Week 34 / 2024

Published: 26/08/2024

Busy, busy, busy week. Got lots done, but at what cost?

What's been happening?

  1. I wrote a lot of code this week.

    We wrapped up a project at work on Friday. I spent the week finishing last minute tasks and bug fixes. Outside of work, a side gig I'm engaged in picked up pace. I spent my nights work on it.

    Both these projects required me to be heads down, typing away.

    I've been feeling confident in my abilities as an engineer lately. I am able to solve all sorts of programming or engineering problems that come my way. This week, I spent my days writing Dart to build a Flutter app. At night, I switched to React and TypeScript to build a web app.

  2. Overworking this week came at the cost of my sleep cycle getting disrupted. I woke up feeling tired multiple times during the week. Balancing work and rest is something I struggle with. My relationship with work is complicated because programming is both my job and a hobby. It's hard to stop "working" when you're having so much fun.

  3. I've finally found a Letterboxd / goodreads for Music: Record Club. I've wanted an app like this for so long.

    I don't particularly care about the social network-y aspects of Record Club. Sure, they're nice, but they aren't what I like the most. For me, the killer features are: (1) the ability to queue records I want to list to and (2) documenting my listening journey as I go through my queue.

    A screenshot of a music tracking web app showing the 'Your queue' section. It lists six music releases: 'Return to Forever' by Chick Corea, 'Djesse, Vol. 4' by Jacob Collier, 'All Tyler Songs' by Tyler, the Creator, 'Atavista' by Childish Gambino, 'ten days' by Fred again.., and 'Charm' by Clairo. There are tabs for 'All' 'Released' and 'Upcoming' and a 'Surprise me' button at the bottom.

    I'm so happy Record Club exists! You can follow me on it here. If you want an invite to join, drop me a line. I have a couple of invites available.

  4. I started using Mastodon (via Ivory) a lot more this week. After trying both Mastodon and Threads, the community on Mastodon feels much nicer. The feed isn't algorithmic and the people are really nice. I end up learning so many things while browsing my feed. Mastodon feels a lot like the early years of Twitter, and I'm here for that!

    Another app I've started using more is Raycast. Raycast has been the default app launcher for my Mac for over a year. Raycast does a lot more than launch apps though. This week, I started using Raycast as my window manager, emoji, and colour picker. I also wrote a few custom scripts and assigned keyboard shortcuts to them.

    As an experiment, I've also subscribed to Raycast's AI plan to get access to a bunch of large language models. This is my first time paying for AI. The jury is still out on this experiment but my initial impressions have been very good.

    Raycast is a joy to use. The team that is building it is doing an incredible job!

  5. I discovered anhvn.com over on Mastodon this week. What. A. Website. I absolutely love it. It is packed with personality and showcases the creator's body of work really nicely.

    I'm a sucker for personal websites. anhvn.com is everything I aspire my website to be like. I can't wait to spend more time refining my website once work slows down a bit.

  6. I bought some matcha and learned to make a matcha latte. I've been drinking it daily this week. Matcha is so much more forgiving than brewing coffee, which can be such a pain at times.

    A top-down view of a glass of iced matcha latte placed on a white tablecloth with a red, intricate square pattern. The latte has a light green color and is filled with large ice cubes.

    My plan is to get good at making matcha and then add matcha-based drinks to my coffee bar's menu. Adding drinks to this menu has been an ongoing project for me this year. I present the menu to friends and family, asking them for their beverage orders.

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