Weeknote for 6/25/2023

Posted on June 27, 2023 by Andy

Programming

:thinking:

I explored the idea of making a software development cheat sheet in the form of a coding project. The lesson of BDD is to make your documentation executable. In this case, taking notes is helpful, but verifying them with working code is better. Why not make a whole software project to illustrate everything I was learning? But as usual, I was unsure what form the project should take, so I’m putting off the idea and will take regular notes for now. For the notes project in general, I’m continuing the iteration again this week.

Health

:eyeroll:

What took up most of my time last week was researching my new medication. My insurance wants me to switch my ulcerative colitis med to Rinvoq, and I wanted to do some due diligence to make sure it wasn’t an obviously terrible mistake. It doesn’t seem to be.

Nature

🙂

I discovered part of the neighboring woods grows like a little garden on our side of the fence. So I visited it a few times over the week to see what I could find there. I found some interesting bugs, such as a harvestman, which I learned is a harmless arachnid that isn’t a spider but looks like one.

 

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And now have some rabbits.

 

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People

🙂

Saturday I had lunch with my friend Jeremy’s family to catch up and take a walk. We visited one of my favorite spots, where they’ve been walking regularly, and somehow we survived the 88 to 99 degree heat.

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Weeknote for 6/18/2023

Posted on June 18, 2023 by Andy

Programming

:-O

I actually got somewhere on my software requirements notes. I’m going to take advantage of my momentum and extend this iteration another week. I’m using the book Writing Great Specifications to learn behavior-driven development on the theory that BDD lets you capture the benefits of a rigorous requirements process while still being agile.

Productivity

🙂

I’m learning to eat my frogs and use the rule of three. I’ve been listening to productivity books in anticipation of this iteration of my productivity system project, and I’m already picking up techniques to add to my practices. Specifically, from Eat That Frog! I’m learning to start with my most important and intimidating tasks and start them without much thought so I don’t talk myself out of it. The rule of three, from The Productivity Project, has you choose your top three tasks for the day based on a view from the future looking back at what you want to have accomplished that day.

Nature

🙂

I returned to the park where I first wondered what all the plants were, now that I have a way to ID them. I made some interesting discoveries, such as some wild carrots and asparagus.

 

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Weeknote for 6/11/2023

Posted on June 16, 2023 by Andy

Housekeeping

:relieved:

I spent the week researching MagSafe charging devices. It took longer than I expected. I had meant to wrap it up quickly and return to software development, but that will have to be this week. But now a continually charged phone is in my immediate future. Having that take the whole week convinced me to space out my purchases instead of waiting every three months.

Programming

😐

This week in my software development notes I’ll look a bit at software requirements. I won’t worry about posting what I find unless the inspiration strikes me.

Productivity

🙂

I listened to Automate Your Busywork by Aytekin Tank. It’s about how anyone can use no-code tools to relieve them of many repetitive, everyday tasks. Ideas for that kind of automation pass through my mind regularly, and the book motivated me to stop putting them off.

I’ve reorganized my projects schedule to add another productivity iteration. The unfinished parts of my system have been wearing on me, so I’ll take a month and see what I can do. That’ll start next week if I don’t extend software development again.

Nature

😛

Some blackbirds harassed me. I was minding my own business, identifying trees, and a couple of red-winged blackbirds started swooping and rasping at me. I assume they didn’t like how close I was to their nest, wherever it was. It happened just like this:

Video

:thinking:

I began researching alternative sources for the DVDs in my Netflix queue. Their DVD service is ending at the end of September. It turns out most of my queue is easily available on streaming services or at the library. A few are harder to find. So far the series I’m in most danger of missing out on is K Street, so that’s what’s next in my queue.

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Weeknote for 6/4/2023

Posted on June 7, 2023 by Andy

Housekeeping

😐

I made general plans for the seasonal housekeeping project and planned some purchases. Part of my procrastination on this project has been not knowing what tasks belong in it. So I gave myself some clarity on that. The one actual project task I did was to plan a batch of purchases that have been on my waiting list. My phone’s power situation has become potentially perilous because its flaky lightning port makes it hard to charge, so I’m ordering a phone car mount that will let me use a MagSafe charger while I drive, and to take no chances I’ll get a MagSafe battery pack too.

