2019-08-22
Just finished reading “The Passionate Programmer” by Chad Fowler, which I
discovered after writing a program to find great people on GitHub to try to fill
an engineering position at my day job. That book talks about marketing yourself,
and, combined with some other advice on that topic that I’d heard recently
(although I can’t remember where), I was motivated last night to rebuild my
vanity website to do a better job of that.
This lead to me rebuilding my blog, which lead to me
subscribing to Medium and finding an unpublished article entitled “Your Password
is Terrible”, which I published and received a clap for before my hands had left
the keyboard.
I really should become more involved in the local scene here in Perth, so will
look for a conference of a meetup that I can attend.
2019-07-18
Right. I’m slack.
Second week of school holidays. We’ve been keeping busy. Had a great hike around
Lesmurdie Falls last week, which culminated with a splendid lunch at Core Cider.
Visited Wil’s family for dinner, Brewski over last night for some VR action,
watched Yesterday on Monday with Dzungy, visits to the dog park with Bailey,
caught up with Petr at Palace Arcade, where I became a gold member, lots of
reading, not so much exercise.
Limited myself to 6 drinks per week, which was hard, so reneged and made it 9
instead, which is also proving hard. Nine is around 14 “standard drinks” which
is pretty much the definition of a moderate drinker, so not all that bad. Will
keep counting, which is the main thing.
No progress on hobby projects, but have been working very hard on RailRoad,
which is my home-spun omakase web framework, using Sequel and Roda and a bunch
of other stuff. It’s exciting and good.
Will try to keep updating this thing. For sure, this time.
2019-06-12
Stayed up to watch the Ninty E3 direct. Nothing outstanding but fun nonetheless,
and the kids get a rare treat of watching it over brekky before school. Walked
the dog with D. in wintery weather; good opportunity to talk about life after
finding out that a brother of a close friend passed away suddenly. It can happen
at any time. Out to a laksa lunch in the cold weather. No progress on personal
projects, which is unfortunate. Time is slipping away. Need to limit the work I
do on my day job so I don’t get distracted by it when I should have free time
for my own things.
2019-06-09
Was well-rested yesterday, so spent some time after dinner dusting off HackTile.
Got distracted by Refrax somehow. Built it to get the same blank screen error
that I’d been getting with HackTile; some incompatibility after upgrading OSX to
Mojave. Down a garden path of getting to to build with Emscripten so I could
publish a web version. Finally got a clean build only to find that the web
version doesn’t run. Not in the mood for debugging it. So moved on to HackTile,
which works after updating the XCode command-line tools and upgrading to the
latest version of SDL2. Keen to get back into it, but should wrap up Sesame
first. Need to finish projects. Always go back to my half-finished work to be
impressed with the potential, which sucks. Could have finished HackTile in the
time it’s been on ice!
Spent the remainder of the evening readling the new Neal Stephenson: Fall, or
Dodge in Hell. And watched a few episodes of Season 3 of Handmaid’s Tale. Late
to bed, which meant I awoke tired and unmotivated. Must get better sleep!
Tom Yum hotpot for lunch at Van’s, and took Bailey for a walk at the dog park.
Plan to have an early night after a simple supper of seafood chowder and garlic
bread. Not looking forward to a stormy Monday and going back to work.
2019-06-08
Well. Hasn’t it been a long time? A summary:
- Eliza is a teenager. Gosh.
- Work is much the same.
- No progress on HackTile.
- No progress on Sesame.
- I actually completed NaNoGenMo: Angela’s Claustrum
Maybe I’ll hop back on the horse? Or whatever the expression is?
2018-12-09
Spent the morning walking around Laguna Beach. Beautiful day. Got a late
breakfast at Zinc Cafe (avocado toast and a flat white). Lots of sports cars
roaring up the main street near the beach. Bought some supplies at Ralph’s. Back
for an afternoon rest, then got dressed and headed up to the house for the
party. Edgar arrived with his wife, and Christa with her partner Danny, and
Caroline with her sister Elizabeth. We drank old fashioneds and toured the
property. Then in a car to the hotel for more drinks and dinner. Met Alex and
his girlfriend Christine whom I had a great chat with; she’s from a similar
background to Dzung. After dinner more drinks; Christa was getting shots. Then
back to the house to finish the night; I insisted on getting Caroline and
Elizabeth glasses of water, which they didn’t really want, and walked them to
their car when it arrived. Didn’t crawl into bed until 2:30am or so.
2018-12-08
Into the office and then off to a team lunch at an Italian restaurant. Fun
talking about weird Australian things, and confused everyone by eating my salad
last. But, hey, it’s what they do in France! Meetings in the afternoon, and got
some work done. Cool that the We Work offices have free beer on tap; didn’t try
any of it though as everyone had left by the time Mark picked me up. Was running
a script on my laptop so strapped it in to the back seat of the Tesla on the
drive home so it could continue. Mark’s sister and dad were over for a Hanuka
dinner; fun chatting with them while drinking an old fashioned in Mark’s bar.
His dad worked on the MOL project (manned orbital laboratory) as a programmer,
which gave birth to SkyLab. Fun telling them about it crash landing near Perth.
Walked into Laguna Beach for a nice dinner; the five of us squeezed around a
table for three. Food and wine were good, and we had gelato at a small place
around the corner afterwards. Home to open presents (socks) and more chatting
before calling it a night.