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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.

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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.

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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:

  • in hyprland
  • 14 min read

New beginnings

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.

Coming back to life

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.

Learning Linux like its 1995

Using Arch Linux (for Hyprland experiments) takes me back to the mid 1990's when I was learning Linux from the ground up.

At the end of 1994 I was installing Slackware Linux (from 82 floppy disks) and spending hours figuring out what to compile into the Linux kernel (before the days of dynamic loading). There was a huge amount to learn (usually without my own internet connection).

Arch Linux wiki pages have a huge amount of information, showing all the possible options for every piece of software and service. This does present a dilemma of choice.

Having experienced many years with Linux, I know many of the concepts and software associated with a Linux system. I don't need to read all the options, but do find myself scrolling a lot until I find something familiar (or simple).

I have an Arch Linux desktop using Hyprland up and running, using HyDE to configure all the extra tools to make Hyprland useable as a desktop (although there are still some things to tweak and add).

Hyprland configured with HyDE after fixing waybar configuration

LSP file renaming with Neovim & LSP still fails using the Neovim LSP client, although it is fairly simple to rename a namespace and its corresponding file name using clojure-lsp command line.

Movies & Shows this week:

  • Death on the Nile 1978 with Peter Ustinov as Hercule Poirot, including an all-star cast from the time including David Niven, Angela Landsbury and Betty Davis.
  • Star Trek - The Original Series started watching this week as a way to switch off each evening, or more likely listen too whilst I write up the days journal.

A new dawn a new day its a new life

As we come to the end of 2025 I continue to contemplate what is next?

Do I want to continue in the software engineering industry with its many systemic faults?

Or should I branch out and do something completely different?

80,000 hours is a guide to careers that have a positive impact on the world.

My searching for a new home are currently focusing on the East coast of Scotland (which is dryer than London at the moment). Aberdeen (the granite city) has good support for cycling and a few cycle clubs in the area.

Wired up my Playstation 4 and VR headset to start playing games again. During more severe covid symptoms I couldnt wear the VR headset as it put too much pressure on my head. From an hour of play today, the VR headset felt okay.

I had a few quick games of Stardust and one surprisingly successful game of Polybius.