Programming

:thinking:

This week I’m back to the software development notes. My plan is to journal a bunch on my current topics and then see if anything postable comes out of it.

Productivity

😎

I found a very helpful online Gregg shorthand dictionary. It resolves so much of the uncertainty I’ve had as I write. It covers the Anniversary and Simplified editions, which got me to take a second look at Simplified, and I’ve decided to standardize myself on it. I’ve ordered its manual.

Fiction

😐

I set up my Goodreads to track the many series I’m listening to. Now that I’m done with The Inheritance Cycle (great series, by the way), I’m running out of obvious next books to listen to. So I took an idea from my brother and added a Goodreads shelf for the next book in each series I’m following. It turns out there are a lot of them, so it’s kind of a major task. But that should make it easier to decide what’s next.

Nature

😎

I went on a plant identifying frenzy. After years of wondering when I would ever find a way to learn the plants on my nature walks, last week I realized I have a plant identification app on my phone, iNaturalist Seek. So now my walks have become much longer as I constantly stop to take photos of every plant that catches my eye, and a few bugs too. It seems that the nearby woods are dominated by common buckthorn, plus a lot of Amur honeysuckle.

Bonus: Have a bee and a fish.

 

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Weeknote for 5/28/2023

Posted on May 30, 2023 by Andy

Housekeeping

🙄

Despite purportedly being on a summer housekeeping project, I did no housekeeping except to replace my carbon monoxide detector. It beeped to let me know it needed replacing at 9:30 at night. So I ordered one to pick up the next day and spent a cold night with the windows open in case of a freak CO incident.

Productivity

😎

Bing AI has been helping me code some small productivity tools. The main one is a time announcer using AutoHotkey. It speaks the time every five minutes to combat my time blindness. AutoHotkey and the Windows text-to-speech feature are a mystery to me, and the chatbot gave me a running start in working with them.

I’m putting cooking on pause while I continue my quest to carve out time for my projects. My latest experiment is family size frozen meals. I still have a few meals to cook before I start on those.

Programming

:thinking:

My software development notes are on hold, but I snuck in some work anyway. I explored requirements management tools and the idea of writing all the requirements as acceptance tests.

Nature

😉

During a spontaneous second walk on Saturday, I caught on video the elusive jumping fish of a neighborhood pond.

 

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Weeknote for 5/21/2023

Posted on May 28, 2023 by Andy

Programming

😐

I did some reading, but not much more. I have some more mental hurdles to overcome before I can make faster progress. I’ll probably extend the project again. But now it’s on hold for a couple of weeks of summer housekeeping.

Life maintenance

😐

The next two weeks are for my second seasonal housekeeping period. I’ll do my periodic admin and housekeeping tasks and miscellaneous catch up. I especially want to sneak in more research on investing.

Fiction

😎

I’ve been having more interesting AI experiences, where ChatGPT gives me a book concept that I then want to read. So I feed its plot summary into the other bots and see what real books they find that are similar. A couple that stand out are Empire Falls for a small town slice-of-life novel and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo for a journalist solving mysteries with lots of intrigue.

Nature

😎

Last week’s walks were filled with animal sightings.

 

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Weeknote for 5/14/2023

Posted on May 15, 2023 by Andy

Programming

:thinking:

On the software development notes, I finished reorganizing the topic outline and wrote a bunch of notes for the longer intro. But I’m still deciding how much of that to post on the wiki. In the meantime, I’ll move on to the software lifecycle topic.

Productivity

😐

I’m experimenting with longer grocery shopping trips. I’m still trying to reduce my time on food management. My latest experiment is shopping for two weeks instead of one. I’m used to once a month from our family routine growing up, but for me two weeks of planning feels like enough of a stretch. Last week was the first of those, so now I have this week free of shopping. But I might spend the extra time catching up on cooking.

