alifeee's weeknotes

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Weeknotes 45

I was going to do the first half of this weeknotes on my train to Leeds but I stared out of the window instead (written in a tunnel).

I'm back. I'm on a timer. My human, sugary-loving brain wants some sugar. Who am I to deny someone such an ask. Therefore, my timer to write this is until the shops close.

What did I do this week, categorised 'normally':

  1. in software/hardware
    1. I downloaded more of my OneDrive
    2. I booted Linux on my laptop
    3. FUTO keyboard has a numberpad
  2. on the internet (website related)
    1. I had a look at the Sheffield Tenants' Union website
    2. I added a SpaceAPI endpoint for Sheffield Hackspace
    3. I set up a cron job for Sheffield events
    4. I created a landlords website
    5. I helped a charity with their website
    6. I uploaded some notes to my notes page
    7. should I do a weeknotes year in review?
  3. housing stuff
    1. I made a landlor-
    2. I had someone visit my house about living here
    3. I've been keeping up with the Renters' Rights Bill
  4. Fun things!
  5. Purchases
  6. The End

in software/hardware

I downloaded more of my OneDrive

I'm trying to move away from OneDrive (as well as many other things). My replacement to having files stored on the cloud there is to... store files on my devices. Crazy one, that.

I'm using ...

... not doing great so far as I had a small break to change my default browser search engine from https://duckduckgo.com/ to https://lite.duckduckgo.com/lite/

... https://syncthing.net/ to sync files between devices, and I currently have a copy of my files on my PC and my phone. I have some on my laptop, but not all because of disk space. I also store some on my server, but encrypted. It seems to work fairly well, and it feels nice. I think I will .zip up any files that seem really important and occasionally upload them somewhere.

I booted Linux on my laptop

A few weeks ago I installed ...

... got distracted skimming a blog https://blog.howrandom.net/post/self-contained-vhf-packet/

...

... ok I got distracted for a long time (40 minutes ?) making a script for TamperMonkey -> https://gist.github.com/alifeee/7936b864bbc6fefb6d74162a1a81123d to skip to the search result on DuckDuckGo Lite (but it's pretty sweet so I'm ok with it)

... er, anyway, I installed Pop!_OS https://pop.system76.com/. I installed it on my PC a few weeks ago and struggled with a few issues (firefox hanging, wouldn't shutdown due to WiFi card, a hard disk randomly broke, occasional freezes requiring a restart for no reason, vscodium crashing on opening the file menu).

On my laptop... nothing yet! (apart from the VSCodium thing but since I'd come across it already I could fix it easily). I also spent a little time exporting settings from my PC to about 5 config files, and imported them into my laptop nicely, so the desktops look the same (Gnome extensions etc.).

I haven't seen whether the battery life seems much different yet, but I'm loving finally getting to use Linux on my laptop. So many lovely shortcuts and keybinds to be had. My favourite at the moment is pressing CTRL+C and pasting a GitHub link or typing the name of one of my own repositories for it to be instantly cloned, or to instantly open the cloned folder with explorer, terminal, or VSCodium -> https://gist.github.com/alifeee/bb0499e1272f312b82497031d28e91f2. I'm also a smaller fan of the file explorer shortcut I made to convert images, which I used yesterday to turn some .jpegs into .webp -> https://gist.github.com/alifeee/fc33ea141cf1a5085498d81c460d0d59.

FUTO keyboard has a numberpad

I love numberpads. It's sad my laptop doesn't have one. I switched from Microsoft's (boo) SwiftKey keyboard a few weeks ago to FUTO's ‡ keyboard https://github.com/futo-org/android-keyboard/, and I had to lose the ability to have my numbers formatted as a nice numberpad. But the latest release added it back!

‡ I think it's unfair of me to boo Microsoft and ask no questions towards FUTO. The company https://futo.org/ was founded by a single rich person who came out of silicon valley who - while they may have good motives - is still a single rich person, and I find that a weird thing for an "ethical software company" to be built on the back of a single rich person and their promises. I'm not sure what a good alternative would be, but perhaps something more community-based.

I had a look at the Sheffield Tenants' Union website

Websites are great. Someone had made a Sheffield Tenants' Union website, using Vue and Vite. I thought the tooling was overkill, but the website was nice.

