Prelude
Today I shall keep exploring the southwest of Madrid in the Usera district. I liked it yesterday, so rather than to put my finger on the map at random and go there, I come to realize that cities can be explored in the same way as nature, searching for nice spots for work and then optimizing the route there.
Workwise, my plan is to dedicate most of the day to the Bézier Game, with sprinkles of Streaky here and there. I’m writing this from Streaky, as in the past two days.
Work session 1 (25min)
I passed in front of the cristal palace of Arganzuela, which is a greenhouse with tropical and desert ecosystems. There is a space in particular which reminds me of my native Mexico, and I thought it would be nice to work here briefly, because there’s no electric outlets. It’s nice, I suppose I could post a picture:
I chose to work on Streaky, because I could implement a feature quite quickly which is useful to me: write x words in a determinate amount of time. So now there’s a bar running out on the top of the screen which lets me know how much time I have left (as of now, around 2min). I suppose I could post a screenshot.
Five minutes seems too long to describe a work session, but perhaps I ought to register more experience rather than to reduce the time for the writing session. I’ll be persistent in it’s use so that I can suggest good time breakpoints empirically.
Work session 2 (1h, 25min)
Five minutes to write this. I came to a study hall in Usera and they placed me in a classroom intended for chess, as the study hall was being used for a workshop. The place is quite dark and not very inviting, but fortunately I was able to let myself go and have a focused session.
I finished the keybindings and exceptions for all vector drawing apps that I know, and it should be easy to add more. I built a temporary UI so that I could test, now I find myself wondering how and when is the best way to ask what app you want to practice.
I lost around 30 minutes attempting something quite useless, which was passing a nested array of HTML elements and have the function unravel it as to append the HTML to the corresponding parent. When I encountered problems I stepped back and thought: how often do I need this? it was only twice on the codebase. So I ditched the feature. I tend to waste a lot of time in these kind of useless things, sometimes wasting hours (or days!) because I become engaged in the challenge. Some of these things result in unexpected pleasures, but it seems when the challenge is highly technical and invisible to the end user, it is a matter of pedantry.
Work session 3 (30min)
A short work session from the pool, as the day is comfortably cool yet sunny, this weather—especially in July—is exceedingly rare. Again five minutes to write, way too much time for the work I did. I adapted the tutorial levels so they would display the appropriate shortcuts dynamically. So I declare this feature complete, the Bézier Game can now be configured to conform to different vector drawing apps.
Next feature will be the addition of levels which have multiple stages. Lines, smooth curves, corners and such. Many exercise per level. Perhaps ten. This implies that progress will be saved, but I don’t want to do user registration. LocalStorage will suffice. I’m terrible at estimating how long tasks will take me, but I will give it a stab and verify my estimation: 4 hours.
I read the first chapter of Piaget’s book while at the pool. What an astounding intellectual. While most of us desperately grasp at whatever certainty we can, Piaget puts certainty to trial until empirically verified and made reproducible, yet admits that all worthy science is born in metaphysical intuition. This gives me some food for thought for Project Arete.
I shall go to the nearest library now.
Work session 4 (1h)
Not all that focused in this work session. I found a way of integrating levels quite easily, though I have the feeling it has shortcomings and constraints I don’t know yet. Tomorrow I’ll advance quickly in this direction to see the feasibility.
This Library working area (Pio Baroja) is little more than a glorified basement with office furniture. Can’t say I won’t be back, but I’ll keep an eye open for better places to work.
Afterword
Nice productive day. I see a pool can be a better place for work in a nice day than a basement library. Again it took me quite long to get out of home today. Everything in Madrid opens at 9am. I ought to make my first work session hit opening hours.