Updated on 2024-02-08

Developing bookmark

Bookmark is my bookmarking/link + archive archival/email roundup tool that I’m building to have a replacement for Pinboard. I’m enjoying using Elixir + Phoenix and am leaning towards a lean/simple UI embracing page transitions and little JS. I’m having a bad reaction to the amount of JS I have to write at work and want something easy to work on and easy to use.

Improving statisch

I think statisch, the static site/blogging platform this site is built with, needs a rewrite/some rearchitecting. I want to add tags, which to me calls for the concept of collections of items with a page that lists all of the items in that collection. This could be a tag like “recipes” or the posts from the month of June or all posts ever created.

Right now, I have a hacked-together method that creates the /posts page – this can probably be repurposed for collections.

Programming as a hobby

I’m having a lot of fun writing code right now! Elixir’s a super ergonomic language for me to use – reminds me of using Ruby in college, but with an FP flair that I love – and working on projects that I enjoy is bringing the hacking spark back into my side projects.

I’ve taken a break from doing things that I think will actively help my career if they’re not what I truly want to do – things like learning more React, or Kubernetes, or studying algorithms. I just want to be a little bear roaming around the web world poking its little snout into things that smell good. And right now, Elixir’s smelling good. Emacs is tempting me so I can have a better writing experience. I want to write small things that are useful for me. I want to ignore the audience and create for myself.

Bodybuilding/aesthetics

After a few months of learning the Olympic lifts, I’ve admitted to myself a dirty truth – I don’t care about competition, I just care about aesthetics. And that’s ok.

The gym for me is meditative. I want an hour of concentration on the physical, something that I don’t touch in my job or most of my other hobbies. I want to move at my own pace and explore what makes me feel more athletic and healthy. I want the freedom to choose what I do based on what and how I’m feeling, physically and mentally.