daynotes 2023-05-11

Nope, brain not keeping track of day of the week currently. That’s ok though, the sun is out and things are happening.

Since last time (2 days):

  • Been assessing and writing up my state-of-play on a longer term project, in which a lot of under-the-hood refactoring work has been done alongside large amounts of codebase orientation. It was feeling … "messy" in my brain, so I took some time to summarise the key changes in infrastructure I’ve been working on, including why I needed to work on them. Coding can get like that a lot – you need to factor in and schedule time to see the wood again, and reassert why you’re where you’re at. It also means I have more clarity and transparency around communications with the client, which is hugely important on a project like this.

  • I deployed a bit of work I’ve been looking at over the last couple of weeks. While I’m happy to take the end users through what’s been set up, there’s always the chance that a) they’ll forget how it works, b) I’ll forget how it works, and/or c) other people may be brought in to edit the content involved. So I spent a little extra time writing the steps up into a document, including screenshots.

  • Both of the above have been good tasks to do alongside a slightly fragmented day involving bank meetings, shopping, and school pick-ups. Consolidate understanding. Set out plans. These things will stand you in good stead in a busy, choppy world.

  • I also had a good day delving into code properly, really understanding (or not) some of the flow of WordPress hooks.

  • I watched Eurovision semi-final 1 on Tuesday with son 1.

Today is rapidly hurtling towards tools-down time, but has been mostly:

  • Trying out GoGoCarto open source mapping tool for a client. Chance to practice reading French a bit, as well as installing a translation plug-in. Docker install went very well and I’ve had some good initial success importing data and configuring the tool locally.

  • Trying out a gitlab-to-Digital Ocean docker deployment for the first time, but just hit an error message.

  • Last night I got MOP3, a Mastodon-to-POP3 bridge, set up, and accessing/posting Mastodon via a new Thunderbird account has been oddly soothing.

In terms of progress – well, see above really.

Also been thinking about this Progress section. Separate post needed, but I think there is merit in "micro-metrics", in the sense that boats might record a fairly simple set of data in their logbook (I assume – compared to today’s modern data capture, at least). Personal progress metrics for a week, lightweight and relevant. Yeah, something there…