A journal of thoughts and experiences from commercial work and community projects 
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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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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:
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.
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).
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
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:
Interviewing for an Engineering Manager at an interesting FinTech company.
The journey into Hyprland continues its never ending (?) journey. I recently discovered HyDE which provides a rich desktop environment on top of Hyprland. Initially the install script was used but it does seem that HyDE-CLI tool is a newer and seemingly more effective approach.
Continued to manage my digitised music, including Megadeth, Ozzy Osbourne, Bryan Adams and The Offspring.
Monday was a very productive day after vising the Doctors surgery to give yet another blood sample.
I am enjoying using Hyprland on an old Lenovo Thinkpad X1 and using it to update my weekly Practicalli Journal entries. I feel a long way off using Hyprland as my normal work laptop, but I do like the simplicity and eye candy that Hyprland and HyDE provides to the Linux desktop.
Hyprland tweaks and notes continue throughout the month (year). This week I investigated how the padding around Kitty is configured in Hyprland.
Having a spare laptop for the sofa means I can watch TV and relax while still capturing the highlights of the day.
Currently I am watching Star Treck The Original Series. I am really enjoying Star Trek TOS, more than I expected. It has been several decades since I last saw some episodes.
Discussed options for running a clojure workshop with minimal setup
Set up a Python local environment and installed Material for MkDocs on Arch Linux.
After a very sleepy weekend, my knee and hip are feeling almost normal again. The aim for this week is to walk at least 45 minutes each day.