Work

Decided to play hooky today, because I got up reallly late and then I got stuff at home to do. Emacs Since I was playing hooky with my time and attention anyway, I decided to see, if I could tackle this little thing, I wanted to happen with my Org Mode. Everytime I move my TODO status for a task to IN_PROGRESS, I want Org to automatically clock in for me. And everytime I move out of the IN_PROGRESS state, I wanted it to clock out. This is because I want a one step process. I don’t want to change state and then clock in too. And I want it this way, because changing states and telling my program, that I’m going to work on this, here, task now is more natural to me, than clocking in and out. A whole day of reading and searching later, I stumbled across this gem on the Emacs StackExchange site which did exactly what I was looking to do. I stole it, twiddled a bit with the variable and function names and added it to the file that handles my Org config. This is it, in its entirety (add-hook 'org-after-todo-state-change-hook 'mjb/org-clock-todo-change) (defun mjb/org-clock-todo-change () (if (string= org-state "IN_PROGRESS") (org-clock-in) (org-clock-out-if-current))) And this works! For now. If something comes up, I’ll figure it out. Which brings me to the figuring out part. Doing this today has left me conflicted. In the old life, this is exactly how I’d do it. But ever since I’ve been learning to write code, I feel like this is something I should be able to do. But there’s only so much life and so much I want. I want the results today, and learning and writing Lisp is not going to happen in a jiffy. Right now my priorities are Devops related tasks. So I’ve just taken the pragmatic way out for now, and used code I found. Urdu Learnt about the “suaad” group. And also learnt that Urdu is just as crazy as English. There are three, count ’em, three ways of making the S sound and no particular rhyme or reason to them, save history :) ...

Everything went to hell in a handbasket today. Time was short. I got up late. I forgot, I had physio. So most things got slightly abbreviated or dropped. Python Did not complete my assignment. Flunked it again. But on the plus side, those 45 minutes were some of the hardest thinking and iterating, I have done in weeks. So there’s that. And on the plusser1 side, I am proud of having stopped and then looked for help. That was my biggest learning for the day. ...

Slightly distracted day, today compared to the rest of the week before. Well, c’est la vie. Python Read about functions, key functions, and asterisks Practiced list comprehensions and dictionary lookups Learnt and practised some, about decimals and rounding up Devops Devops-ish? Upgraded the BIOS of my desktop to the current the latest available version. I was on v1.5, when I had last done it in July ’21. Now I am on v1.9 from November last year. Fixes plenty of vulnerabilities. While I got to know of it last eve, I did not upgrade then, because I wanted my mind fresh and attentive while I did this. I have bricked enough PCs and handhelds in my misspent youth and I cannot risk killing my daily driver to tiredness. What do they call it now? UEFI firmware?1 Urdu Learnt the ‘daal’ group of letters Today was also the first day, I realised reading right to left is becoming intuitive. I read “Daataa”2 in Urdu and went to check if I was correct by trying to read the English, and was wondering why they nonsensically called it “aataad”, until my brain switched back to Latin and reading left to right 😂 Physical Activity I hope gym gets easier, because I am getting crankier about the pain by the day. The better half says I sustained much more pain with physio and bore it longer and more stoically when I broke my back in 2017. Well, that was my body doing it to me and I had no control over it. Right now, I am doing this to myself, ergo the crankiness. I know this is good for me in the long run. Does not stop me from hating the process and its repercussions right now. I’m getting old and grumpy. Feedback on this post? Mail me at feedback@janusworx.com P.S. Subscribe to my mailing list! Forward these posts and letters to your friends and get them to subscribe! P.P.S. Feed my insatiable reading habit. ...

Did a full day. But is this sustainable? I’ll know in a week or so. Python Finally figured out what def __init__ (self): does in an class, in a way that makes sense to my mind. If I create an class and I want it (i.e. the objects created with it) to take in arguments, then I need to define an __init__ method to set it all up. For e.g. if the class definition is just class chantSomeName(): where do I reconcile the fact that I need to pass in a name that needs chanting? In its __init__ method class chantSomeName(): def __init__(self, name): self.name = name Python does a lot for me. My first approach going into any problem should henceforth be, Does Python already do this for me already, natively? I should think of Python less, as a forge where I make my own tools (which it undoubtedly is) and more as a librarian, where I can just ask it for something and it will return it to me. The more I study it, the more I realise just how much it keeps track of and how much it tries to make life easy for me Devops Learnt a bit about how Prow jobs work English Learnt a new (old) word viscid Vis"cid (?), a. [L. viscidus, fr. viscum the mistletoe, birdlime made from the berries of the mistletoe; akin to Gr. ?: cf. F. viscide.] Sticking or adhering, and having a ropy or glutinous consistency; viscous; glutinous; sticky; tenacious; clammy; as, turpentine, tar, gums, etc., are more or less viscid. ...

I use Miniflux as my feed reader, and I love it to bits. It does what I need, it does it fast and it stays out of the way. Well, almost. I have a couple of those—whatchacalit—firehose feeds. And I keep skimming through them by clicking next, next, next on each page. Like so, Except for when there is no next under my pointer. ...

Ok, here’s to learning Kubernetes in earnest, to get that career pivot going. Notes as I learn, over the coming days. This one, is a lot of random thoughts on bringing up a cluster. It is both harder than you think, and easier than you think I did this, because I wanted to run my own cluster, just like the big boys do.1 It’s much easier to run alternatives like kind, if that suits your needs better. Notes to future Jason: ...