC down to a zone, that will activate it? Thinking with regards to having a custom sprinkler controller that I can put on my local network.
To the solenoid, yes. When you drop the current, the solenoid will shut off the valve.
Ooh, I’m gonna have to investigate this further at some point too! Opensprinkler or fully-bespoke?
Thanks for pointing me at open sprinkler. I’ll probably end up using their ospi board, since I don’t think hardware I’d design could readily beat that. As for the software, the cloud is a non starter for equipment that directly increases my bills. So that will be more bespoke.
More colemak practice! I’m finally close to decent. Also hoping to make the character sheets for my tabletop RPG prototype. Getting ready to release a beta.
Hopefully closing on buying an investment property and handling all the locksmith stuff, appliances, utilities and so on that involves. Capitalism ho, I guess? For lack of better options.
Also ideally working my programming language Garnet (I have a bunch of SSA papers and talks to go through), and on some hackerspace stuff (our laser cutter tube died tragically, so I might make a tombstone for it).
Emptying even more boxes, then seeing two different groups of friends, one for socials and the other for boardgames.
Our kid is turning one this weekend! My wife and I built a Pikler Triangle for him, so I suspect most of the weekend will be spent tending to his injuries..
Hoping to spend some time reading the ZHeap code code. But.. does anyone here know the state of it? I was expecting it’d be going into Postgres 13.. but progress seems to have stalled in 2019? Or is it just being developed somewhere else?
If time permits, I’m reading Allens “Water Wise Home” to plan the grey water / rain collection / dry toilet setup at the cabin.
Really, really want to buy Wasteland 3, noting it came out today..
Congrats! I had a friend bring up Pickler Triangles just last week and it seems to be an interesting market (at least in the US) with most outlets seeming pretty marked up. May I ask where you found the plans you used, or did you draw them up yourself? This seemed like a place where a lot of savings could be had by building yourself.
Yeah and for some reason there’s a substantial amount of them available from Eastern Europe, with several-hundred-dollar shipping fees.
We used these plans: https://www.montessoriinreallife.com/home/2020/3/6/how-to-build-a-pikler
We don’t really own tools for doing fine carpentry, I think it was pushing it a bit to do this without a drill press or a table saw to get stuff to line up perfectly.. but it came out really nice in the end!
Thanks for this, i built a wooden climbing wall for the other kids , but now I’ve a 3mo 3rd boy ! This is going to start him in the right direction :)
Thank you for sharing! Those will come in handy for some friends. Sadly, I will continue reformatting a new laptop and trying to finish a migration to it this weekend. No playing with power tools :(
The amount from Europe and the sheer cost that most in the states are selling for are what made me interested in building them. It seems there’s a huge difference between cost, even for good materials, and what the market rate is.
You need to use quite good wood to get the climbing bars strong enough while keeping them thin enough for small hands and wide enough to ensure stability.
Working on the Medium question set on binarysearch.io
Trying my best to pass the Finnish language exam.
I would like to do more of Google’s course on writing Android apps. I want to learn writing those apps.
Working on a backup tool I have written:
https://github.com/andrewchambers/bupstash
Saturday - I’m going for a hike with my girlfriend.
Sunday - Chores
I’m learning some Blues, playing a session of a scifi Tabletop RPG campaign we started a few weeks ago, and relaxing
Virtually nothing, finally.
Heartifacts mental health, community building, and career management conference for software professionals was two weeks ago now – I ran it – and the only remaining tasks I have are to await the twice-daily release of the videos (playlist) and pay the people involved after I do some accounting. I’ve not had a weekend without something to do since basically April.
Setting aside time to refine a startup idea with a colleague who’s going to help out with UX and planning. I am going to service one of my motorcycles as well, I enjoy getting a bit hands on on the weekends, then finally checking out a 49” widescreen monitor since i’m in the process of improving my workspace.
Autumn seems to be on its way here in the south of the north, so will be going for a longer longboard (boosted stealth) run before the roads gets too slick. Evenings will be creative writing, continuing to unpack the principles for a diverging desktop future and less creative coding on one of my, so far, not so public projects. A low-quality teaser from that on an even lower quality image board: https://i.imgur.com/bWcRihx.mp4
I want to write a blog entry about … something Python related, but haven’t quite landed on the fun thing yet. Maybe memory profiling…
Visiting family, helping with a move, trying to get on top of my PR queue. :-)
What I did: dabbling with my cistern sensors (plenty of rain this weekend), cleaned up my formerly filthy commute car, booked my vacation for the third time (hungarian borders now closed for tourists :( ).
Also: changed my package delivery address to c/o b/c it saves me from 7km drive to the next post office box, and saves him from sweeping his curb (I have a sweeping machine and clean his curb too in the future.
win(me) win(neighbor) lose(german post office)
Writing my book about Graphics Programming in Go
I think I’ll get back to working on my generic package manager for files (single-file binaries, config files, other categories of files where its currently cumbersome to manage and update versions and metadata associated with them). Finished a working prototype, but want to re-write some of the parts to remove a few pockets of complexity. We’ll see how that goes, usually I have a harder time motivating myself to do work when it’s about re-writing things I already implemented, instead of solving a new problem…
I had no plans except “write” and I finally published the first two posts in my Lisp compiler series.
Yardwork. Clean OS X install on my MacBook Air. Finish moving blog to VPS. Refreshing myself on Io. Playing some music, maybe record some. Thinking about getting a puppy. Catching up on HBO shows. Naps.
We are trying to host a Social distancing Birthday party for the kids. We’ll see how that works out. And then I had big Certification plans but apparently I’m going to spend the nights trying to have amplify and rollup work (or migrate to webpack).
No plans. And that by design. That’s my plan at least.