AI

:thinking:

I collected AI news digests and more chatbots. AI news is like a firehose right now, and each summary service covers different stories, so I’m trying a bunch of them to see which ones settle as my favorites. And new chatbots come out every week, so I’m collecting the ones that are easily available to use online. Sometimes when I have a question I like to consult several to get their differing perspectives. And it’s interesting to compare their styles of creative writing.

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Weeknote for 5/7/2023

Posted on May 8, 2023 by Andy

Programming

:relieved:

On the software development notes, I posted an updated intro and outline. I’ve also been relistening to SWEBOK and Steve McConnell’s Rapid Development to motivate myself and refresh my memory, and interacting with that material will be my next step. I’m extending this project until at least June 17, with a couple of weeks’ break for summer housekeeping starting May 21.

AI

😎

I took the plunge on a paid account at OpenAI just so I could play around with petertodd prompts. petertodd is a glitch token that evokes weird responses from GPT models. Here’s a fun recent example I got to work. I also spent a fascinated weekend listening to the petertodd folktales from the original report.

Health

🙄

I got the ball rolling on the latest change to my medication. My insurance is dropping their coverage of Xeljanz and requesting that I switch to Rinvoq. They sent me a letter about it. I learned my lesson from my delay on the last change and called the doctor ASAP. Hopefully this change won’t be a problem, but if, so, at least this time I’ll have done what I could. And I appreciate the medical system’s efforts at keeping me from boredom.

Nature

😀

I had surprise animal encounters at a farm where I walked. For some reason I wasn’t expecting cows, sheep, and chickens, only crops. I will definitely be back!

 

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Weeknote for 4/30/2023

Posted on May 2, 2023 by Andy

Programming

:relief:

I got myself unstuck on my software development notes. I used some of my neglected productivity practices and succeeded in taking some notes for rewriting the project’s intro. Maybe I can finish that this week.

Productivity

:thinking:

In my renewed push to focus on my projects, I’m returning to my car picnics from yesteryear to give myself a distraction-free place to work. Sitting in my car I tend to get a lot more done. For a car picnic my meals need to be portable, and in the evenings my lunch bag is occupied with the next day’s lunch, so to set myself up for dinnertime picnics, I spent an hour or two shopping for a second bag and a covered glass dish.

AI

😛

I installed an offline chatbot called FreedomGPT and have spent way too much time messing with it. Judging by its marketing and press coverage, you’d think it was the far-right version of ChatGPT, but really it’s just more cooperative. It’ll take pretty much whatever perspective you give it, though often it still tries to uphold human rights. I’m having fun trolling it with my typical absurdist mode of conversation. It gets more confused than ChatGPT, but it tries to keep up and complains very little. The perfect conversation partner!

Nature

🙂

Now that the world is green again, I’m out exploring new parks and new corners of old parks. I’m thinking of making some maps of unmarked trails using my GPS walk tracking app.

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Weeknote for 4/23/2023

Posted on April 25, 2023 by Andy

Programming

thinking face

I did nothing on the software development notes. I’d been looking forward to this project, but now that it’s here, I’m strangely unmotivated, and I’ve let other activities crowd my time. So the next step is to figure that out, and then hopefully I can make better progress.

Fiction

🙂

I started listening to Ann Radcliff’s Romance of the Forest for a book group at work. It’s a classic Gothic novel that earned some praise from ST Joshi in his Unutterable Horror, so I’m looking forward to it.

Video

pensive face

Netflix announced they’re shuttering their DVD service at the end of September. The news was a little depressing because the service has been such a valuable source for hard-to-access video, but it tells me what shows and movies to prioritize for the next few months before they’re gone.

Space

grimacing face

I watched Starship’s rather surreal orbital test launch on Thursday. It was a successful failure in terms of gathering flight data before the rocket exploded, but its environmental impacts were larger than officially expected, mainly from the way it flung concrete chunks from the launch pad everywhere and blew clouds of dust up to 5 miles away. I hope this pushes SpaceX toward moving Starship away from Boca Chica and its wildlife refuge. But in any case, the launch complex was so damaged the next launch will apparently be delayed an indeterminate time for repair and redesign. This isn’t great news for the Artemis program, where Starship is supposed to be the lunar lander.

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