Weekly Recap 1526/5000, reviewing my first few journal entries and laughing about it.

• Read: The Art of Manliness articles on focusing.
• Reading: Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain, by David Eagleman.
• Reading: Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns.
• Wrote: Blog entry on decluttering.
• Writing: My speech for Rubyconf! :)
• Biked: 155km.
• Coding. Forever project: Daryllxd.
  • I added a started_at and ended_at to the table. This is huge. The goal of the eternal side project is to keep me productive, and I’ve noticed that I can get carried away doing frivolous things from time to time. With a started_at and ended_at, I can literally see what time in the day I was unproductive.
  • I’ve been implementing the Composite pattern for Payloads/Errors in SuccessfulOperation. It really fits the needs of “I want to return this operation, but I also want to be able to add attachments or errors if I need to.” I also want tor return NullPayload and NullErrors.

• Coding. Transcripto:
  • While I like what Bulma does, I changed it back to Bootstrap. There’s a high chance that when I get to another company, they use Bootstrap anyway. Plus I need to concentrate on shipping rather than creating weird stuff.
  • Currently doing UI work. I think this thing is going to work conceptually because it will save people a lot of time. It also publicizes the speaker’s work. Maybe. I’m not really sure. I just have to finish this so I can have a portfolio project of my own that’s web-based.
  • I’m thinking of just buying a Bootstrap theme just so things look slicker. Let’s see.

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Life updates:

I like the direction things are headed so far. I’ve been slowly adding helpful habits while deleting bad ones.

When I wake up, I weigh myself. This makes me keep grounded even if eat bad things because I know I’ll have to weigh and check myself later.

I constantly write down things on my journal. It’s so funny because I checked my journal entries from a few months back and I was laughing at how inane some of the entries were. There’s something there about “Why Beaches Suck”. First point: “No Internet.” Lol.

My mind has been blown by the concentration articles on the Art of Manliness blog, so much so that I’m constantly doing things now just to keep my concentration in place. I just start a Pomodoro and simply concentrate on the task at hand without interruptions. It takes a lot of energy and willpower but usually, after the time is up, I’m blown away by how much I got done.

I’ve been trying to ask more questions lately. I’m trying to start a Hacker News or Reddit thread every day about something that interests me. It’s been really good so far. Google usually answers questions of a “what” variety. For the “how”, I’ll just ask a person.

It’s so weird to see my name at Rubyconf. This is my first time speaking at a programming conference. I’m pumped. I read somewhere that “Just try not to suck, because people don’t remember talks anyway”. I’ll be presenting on some of the good habits I’ve built up over the years. I’ve been working on it intermittently for the last month, but I have to dedicate a chunk of time rehearsing the entire speech. The last time I gave a talk at the local Ruby users group meetup, it was too damn long. Like freaking 20 minutes over the time limit. Huhu bells.

I’m going to put all the “Learning How To Learn” lessons I took when I start drilling down on Elixir next week. It’s about time, because I keep on reading about it in a book but not really create a project with it. I have to immerse myself in the language by not doing anything except that language. So yeah, I’m excited. Daryllxd becomes a multi-language back-end.

Okay, see you. I have to ride my bike!