I re-created the website in Eleventy which I consider less overkill, as it generates a static site, so uses no (client-side) JavaScript - https://github.com/sheffield-tenants-union/sheffield-tenants-union.org.uk. It may, however, be the case that it is still difficult to start developing it (cloning the repo etc.).

I added a SpaceAPI endpoint for Sheffield Hackspace

... got distracted checking Discord for a message I could copy some context about SpaceAPI from - to checking Mastodon while Discord loaded, to seeing a message from a friend about a video game they've made this week in a game jam, which I am now about to play

... got distracted installing Wine to play the game because it was a Windows executable and as aforementioned I am using Linux now

... alright I hit the distraction limit on this one. The API is on https://www.sheffieldhackspace.org.uk/spaceapi.json and to read more look at https://github.com/sheffieldhackspace/Public-Website/pull/80

I set up a cron job for Sheffield events

This is a quick one. My scraping of Sheffield events on https://server.alifeee.co.uk/sheffield/events/ wasn't set up to update. I made a cron job so that it scrapes the welcometosheffield events page at about 4am every day. In doing this I also made a note (microblog) about cron: https://blog.alifeee.co.uk/notes/cron-jobs-are-hard-to-make/

I created a landlords website

I'm still not sure what to do with this site, but have a look on https://alifeee.co.uk/landlords/. It broadly is a tool for navigating the question: "how ethical is it to charge your friends rent to live in your house". I try to be impartial, but believe it or not, I believe the answer is: "it's not". I was encouraged (by myself) to create this by the idea of https://day2day-moral-ambiguities.neocities.org/ which will soon have similar moral conundrums.

I helped a charity with their website

I got an email from them about problems with their site. The problems were that the person who made the site had gone AWOL. The site was on Google sites. After looking into it, I found that the best option was probably... trying again to find the person who made the site. But, I gave some other options and ways of exporting the site (which is quite difficult as Google really would like to lock you in).

I uploaded some notes to my notes page

I'm enjoying posting notes to https://blog.alifeee.co.uk/notes/. There's a chance that I'm only enjoying it because it's new (the opposite of nostalgia goggles), but there's a chance too that I like the format.

The format is generally: things that are of a size in-between a Mastodon post and a blog post; so, a few paragraphs. It's mostly technical stuff, and I expect it will stay that way, with some non-tech stuff interspaced.

should I do a weeknotes year in review?

I started doing weeknotes on December 24, 2023. Around that date this year, I could click through my year of weeknotes and write some sort of "yearnote". I'm not sure what it would include. If I had tagged my posts, I could have stats like "number of times I mentioned lipu tenpo", but I sort of gave up on tags, so it will have to be less of a quantitative and more of a qualitative review. Ideas welcome.

... I give in. I've not met my deadline. Humans are imperfect, me doubly so. I'm going to the shop to buy some snacks.

... actually, I remembered I've got some sauce from yesterday in the fridge. I'll heat that up and some pasta and we'll be good.

... about an hour and a bowl of pasta later

housing stuff

I made a landlor-

wait I did this one already

I had someone visit my house about living here

They were very nice. They thought so oppositely, too. Thus, they will live here! I'm excited for it.

I've been keeping up with the Renters' Rights Bill

I found an RSS feed for...

... got distracted changing the aforementioned tampermonkey script from pressing tab to skip to search results to pressing CTRL+1, CTRL+2 etc. to skip to the nth result.

... the Renters' Rights Bill -> https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3764. It's actually right there on the page.

Stuff has been coming through all week. It's mostly evidence submitted, sometimes by landlords, sometimes agencies, sometimes tenants, sometimes tenants unions. Lots of people. It's interesting to skim some of it, as it's people debating whether the bill is useful and which bits of it are good or bad.

... got distracted texting a friend that turned into texting two friends

Fun things!

This section is bullet-style

Purchases

The End

I think the theme of this weeknote was really... distractions. If I wanted to be less distracted, I think I should only put in links at the end. Apart from hunger, that's probably what makes me distracted the most, as my mental pathways to finding links are scattered with other things (new posts, texts, thoughts).

Go and look at some shiny lights.

Until next week.

alifeee

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