Today I have to receive airbnb guests at 13:00, and I left some pending work, so I'll be there by 12:00. This leaves me around two hours for a first leg of work during the morning. It shall be done at the closest library so that I can come back for the bike and further my skills biking uphill. I recall some months ago I felt a lot of hesitance biking around, the excuses put forward by reason were that people in Madrid don't know how to share the road with cyclists, and that there were many cases of bike theft. But I also intuited that these were excuses, and that deep down I felt it was a hassle to bike around, so I pushed myself to use the bike. I'm glad I did it. It takes me the same time to reach the apartment by bike than by metro, and indeed it's more hassle, but there's more pleasure too.
What shall I do today? For the past few weeks I've been working on project Arete going from the foundations and building upon them, yesterday I made some speculative work sans foundations and saw that the foundations could be different. I'll keep doing the speculative work and then decide if the foundations need to be different. To be more specific: in an application one enters data to produce a result, now I'm trying to start from the result to see how the data is entered. In order to use my product I don't need an interface to enter the data, I can write the JSON files by hand. Though unwieldy, this gives me the opportunity to use the product before the brunt of UI work is done.
After I receive the guests I'll have lunch at a pool. I'll make sure there's a good workplace nearby and then complete a second leg of work there. From memory I know Francos Rodriguez is a good option for this, and the library and gym nearby are unknown to me, so it will be a good change to check them out. But it is also quite far away from home, and I'd en up biking around 20-30 Km today. I'll see if I have a better option.
Work session 1 (1h, 20 minutes)
This is indeed the correct direction, it is as if I had been hiking through a wild area not knowing there was a path parallel to my route. Now the task is to get this to the "works for me" stage, then I will continue working on the Method of Action projects. I want to accomplish the working state because this would be like hopping on a bicycle, now that I now this is the correct path I can optimize for efficiency instead of exploration.
Work session 2 (1h)
I arrived to the airbnb apartment with very little margin, so I jumped in the shower to rinse myself off from the biking and I put myself to work immediately. On the way here I saw many ambulances and I recalled a dream that I had last night: I was walking with a female acquaintance along a clear river, and she misstepped and fell into it. We were both carrying our laptops, and she sank to the bottom because the laptop dragged her down. Finally she let go and came to the surface, and told me she'd dive back in to search for it. I was wondering if I should help when my own laptop slipped from my hands and sank to the bottom, I wondered if I should recovered it as it would be rendered useless, but I dived in anyways and brought it out. I inspected the water damage and wondered if my laptop would ever work again. I noticed myself biking with more care, and in fact I added one minute to my previous record. I've observed that my dreams often influence my behavior.
I finished cleaning up just in time for the guests to arrive, who were some young Spaniards from Zaragoza who came here to spend the weekend.
Work session 3 (1h, 50min)
I came to Buenavista library which is on the way back home. I forgot to pack my bathing suit, so the pool plan fell through. I'd gladly use my sports shorts for swimming, but all city pools here warn that bathing suits are required. From experience I've seen that rules in Spain are non-negotiable, contrary to my native Mexico. Still, I commit petty crimes such as bringing tea into the library.
I've come here without having lunch yet, so I won't be able to extend my work session for too long. But I've seen I'm more productive when I'm hungry, so let's make the most out of it. I'll try to finish the proto-MVP for project Arete in this time.
***
In the end I completely forgot about the hunger. I finished the proto-MVP within 15 minutes! Then I tweaked the games to include María's credit and wrote the page for the first period of Method of Action. I'll now head to the park for lunch, and a fourth work session if the mood is right.
Work session 4 (1h, 15min)
I came to Fuente del Berro park and after lunch I had a nap under a majestic cedar tree. There's a study hall within the park with high ceilings and beautiful views of the park, there's no air conditioner, only fans, but open windows in a nice park are a good trade-off.
The study hall closes at 19:30 and it's 18:00, so I have 1½ to work. I don't want to dive in a new codebase without being able to dedicate the full day to it, so I'll work on my technical debt so it stops accumulating.
19:15 and it seems I cut down a substantial amount of debt. I'll publish this, hit the gym and then call it a day.
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
- Give some decency to that ugly footer
- Redirect duopixel.com