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Journalλ︎

A journal of thoughts and experiences from commercial work and community projects 🌐 powered by Material for MkDocs

Practical.li provides free online books covering practical guides to Clojure programming and development workflows. Practicalli Engineering Playbook contains specific guides across the full spectrum of software development.

Sponsor Practicalli

All sponsorship funds are used to support the continued development of Practicalli series of books and videos, although most work is done at personal expense and time.

Thanks to 🌐 Cognitect, 🌐 Nubank and Practicalli GitHub sponsors from the community for your continued support

Older and wiser

After last weeks experiments with Neovim 0.11 and AstroNvim version 5, it was time to put together the new nvim-astro5 configuration. The AstroNvim 5 based config is even simpler with fewer lines of code than current AstroNvim 4 config.

AstroNvim has replaced many plugins with Snacks and it feels even more responsive to use and more visually appealing. I've also updated the theme to Catppuccin (Cat Pussin') for Neovim and Kitty terminal app for a nice consistency.

There will be some significant changes to add to the Practicalli Neovim book as the content migrates to use Practicalli nvim-astro5 configuration. So as to not disrupt users of Practicalli Astro (based on AstroNvim 4) I will use a separate git branch and publish initially to Practicalli Neovim Staging site.

Once the Practicalli nvim-astro5 configuration is feature compatible and has proven itself stable, I will push all the updates to Practicalli Neovim

Firstly, I had to create a staging website and workflow to publish from a seperate branch (or a pull request) for a book created with Material for MkDocs. A staging site was used for the Practicalli blog generated by Cryogen and pushed to a separate repository (GitHub Org token added for accessing a different repository).

TODO: Relesed Practicalli nvim-astro5

DOING: are there meaningful icon for linking to GitHub issues, pull requests and and projects? Other than the generic GitHub icon

Material for MkDocs Icons & Emoji page has a search across all icons and emojis available. Potential icons include:

  • - Octicons issue open
  • - Octicons issue closed
  • 🎫 - a ticket
  • 🎟 - tickets (like ticket but red)

Updating to Neovim 0.11 on Arch Linux was unexpectedly challenging and was an opportunity to look into package mirrors. It seems some mirrors are not updating as regularly as they could. Further investigation into the best mirrors to use for my geographical region seems valuable.

Contributions:

Hello Sunshine

Neovim 0.11 was released last week along with AstroNvim 5, so its time for some testing with Practicalli Astro configuration for Neovim.

A sunny week ahead and my focus will be on health and fitness this week. I have managed to be regular with my walking, although I am still very slow when cycling (especially the hills of Kent).

I have been using LinkedIn to consider the next steps in my career. Unless there is a really interesting role, I am tempted to focus more on community work or maybe part-time / contract work.

End of the tax year in UK

Its the end of the tax year in the UK in a few weeks, so I have been busy ensuring I maximise my pension contributions. I am able to make a significant pension contribution this tax year (and hopefully get a nice repayment via self-assessment later in the year).

I am still interested in using Hyprland (and many related packages) for a tiling desktop environment with excellent UX. I came across Garuda Linux with has many kinds of editions, one being Hyprland.

Practicalli rising

Really getting into the swing of working full time on Practicalli educational content again.

Applied for funding from Clojurists Together for a new Clojure Stacks project and for updating Practical.li content. I've been tidying up the very many tickets across the project issues across the Practicalli GitHub Org.

I created a new GitHub project for Clojurists Together Funding and discovered interesting new features of GitHub projects.

After a report on a compromised GitHub action, I restricted the GitHub action policy for the Practicalli GitHub Org. Unfortunately the liquidz/antq-runner GitHub action is not by a certified Organisation, so is blocked from running unless I add an explicit exception.

reClojure 2025 has been announced for 26th May 2025, this time an in-person event. Strangely this is a Bank Holiday in the UK, so travelling could be 'interesting'.

Unlike previous reClojure conferences, this is a paid event costing 75 GBP. With the event being on a Bank Holiday I am unlikely to attend as I'll be riding with the local cycling club or other long distance event.

Updating Neovim on Termux

After a lovely sunny weekend its back to grey and chilly outside. Later in the week it was sunny but really cold (freezing overnight).

Lots of updating software and tools this week, including

Backup continues for the Lenovo X1 Extreme laptop which is running an old Ubuntu and will have Debian Linux soon.

