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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

A brave new world

Omarchy

Omarchy 3 is distributed as a self-contained ISO, so no internet downloads should be required during the install.

This does mean a 7 GB download is required, along with a USB stick or suitable SD card of 8 Gb or more.

There are links to the ISO image on the Omarchy website and in the manual, but I didnt see a link to a checksum file to check the integrity of the download.

Omarchy recommends Caligula for Linux to burn the ISO to the removable media.

Burn Omarchy ISO to usb memory stick

caligula burn ~/Downloads/omarchy-3.0.1.iso

Caligula will prompt for a checksum file if one is not found. Unfortunately I did not have time to hunt for one.

Caligula shows a selection list for all the removable media it finds, detailing the size of that media. I recommend only the USB memory stick to be used for Omarchy to be plugged into the computer, just in case :)

After 915.3 seconds (caligula shows the times) the Omarchy image was written to the USB memory stick and verified the image was written without error. 653.8 seconds to write the image, the rest to verify.

NOTE: I used an old USB Memory Stick (USB-A) which I picked up somewhere for free. Newer USB sticks with USB-C or SD Memory cards may be faster.

Booting from the USB Memory stick displayed a simple Omarchy menu system to define key information about the user, login name & password, Full name and email address (used for Git authentication), computer name and finally selecting where to install Omarchy.

After 7 minutes 23 seconds Omarchy was installed.

Enter to reboot the computer and remove the USB memory stick after the computer shuts down, just before starting again.

Omarchy starts with a simple login screen, with a prompt for the users password.

NOTE: I had to login a second time, as a few seconds after first entering the password Omarchy returned me to the password prompt.

It will be interesting to see how much tweaking I feel compelled to do over the coming weeks.

Removing software

Super + Alt, SPACE > Remove to remove software not required.

The computer used to test Omarchy has 8Gb of memory and 256 Gb or storage, so larger programs and those not otherwise not being tested can be removed.

  • libre-office

Terminal

Switch to Kitty terminal and reuse the Practicalli dotfiles or appreciate configuration options from there.

Super + Alt Space to open the system menu. Navigate to Install > Terminal and select Kitty.

A prompt shows to enter the sudo password and installs Kitty packages on correct entry.

A Restart Hyprland button appears once install is complete. This sets Omarchy to use Kitty as the default terminal, opening all requested configuration files in that terminal (and Neovim).

Slack

Hyprland tweaking

Before any changes, version control the original configuration so we can easily track what has been changed from the defaults.

Assume this is done with Neovim and lazy, to update config files

  • enable natural scrolling

Thank you.

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A lighter load

Three rides in three consecutive days this week, so I am looking forward to a relaxing Sunday. I plan to cuddle up with Omarchy.

I continue to use Garuda Linux for a Hyprland & Wayland based system on my main computer and it is an enjoyable experience athough there has been quite a lot to learn.

As the huge push for 'AI' services over the last year has been mostly hype I have dismissed much of it. To evaluate if there is any value in the current 'AI' tools I've started considering how I gather and organise information, to find opportunities for optimisation.

Downsizing my life continues with my older bicycles and accessories being recycled or upcycled. I am also investigating where are effective places to sell my bicycle.

I bought a Cannondale Quick Carbon Hybrid bike back in 2018 for commuting into London (42 minutes was my fastest time into London, this was before the cycle super-highways).

Cycling UK has tips on selling a bicycle. There is also a For Sale Forum. I have posted my Cannondale hybrid bike on this forum to see if there is interest.

Bike Delivery provides a delivery service for 42.99 GBP, with a further 19.99 GBP for a cardboard box to pack the bike in. 100 GBP liability insurance is free, 14.99 GBP for cover up to 500 GBP.

I will still have 3 bicycles left after I sell one.

I have a much greater appreciation for a simpler life over the last few years (since Covid). I will focus on a small number of things I value deeply.

This simplification lightens my mental load and enables focus on the things I really value. It will also be far easier to relocate, should I find a new place to live.

It sounds like the HMRC is swampped with self-assessment returns. According to the Gov.uk website it will be 44th November by the time they process and reply to my self-assessment submission.

The Gov.uk website has a check the status where an estimated date will be shown. along with the current submissions date being processed (16th May). It may be worth checking again in a few weeks to see if HMRC has got faster or slower.

Getting healthier Feeling healthier

I've lost 1 and a half bags of sugar in the last 4 days and had an excellent ride through Northern France, so feeling very motivated.

My Hyprland setup is working well, so I should be able to stop yak shaving all the configuration files 🤣 I do need to version control the config and document Garuda Linux and my own preferences for Hyprland.

Neovim 0.11.4 released with a several changes to key bindings to investigate. Some changes are moving to newer standard function calls. There are also new mappings for navigating quicklists, locaiton lists and tag-match lists.

  • [ Space adds a space above the current line, without moving the cursor
  • ] Space adds a space below the current line, without moving the cursor

Adventures in Hyprland and France

The nights are getting darker but that means more chance for star gazing.

Monthly updates for practicalli projects, updating dependencies on the Clojure CLI Config and Project Templates repositories.

Testing out new toys for the bicycle, including an electric pump, RideNow TPU inner tubes and Continental Gran Prix 5000 cream & black tyres. Final maintenance before my weekend cycling adventure.

