I’m getting the feeling that this month’s various goal-oriented tasks will make for incredibly dull reading. For example, today I spent about 90 minutes going through a tutorial for Metalsmith. (more…)

Continuing from Tuesday and Wednesday’s focus on contract work for an upcoming deadline, Thursday through Sunday were also all about coding. I got the critical prototype code working late Saturday, and spent Sunday doing some fixes followed by a code review to document what I thought needed improvement.

An interesting side-project did arise out of the week-long coding exercise: a video log of the development process, recorded as I was working through the problem in real time, an accurate reflection of how I think while programming. While it’s a bit embarrassing how slow I am at times and what obvious things I miss, I did find the act of talking to the camera as I coded actually helped me stay focused, far more than I think I could have managed otherwise. There are over 18 hours of footage, a significant portion of the 25 hours total I spent developing the feature, and some day I will go back and be amazed at how smart/how dumb I am on different days.

At this point, I think I can say I’m a fan of streaming my activities and look forward to doing more of it with as many of my activities as possible. My Groundhog Day Resolutions time might be quite limited for the next two months, as I am working on contract through the summer AND will be back in Taiwan for a good chunk of time, but I will figure out a way to bring the schedule back into balance. This is a learning situation, after all! I am feeling very positive about the days ahead!

After 4/4’s major Groundhog Day Review #2, I’ve been drawn into contract work, as there is an upcoming delivery rapidly approaching that I’d like to get largely settled by this Friday. Because of that I’ve not thought too hard about Groundhog Day Resolution Goals. However, I have made some related decisions!

• I’m getting rid of the Epson Workforce Pro 4630 printer that I really liked until I realized it was not printing text cleanly. I then got a warranty repair unit, which printed text correctly but could not print color. At this point, I’ve wasted over a hundred dollars on ink and hours of time. I could try sending it back one more time, which I may do, but I have decided to wash my hands of this crappy inkjet technology. The Workforce Pro 4630 was well-regarded as a small business inkjet All-In-One, and I believed in Epson’s ability to deliver a quality product especially for their more expensive business products. But you know what? Inkjets suck unless you spend time maintaining them every week. If you are not printing color every day, it’s a huge waste. So I have decided to get rid of this stress-inducing hunk of junk; I’ve replaced it with a color laser printer (an HP LaserJet Pro 252dw) which should not have the print head issues that inkjets have always had. As I said on Twitter, an inkjet printer is like a great-looking exotic dog that has the habit of randomly on your work. Color laser output is not the greatest, but I just need it to work on my form design; business level graphics are fine with me. I don’t need a new hobby taking care of needy printers.

• I’ve been continuing to try virtual coworking, streaming for a chunk of time every day to see what it’s like. An experienced streamer caught one of my last ones and sent me a wonderful breakdown of his streaming setup, so I have some ideas of where to go next in terms of expanding capability. Streaming is fun! It gives me the power to use my voice conversationally, and I had the interesting thought that perhaps streaming is actually the best vehicle for what I want to do, which is do creative things with other creative people. It reminds me a bit of when I worked in digital agencies in the early 2000s, doing work in the company of other people but not directly interacting with them because we all had different areas of focus. Combining the livestreaming of creative work with the coworking and living room cafe concepts might be a fruitful direction to explore!

• I’ve been dealing with health-related issues not only for myself, but for the cats. I have a doctor’s appointment coming up, and had to have a blood test. One of the cats is having dental surgery tomorrow because her front teeth are badly infected, and the other cat needs catsitting when I plan my last-minute trip to Taiwan to visit my Dad and have some dental work completed by my uncle. It’s been a little stressful trying to coordinate the times and making sure I have the money with the upcoming tax deadlines looming over me.

Otherwise, I have been feeling pretty good. I’m actually fairly productive and focused. The coworking streaming sessions have provided an outlet. I’ve been improving my audio/video setup and getting a feel for how to talk on my feet as I try to work, which is good training. I see some possibilities for expansion of my online digital community, and I feel more connected to the development community in a way that I haven’t before. It occurred to me today that this is a new Golden Age of computing that has the optimism of the early 1980s, and I’m happy that I’ve again lucked into being part of it!