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Journalλ︎

Gardening in the mornings

A new month so time to update libraries across Practicalli projects.

Bank holiday Monday and two personal holidays this week, so only two days at work and very few meetings, yay!. Time to prepare for the company offsite event next week and see how lightly I can pack.

I made a big impact on upgrading the garden this week. All the paving stones at the end of the garden were levelled so the shed is no longer on a slope. A thick weed surpressing membrane was fitted underneath all the paving stones.

The raised garden bed was be reworked by adjusting the top of the railway sleepers to be level to the top of the paving stones. This adds a nice clean line with the garden and makes maintenance in and around the garden easier. Weed surpressing membrane was added to the side and underneath of each sleeper. Spare wood panels was used to keep the membrane in plate and to also add more robustness to the sleepers.

Most of the work was done in the early mornings as the weather was quite hot.

500 Commit Streak on GitHub

500 day commit streak on GitHub reached today. This was legitimately achieved by doing a small amount of work each day.

I am not actively coding and committing on a regular basis in my current role, so the large majority of these commits are for Practicalli or Open Source projects.

GitHub stats - 500 day commit streak

Continuing to simplify the Practicalli AstroNvim User Config, so changes from the AstroNvim template are in new files or in community.lua.

The most visual opinionated changes are in practicalli.lua, such as dashboard logo and theme.

Motivated to work on the Practicalli Sustainable Life book after joining a sustainability working group at the company.

Its April Fool

Adding SSH keys to the YubiKey hardware security key provides convenience of SSH key use, especially when required for multiple computers.

Using a YubiKey to keep a single SSH key pair removes the need to generate a key pair for each computer.

Using one SSH key avoids the need for multiple entries in the allowed-signatures file to check locally that a commit has been signed.

Git Multiple SSH Keys & Neovim

A short week at work made even shorter by a company day to celebrate going live. A chance to unwind and reflect.

Neovim 0.10 is planned for 1 May 2024. Plugins should be unafected, although actively developing plugins like Neogit are trying to used parts of the Neovim API. The parts of Neogit that use 0.10 api should be more efficient, although I assume there wont be a noticable difference in functionality.

I will update Neovim to 0.10 when AstroNvim confirms it is working well with that release.

Having a Donut Party with system components

Not quite back to full health yet, so took it easy at the weekend.

More work on restoring spare bicycles so I can sell them or otherwise find a good home.

Continued the refactor of the Practicalli Service template, specifically refining the design of the system config and helper functions to support a development REPL workflow.

Debian Linux almost everywhere

Enjoying being back in Debian Linux world, with regolith desktop as the tiling window manager.

I have several Lenovo laptops and all but one are now upgraded to Debian Linux, using the testing version of the distribution.

The most significant difference with Debian Linux is the use of a separate root account for administration, rather than using sudo in Ubuntu Linux.

Springing back into life slowly

The last month has been tough due to illness, although still managed to do a little work with Practicalli to keep me motivated (both for work and my own personal health)

I though the Practicalli Project Templates had broken when I tried to create a new service project. It took me an hour or so to realise I had simply been using the command with the wrong argument, doh!

Alias Shell that updates Shell

As this week is mosly tweaks for Zsh history, I've titled this journal entry to be a play on words from the Shakesphere play 'Alls well that ends well'.

The fd built-in command for Zsh is a very effective way to keep the command history clean.

Engineering Practices

Illness is all around. Around 12% of people in Germany are currenly ill through covid, flu or a stomach virus. I have some relatively mild symptoms this week.

The hunt for a new place to live continues, investigating lots of facinating places in Scotland. Discovered an Ecopark with sustainably built housing. There is one house for sale and some new builds in the near future. Requested a build plan for the new build houses.