Journal -- June 12, 2023

Monday, June 12, 2023 – Time for the regular check-in to braindump what I’ve been up to and what I’m thinking about. Who reads this stuff?

Work

I continue to look for contract and/or full-time Elixir work. Hire me!

It’s been a quiet and slow spring, but there are small signs of promise. Took a few more calls and emails in the last 4 weeks than the 4 before that.

Not too much else to share. In general, just feels off since normally I turn away work and have people come to me. It’s been strange to have to flip it and do the outreach myself.

Franklin

As posted, I’ve put Franklin on-hold while I consider if I really want to move away from Hugo. I suspect I will stick with Hugo.

One related idea is to stick with Hugo and then maybe create a LiveView (or maybe Svelte?) UI experience to let me stage PRs for the Hugo-powered blog to help overcome the weight of editing stuff in VS Code. There is a project called Keystatic which is playing around with similar ideas. I dunno if the pain is really that large or worth my time but we’ll see.

Tech Education

I finished working through the LiveView course and started the Elixir MVP course. Also started tinkering and reading up on both Ash and Svelte. I even joined Fireship.io to check out some of their content.

ElixirBookClub continues to work through Software Design X-Rays: Fix Technical Debt with Behavioral Code Analysis. We finished Chapter 5 on Sunday.

Next Side Project?

I continue to fiddle with ideas and audiences. Part of this has me revisiting the 30x500 course I worked through before. The audience I am considering is “digital course builders”. I feel like I align with them, have been a member in the past, and would be interested in building some sharp tools to help them out. It’s all research at this phase. I’m planning to start blogging to that audience soon and will share when it’s public. (That content will likely not be posted here, but I dunno – maybe it should be?)

Walks and Exercise

Slacking. Been walking about once a week. Weather is great now, which is no longer an excuse. Next week I’ll be down the shore and planning to walk in the mornings there. Beach and boardwalk should make for a nice new environment.

EMPEX

I did not attend EMPEX as I was planning. I saw the NY smoke issues, and even from what I was experiencing in Philly, it was bad. I have some historic asthma issues and had to make a call mid-day Wednesday, and in that moment, I did not want to put myself in a situation where I’d be traveling in the smoke.

It’s a shame because by Friday (the day of the conference) it had cleared up a lot. Oh wells.

Vacation

Next week I’ll be headed to the Jersey shore with my sister for a week. Should be fun. Looking forward to some quality beach and pool time.

ElixirClub

No big movement on this front, though I did have an issue with fraud credit cards which was fun. I’ll probably make some bigger decisions about this and PhillyElixir when I get back.

Phillies

The up-and-down emotional ride of 2023 continues. Still watching a lot of games day to day, sometimes just listening to the radio broadcast while grinding content in MLB: The Show.

Need to figure out my next game at the park. I have tickets for the Braves series, but I’ll be down the shore.

Video Games

In addition to playing MLB: The Show I’m also finishing up Breath of the Wild. I have like 4 more shrines to get to 120, and then I think I’ll go to the end-game boss and maybe try some of the DLC. Not sure what will be after that.

Really psyched for Cities Skylines 2, FF16, FF7: Rebirth, which have all seen trailers recently.