The Hyprland configuration seems very stable now, with only minor enhancements. I havent quite got a hand of the window layout system yet, at least not in the same way as I could with i3 (Regolith desktop).

Setup Clojure on Arch Linux for the first time. The packaging is well done, although the install location, /usr/share/clojure is different to the manual script install I am used to on Debian Linux.

1001 GitHut Commit Streak

On Sunday 17th August 2025 I completed 1,001 days of successive commits in GitHub (without cheating).

Practicalli Johnny profile - GitHub activity statistics - 1000 day streak

Some job hunting during the week included being contacted by a recruiter from Docker regarding an engineering manager role (security division). The recruiter that helped get me a position at Citi also got in touch for a healthcare engineering manager role.

Planned a longer cycling route to the Isle of Grain, one of the more remote parts of Kent. Grain village is right by the sea and there is a long sandy beach there. As its a remote location, there are very few people around usually.

I've taken several trips to Grain with my friend Gaiville who I trained and cycled with from Lands End to John O'Groats in 2019.

I've altered the start of the route previously used to accommodate people from the local cycling club.

Movies to see

Movies watched

  • September 5 covers the terrorist attach at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, told from the perspective of the people working at the ABC sports division who were able to broadcast live much of the tragedy.
  • A Simple Favour with Anna Kendrick in the lead role, as the perfect mom who gets involved with some 'interesting' people.
  • Matrix trilogy a relaxing bank holiday movie marathon and even after 25 years the movies looks great and are still very engaging.

Current TV shows:

  • Twisted Metal is quirky and fun show with bizarre and disturbing characters who are also quite likeable too.
  • Star Trek Strange New Worlds I find to be a very fresh and fun take on the Star Trek world, whilst still having darker storylines and background threads.
  • Gravity Falls watching this show again for about the 5th time, using it as my brain switch on / switch off show. I have watched Rick n Morty too many times 🤣

Another heatwave

This week we have the pleasure of another heatwave in the United Kingdom. Its not quite as extreme as the one in July (37 degrees Celsius), but it will in the 30 degree range again for several days.

The week started with a cycle ride to collect some new shoes. In training for a ride up a mountain during a French trip I did two more ~100km rides back to back

I use the Lake brand of shoes as they have a wide fit size. Although going through there very detailed sizing chart it was clear that not all shoes were wide enough for my feet (without being far too long).

Is AI worth the cost

OpenAI gives a curl command to initially test the account setup, then its nothing until a credit card is added to the account. So is it actually worth spending money on something I cannot try out first?

Watching Beacon 23 again and enjoying it even more a second time around. The first viewing I was a bit confused with the storyline jumps, but it makes a lot more sense now.

The Editor code assistant plugin for Neovim had a bit update, although it is no longer running the ECA server.

The Saga Begins

I tried using Hyprland with Debian Linux a few months ago but the packages are a little out of date even when using the unstable (SID) distribution. As I had been using SID packages, then the Debian Linux system had become a little too unstable for day to day use. Interestingly I installed the KDE desktop and that worked very nicely before I started again from scratch.

Hyperland is kept up to date in Arch Linux although there is a lot more work to learn and maintain arch linux compared to Debian Linux. pacman command options are quite cryptic and I found them hard to memorise. Its also easy to break things doing an update (the downside of a rolling release based distribution).

Garuda Linux adds some nice tools on top of Arch Linux (and can also used the Nix sub-system) to simplify overall package upgrades and a range of other maintenance tools.

Supporting the editor-code-assistant/eca-nvim project via testing and feedback. Contributed a plugin spec for lazy.nvim plugin manager. The eca-nvim plugin is in very early stages, but I got a prompt to appear in Neovim 😃

Health and fitness continues to improve and the number of cycle rides and distance continues to increase. In July I completed 800km distance from 11 distinct rides, totalling around 35 hours of riding across the month (not including stoppage time).

Cycling maintenance seems to be complete for both the Ribble SL Disc and Bianchi 928 RC road bikes.

Aims:

  • DONE: new cleats for the black & red Lake shoes (and readjust cleats on white lake shoes)
  • DOING: upgrade OS on rangerone (Garuda Linux Hyprland flavor)
  • BLOCKED: continue eval of shuttle and rust experiments - on hold due to service outages
  • TODO: update Practicalli Clojure hot loading examples

Practicalli working

Much cooler week and my ankle is feeling sore, so more focus on work this week.

Aims:

  • update Practicalli Clojure hot loading examples
  • continue eval of shuttle and rust experiments - on hold due to service outages
  • new cleats for the black & red Lake shoes
  • upgrade OS on rangerone (Garuda Linux Hyprland flavor)
  • in journal
  • 4 min read

Practicalli on a minimal budget

I am writing an article about running Practicalli for (almost) zero cost, only the domain name renewal incurs a yearly fee.

Surprisingly, GitHub started showing a message about a billing problem. As I shouldn't be billed for anything I am aware of, further investigation was required. The issue was resolved really quickly by GitHub support, so I can continue with describing how I run Practicalli on a minimal budget.

Movies:

Arrival is a beautiful film with an engaging story, breathtaking cinematography and a very powerful message about the importance of language and communicating. The film opens and closes with the moving "On the Nature of Daylight" composition from The Blue Notebooks by Max Richter.

Cycle rides:

Speedgate Cafe Wednesday Group Bianchi goes to Windsor Castle and back again