Weeknotes 51

I'd like to start doing Weeknotes (See IndieWeb definition). I came across the idea of publishing weekly notes as a blog via Nonnullish's blog, and then found sites like https://weeknot.es/.

How do/will I make Weeknotes?

My implementation of the idea will be to write some notes every Sunday about what I've been doing. Since repeatable things are easy to give up on doing, I wanted to make Weeknotes as easy as possible. Thus, I spent a while setting up weeknotes.alifeee.co.uk, to be as easy as possible. I use Eleventy to build a static site out of markdown files, which happens every time something is pushed to the github repo, via github actions. This means that my process is:

write text anywhere (including, and will probably mostly be, on my phone)
push the text to git (which I achieve on my phone using MGit)

I can only make textual markdown, but I think that's a fine constraint. As I say a lot: constraint breeds creativity :)

In unrelated news, I'm currently taking bets on how many weeks I make it until I miss a week...

What I've been up to this week

Bogface, the font

A couple weeks ago I created a font, and called it BogFace. This week, I finally added numbers like I wanted to, and made the font look bigger (by making letters like g and j not go down as far). I made a 1.0.0 release on the BogFace github (regardless of how "professional" something is, it's always fun to write the numbers 1.0.0).

I also wrote a blog post in a particularly motivating evening under the covers in bed. It's on <blog.alifeee.co.uk/making-bogface/>.

Spooky website themes

I woke up one day this week and had a thought of a website that was entirely dark, and you had to use your mouse as a torch to light up the bits you wanted to see. I'm sure someone has made this, but I didn't find an example in my brief looking.

So I made a prototype with CodePen: https://codepen.io/alifeee/full/mdobpNd (it doesn't properly work on mobile).

I did it in a very hacky way, because that's the only way I could think of at the time. It works with three layers, which, listed in order of Z-index (last appears on top), are

a black background
a moveable white circle
the text content of the site

So... the text is technically always there, on top. It's just not visible because it's the same colour as the background. So, this effect only works in black and white.

I showed it to Neil and he felt inspired to make a "proper" version enough that he did. It uses an SVG mask and should work for any full-colour website.

https://codepen.io/Neil-Allen/pen/zYbYjXP

My first 3D print - a tape roller core

I've been around 3D printers and 3D printing enthusiasts a lot, but I'd never printed anything myself.

That is, until this week, when I dropped my sellotape dispenser from 2 metres up (don't ask) and snapped the arms of the little core that goes in the middle of the tape and spins around.

Some would say (and have) that I could just drill the centre out of the broken core and glue a cocktail stick into it, and bam, fixed. But, I wanted to 3D print it instead, so I did.

I asked my friend to model a 3D model and he did, which I am very thankful for.

Then I took it (metaphorically, I suppose, with a file) to the hackspace and asked them to help me print it. They helped a lot, and I now have a working sellotape dispenser! (a pretty good tool in the week before Christmas...)

My GitHub repo was starred

I make a lot of random stuff for no more than my own amusement. But, I do put most of it on GitHub. This week, one of my random repositories (invoice template) was starred by someone I don't know. It provided a small boost to one of my mornings :)

I did some laser cutting

I've been eyeing up laser cutters for a while. Two facts are:

Thus, making things with a laser cutter was evidently the next step. This week, I used one for the first time to cut out some Christmas gifts :)

I signed up as a sole trader

In the UK, if you earn more than £1000 a year from self-employment, or if you want to contribute to your national insurance (a tax you have to pay to qualify for fun things like a pension, that funds other things like healthcare), then you must register as a sole trader.

This week, I did just that, as I am trying to get into freelance web development :)

I moved a pile of fabric from my bed to my chair a lot

This usually wouldn't be out of the ordinary, but this fabric is a large sheet that I bought to make a coat/dress out of. I have an old sewing pattern I found for a pound and I've been wanting to use it.

However, the fabric is very large and I don't know where to put it to cut it out, so I've been putting it off. I'll get round to it.

Weeknote'd

This is what I've been up to! I expect that my "normal" Weeknotes will be shorter than this.

This website has a different RSS feed to my blog, you can subscribe by the link in the header or by this link.

Until next time. I hope all are having a good Yuletime.

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