In the Clojurians Slack community, a post in news-and- channel highlighted a security risk to the tj-actions GitHub action. I dont use this GitHub action, but as a measure of caution I configured a more restrictive policy for running GitHub actions in the Practicalli Org.

Spring is in the air

Its March already and I am feeling much better about how my health is improving after longer walks and cycle rides (although medical test results are still concerning if they are to be believed). I should be able to get a lot of interesting work done this month :fingers-crossed: (and probably lots more sleep).

Continued searching for a resolution to the degraded RAID array in the QNap NAS device (Network Attached Storage) which was not automatically rebuilding when adding a new disk.

Clojurist Together has are accepting proposals for Q2 2025 ($33K 5-7 Projects). The deadline to submit a proposal is March 17th.

Consider writing articles for Dev, clojure and more general engineering topics (from the Practicalli Engineering Playbook)

There is also a writing challenge about the future of software

Rescuing storage

Tweaks and maintenance updates to Practicalli projects and my Neovim config this week.

Continuing to organise my digital media which required recovery of a RAID array, using SSH to connect to the NAS and the mdadm tool to repair the RAID array.

I forgot how crap Apple software can be when I tried to watch movies stored on my iPad via the Apple TV box connected to my TV. There is an AirPlay option in VLC and it picks up the AppleTV, however, it will only stream the audio and not the video. In the settings drop-down from the top-right (which has network, bluetooth, volume, etc.) has a screen mirror button that does actually stream both audio and video. They both seem to be using AirPlay, but selecting from VLC never seems to work, which is unfortunate as this is the most convenient button to select from within VLC.

I wasn't feeling optimistic about my health at the start of the week, but I managed a lot of walking, a 35km hilly cycle ride and a park run 5km in 38 mins. So my health is slowly getting a little better.

I do have greater pain in my throat and ears after the exercise, so am taking more paracetamol to help combat the inflammation there.

Learning to live again

A productive start to the week and I am feeling much more like myself again. I thrive when I am getting things done whether that be a large or small task.

My TODO list for this week:

  • Practicalli Rust - more content but still very early days for the book
  • DONE: prep for job interview
  • DONE: job interview (EM)
  • digital archive clean up continues
  • DONE: unclog central heating (3 way port motor blockage) - using manual lever on colder days.
  • DONE: at least 1 bicycle ride
  • DOING: Heart points and steps for each day - didnt complete for the whole week, but a good improvement.

This weekly journal is updated most days and gives an easy way to capture and more importantly review what I've been up to. Especially when doing many small and disparate things, it is easy to forget what was done. The journal keeps my brain active and allows me a central place to review my activities (and feel good about them).

I had the first interview in a year and a half and even though I prepared for the interview questions using STAR responses I didnt feel I had sufficient focus in my responses during the interview and I dont think my health was good enough to be interviewing.

I am definitely out of practice interviewing, especially when very tight replies, so I will need to figure out how to effectively practice, or just do more 'practice' interviews.

First glimpse of Spring

A sunny day at the end of the week inspired me to get out on my road bike, once essential bike maintenance was completed.

Saturday Park Run was the first in over a year and it was very challenging. My time was 39 minutes and 25 seconds, around 9 minutes slower than my personal best so there is a long road ahead to a reasonable fitness.

April is the start of a new tax year in the UK so time for a personal financial review.

This weeks digital music organisation included The Cranberries, an excellent Irish rock band. The Mission and Fields Of The Nephilim unleashed my inner Goth. Nine Inch Nails finished the week of with industrial rock.

The Gorge movie on Apple TV was excellent. I really enjoyed the characters portrayed by Miles Teller staring Anya Taylor-Joy who gave a fantastic performance in The Queens Gambit. Some excellent music in the movie, including a very unexpected track from Twisted Sister xmas album (yes it does exist).

Ribble Endurance SL Disc road bicycle

Hacking Material theme for MkDocs

Trying out an aesthetic change to the Practicalli websites by changing buttons to have rounded corners. This alleviates one of the very few niggles I had with Material for MkDocs.

Practicalli Journal post footer buttons with round corners

MkDocs Material buttons with round corners - example from Practicalli Journal

Testing a Neogit config change to automatically update the Git Status buffer on file change when that buffer is already open.

Its still cold despite a few nice days last week, although as I was ill for several days then I was snuggled up on the sofa under the lovely warm blankets I got from Wilco (before they closed down).

Music organised this week includes a mixture of gothic, rock and pop genres: