Prelude to the day

I brought down my laptop to my building block gym to put on some music. As this is a hole, very few neighbors exercise here. In the half dozen times I've been here I've yet to encounter anybody else, even though changes in the arrangement of things reveal that there are some people who use it.

I decided to plan the day here because exercising clears the mind, and there's nobody here to think it's strange that there is a man writing on his laptop between sets. I intuitively know nobody really minds you if you don't interfere with their routine, not only at the gym but in the city at large, and the most disapproval I could get is a roll of the eyes. Just an observation pointing to the fact that I prevent myself from doing things because of my own perception of social approval.

It's time for the next set.

What needs to be accomplished today? It is Sunday. Yesterday I marked as rest day, and rest I got indeed. My body was quite sore from the physical activity of the week. Despite my leisurely schedule I still need at least one day of rest. So, last last week, my weekday begins on Sunday.

I have guests coming to the airbnb at 14:00. I'll need to be there at 12:00. It is 9:21 at this moment. I'll be done by 10:30, then I have one hour to shower and do some chores. Shall I take the bike? When I both hit the gym and bike to the apartment my body ends up exhausted and it makes it more difficult to work, so it will be better to simply take the metro there. I'll probably be back home at 3pm.

It's time for the next exercise.

I can come back home for lunch and then hit the library of Casa Encendida, which is open on Sundays, and if I end early enough I will hit the pool. Two work sessions today, in the first one (the airbnb) the tasks are very clear, no need to write them down. The second one, I almost feel hesitant to call out what I'm going to do, because in the recent past I've planned to work on the Bézier Game but I end up working on Project Arete.

Time for the next set.

Damn, deadlifts are always intense. I think the bursts working on Project Arete came from a need in the product. If the need is resolved, then it can become a dormant project once again so that I focus on the Bézier Game. In order for me to verify that the need is resolved, I need to become the user and work around the minefield that is the project at this early stage. This I will do, and I've already extended my prelude way beyond what any reader can possibly tolerate (ah, there it is again: a perception of social approval).

Next exercise

I used Project Arete between sets, having in mind that I wouldn't touch this next week, and there is still more work to do if I want to accomplish my intention of putting more attention to Notebits flow and the Bézier Game. So the second work session for today will be dedicated to Project Arete instead of the Bézier Game. I don't need to do much, so I'll have the rest of my sunday free.

Next exercise

I must question myself: what would be a good position where to leave Project Arete? Since I'm mostly prototyping, the UI for data entry involves writing JSON in sublime. It has become more unwieldy and error prone as the data grows. I already have some very basic inputs in place so that I don't have to dive into code every time I wish to use it. But these inputs are really the values for a widget in which you use the mouse, similar to how you use a color picker to represent three dimensions (red, green, and blue; or hue, saturation, and lightness).

In my usage, I've seen that inputting numeric values influences the way in which these values are picked. The color picker analogy is quite accurate: if I'm writing code I might pick #ccc for a gray, whereas if I used the color picker I would come up with a coldish or warmish gray because able to see what the visual result of the values I'm picking.

Next set

Another thing to take into account is the capacity to register these values more than once per day. As a user, this is perhaps more important to me than inputting values with a picker. So it seems that I have two tasks for Arete today:

  1. Allow to register values more than once per day.
  2. Implement a rudimentary visual picker for values.

Shouldn't be too complicated.

My gym session is going much slower with this technique. I think it's useful, but now that my next steps are clear, I'll finish my workout without touching the computer.

Work session 1 (1h)

I'm coming back from the airbnb apartment, I put the laundry on a 1h cycle, and I'll use this time to prepare lunch and pick up after myself, and write the work session of course.

The lovely French couple left the apartment better than they found it. All I needed to do was to put fresh bedding and replace supplies. When guests arrive I now estimate with a fair amount of certainty how clean they will leave the apartment, but some people just go out of their way in a good way. I've lost count of how many guests I have received, but averaging ten per month, I'd say 10% of people go beyond their duty and leave the place as clean or cleaner than they found it.

These outliers I'm unable to predict. This time it was a French couple, other were a family of Canarias (mother, grandmother and two children), the other were two ladies who came to Madrid for a course on a two week stay. I don't know why this happens, but people like this are the salt of this earth.

The guests who were supposed to arrive today didn't answer my messages, or show up at the apartment at the time they had indicated. I was left wondering what to do: should I have my computer I'd simply do a work session, but I left it at home expecting to to wrap things up over there. I left them a message to give me a call when they knew their arrival time. I'll need to remain mobile for the day.

Now I'll have lunch and then have my last work session of the day.

Work session 2 (1h)

Just as I was finishing lunch, the guests who hadn't arrived informed me they'd be there in 30 minutes, and I saw the message 20 minutes after the fact, so I told them I'd be late. When I arrived to the apartment, there was nobody there, and they hadn't answered my messages. I waited another hour until they finally showed up. Taxi strikes at the airport and a lack of internet had made it both difficult to communicate and thrown off the schedule. They were a surfer-type couple from Australia, vibe told me they'd leave the apartment a little below average in cleanness, I just write this here to verify that my intuitions are currently accurate.

So, being thrown off schedule I came back home to work at a leisurely pace. I didn't finish what I intended to, it turned out to be a more complex problem than I had thought, so I left it for the morning.

Afterword

Hmmmm... interesting, I enjoyed the planning at the gym, but there is an aspect of life which is unpredictable and throws off any schedule. I see that the conclusions are still valid: I need to leave Project Arete in a useful state in order to advance the rest of the projects.