September 2022

Wake me up

Published — 4 minute read

Updates

I’ve been working on some client projects, contributing to Simple.css, and learning more things about JavaScript and DevOps.

I got my ears pierced. They’re still healing, and I have to be careful with so many things, like wearing headphones, sleeping position, showering, sweating. I didn’t know the healing process for two tiny holes was so involved, but they’re healing well. I want to get some studs that look like cork board push-pins.

🐱 Cats

3 cats on a sofa

📝 Blogging

8 posts published in September, and I beat my 2011 record for most posts published in a year.

Selected posts

📖 Reading

I’ve been reading Practices of an Agile Developer, and it’s surprisingly not boring.

Articles I liked this month

📚 Learning

I spun up Astro recently and built a starter template for Simple.css with it. I really like Astro, and its use of Vite enables some cool things like importing CSS files from a node package, and then the files get included in your output automatically. No messing with link tags or file pass-through on build.

I signed up for the Structure and Scale JavaScript course, because I’d like to learn more about building JavaScript applications. It’s by Chris Ferdinandi, who created the Vanilla JS Essentials course I finished in May. This new course starts on the 10th and I’m excited.

I’m learning more DevOps stuff, which has been a hobby of mine since when I ran my own VPSs for my sites. Freelancing alongside a full-time job meant spending time on hosting issues and maintenance took time away from producing, so I my goal was to leverage automation as much as possible. And when I hosted game servers, half the fun for me was maintaining the server, and checking statistics more often than necessary.

DevOps is more than just running servers and setting up deployments though, that’s just the delivery and operations part of it. The planning and development parts align with my interest in coding, so boxes are getting ticked across the board for me.

💪 Fitness

Still walking around the block irregularly, and I’ve started to include mowing when I ask myself if I’ve exercised this week. It definitely gets the heart rate up and my clothes are soaked when I’m done, so I think it counts.

🎮 Gaming

A friend gifted me Caves of Qud, a rogue-like with procedurally-generated regions, and a somewhat steep learning curve. I’m enjoying it, and the soundtrack is super good. It’s a very eccentric game, which I love. Live and drink!

I tried to get back into Warframe, Guild Wars 2 and Lost Ark, but I was thoroughly bored, and I think I’m done with the MMORPG genre. Too much grinding, especially if the game uses the free-to-play model.

I started playing Screeps: World, a programming sandbox MMO. I haven’t gotten far, because writing JavaScript for it is a lot more complex than the simple frontend scripts I’ve written. Going to keep at it though, I like the concept.

Other games I’ve been playing include Cookie Clicker, Dota 2, and Total War: Warhammer III.

I might play Overwatch 2 when it releases on Oct. 4th. I’m not happy with the change to F2P, the replacement of the original game with the new one, and other Blizzard things, but I do miss the fun I had playing the original in 2016-2018.

🎵 Music

📺 Movies and TV shows

Shows I’ve been watching

Movies I’ve seen