The guests are having issues with a window that won't open. It wouldn't be much of a problem if it wasn't blazing hot these days, so I'll go over to address the issue. I don't know how much time it may take me to consider it a work session, but just going over there will take me a while and I'll begin addressing digital work after noon. I'll take an extra fan for the guests because of the heat.
As for the rest of the work, I shall simply think by writing and figure out what need to be done. If I want to publish the work today, I'll have to fill all the blind links that I put on the design, and do general detail work. It has to be launched today, as I've seen deadlines tend to move backward once you've pushed it backward once. This seems to be the only detrimental effect of "virtual deadlines", you think you've pushed the deadline back, but you have crossed it without shipping and thus the product becomes stale. It's not easy mustering the pressure necessary to overcome the "desire of fulfillment of vision" which leads to perfectionism. Let us simply say "this is what I could do in three days" and roll with it.
If I must make a stop at the apartment, perhaps it is fruitful to think out where the computer work will be done. There's a library and a study hall nearby. I've been to the library before, it's not really an inspiring place for work but it is adequate. There is also a study hall nearby, which I haven't checked out. I'll go there in order to maximize experience. I don't know yet if I want to make a stop at the pool today, perhaps I shouldn't make any leisure plans until release. Indeed, today I will forgo leisure until I've shipped, not as a matter of delayed gratification but from simple practicality.
I don't need to write anymore in the 14 minutes I have left, I'll prepare the things I need to take to the apartment and begin the day.
Work session 1 (1 hour)
I write this after the the work session instead of the beginning, since there was nothing to plan about getting a window unstuck. It is strange how planning is sometimes useful and sometimes useless, I've seen this happen when I go hiking through nature without paths. If I have good visibility of the terrain, I observe carefully the features and then hike/climb in that direction, making sure I'm hitting the landmarks that I observed from afar. But sometimes you must traverse terrain unfamiliar and invisible to you, and in this case plans are more of an obstacle than an aid. You must constantly improvise.
The window handle wasn't opening an aluminum frame window. It had been wonky in the past weeks, and apparently a previous guests (in his desperation for fresh air, no doubt) forced it in such a way that he rendered it useless. I tried for a long while, but I felt that nothing in the mechanism was moving. I then tried sliding a knife between the windows and it was possible, though I was just poking randomly and this wouldn't get me anywhere. I then opened a working window and observed the mechanism, and I saw a place where I could slide the knife, and then push down on the knife to liberate the lock. I came back to the stuck window and did this, but it didn't seem to bulge. Since I had observed the mechanism, I felt confident about putting a lot of more weight on the knife that I would if I didn't know what I was doing. So I forced it with confidence and I heard the "clack" of victory.
In the end I came came here by metro instead of the bike, the fan was too big to transport on a bike. It's a shame because I was looking forward to see if I could improve the 40 minutes it took me to get here. I'll go to the park for lunch now, otherwise my next work session would be cut short by hunger.
Work session 2 (2 hours, 10 min)
My intention was to have lunch at a park next to the study hall, but it turned out to be a concrete park. How can architects come up with this? Perhaps the client request is to repel people as much as possible. Across the street I saw a generous strip of grass lined with trees, and sat for lunch under a red plum tree. As this wasn't marked as a park by google maps, I switched my basemap to satellite, this should give me a better vision of nature within the city.
As nothing was going as planned, but I was still dealing with the unexpected situations adequately, I decided not to describe what I was going to do, but what I had done after my work session. I spent most of the last two hours tweaking details so the web page "feels" right. These kind of things are not visible at first sight, they only reveal themselves after use. Though one can engage indefinitely with this kind of detail work, assigning a couple of hours for it is enough to bring a web page to life. After two hours I found my energies lagging. I can either head back home or continue work here, but I need a break. This is a nice spot to work, the study hall is on the 7th floor of a building with nice views of Madrid. People are focused and silent. There's air conditioner. One of the better public workspaces that I've encountered. I will surely repeat this place as it's close to the airbnb apartment. I'll use my break to explore the rest of the building and see what else is here.
Work session 3 (3h and 30min)
I come back from the break having explored the building. The bathrooms of the study hall were appalling, but coming down the stairs I found another bathroom in the fourth floor which is nice. There were numerous spaces for activities, which, coming into the reception, turned out to be for drawing, painting and chess lessons offered by the state. I'd surely sign up if I knew I'd be in Madrid for a couple of more months, but for now I flow in uncertainty. At the entrance I found an exchange bookshelf which appeared to have nothing interesting at first sight, but amongst cheap Spanish books I found an edition of "To Kill a Mockingbird" in English. I pocketed it knowing that when a classic finds you it's time to read it. I went through the first pages and the narrative is lucid.
I see my personal life seeping into my workday descriptions. But at this time all work is personal, so it's fine. Let the end of the day mark the period of privacy.
It seems this last leg of work would be for actually publishing what I've done so far. There is some hesitance, I was thinking "if I am more productive just by imagining I am observed, perhaps I do not need to be observed, I just need to imagine I'm being observed. But here again is the mind with it's clever tricks. I'll simply stick to my original intentions. I'm aiming for 19:00, it is 16:36 at this very moment.
It is 20:02 and I just finished. I feel mind exhaustion. Though I am ready to announce, I will wait until I get home. I need to give my mind a break.
Debt
- Put blog templates in linked files
- Launch plackup upon server start
- Create build step for blog javascript and css minification
- Historical about page
- Create archive pages for blog
- Serve everything on https
- Make blog footer sticky