Coding updates
I recently leveled up my development process for web projects. Don't tell anyone but I've largely been operating without a dev environment. When you're coding for yourself and it's low risk, it doesn't really prove much of a concern.
Recently I finally began to implement the dev server on the local laptop within an Ubuntu WSL sandbox. And I've been slowly migrating projects into it. This blog was today's migration as I came back to working on some things.
5Flix was the first one I put in the WSL sandbox as I wanted a better ability to tweak its design and admin tools without risking messing up my friends' streaks and such on the site.
My latest personal project is one I'm calling 'Alchemy' - I haven't said anything about this one yet. It is a bespoke organization system that I use in my daily work, which combines a kanban board for my ongoing task lists, and then an Eisenhower matrix for my daily organization, with a few other aspects thrown in. Like Glowbug (my blog's homebrew CMS) I expect Alchemy to remain a personal tool and not be something I share more broadly, but we'll see.
Another small project that I have going, I call '2ndmon' as in 'second monitor.' I found I wanted a news hub for a second (or third monitor) and couldn't find what I wanted. So I put together a simple tweetdeck RSS reader for a few news feeds, then added some other small features like a set of global time clocks, and weather, etc. It's super lightweight and easy. Right now I use: NPR, Al Jazeera, and Factal. And before anyone asks it's because they are the best RSS feeds I could find without jumping through too many hoops or dealing with too much noise.
Lastly I have my ongoing personal tool for generating my top movie list simply called 'MovieRank.' It's an overengineered movie battler which puts movies into an Elo driven ranking system. It automatically pulls newly released movies in and if I happen to watch something not in it, it can quickly pull the movie in. It also lets me slice and dice my movie rankings into groupings by: director, lead actors, genre, release decade, studio, franchise, etc. It's largely stable at this point and I haven't made any sizable code changes to it in a few months.
As for how I program, these days I program inside VSCode and make use of Claude Code. Love it or hate it, it is very good at many things. I still review all changes and code and do a fair bit myself, but I cannot deny that it is helpful to me as a hobbyist coder.
In some ways Claude has changed how I enjoy coding as a side hobby, I compare it to someone who was a whittler buying a lathe or something. It gives me a lot more power and capability to do things faster than I could before.
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Yeah, big props to Lenovo. The hurdle of unlocking the bootloader and bitlocker not withstanding, once I installed Ubuntu every feature has worked flawlessly on the laptop. I used to have to track down and manually install drivers for wifi or audio or something, and this all just works completely.
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Delving into the meaning of the Ubuntu philosophy
Bringing people together is what i call 'ubuntu,' which means 'I am because we are.' Far too often people think of themselves as just individuals, separated from one another, whereas you are connected and what you do affects the whole world. When you do well, it spreads out; it is for the whole of humanity. - Desmond Tutu
I have known of the term of ubuntu for years. Largely since it's rise as the name of a Linux distro in the 2000s. However I was re-introduced to it for its philosophical meaning as I continue listening to 'How to be Perfect.'
Ubuntu is an Nguni Bantu term meaning "humanity". And the philosophy it represents, as Desmond Tutu speaks to above, is "I am because we are." Which I absolutely adore.
From its Wikipedia page, the most recent definition of ubuntu from the African Journal of Social Work:
A collection of values and practices that people of Africa or of African origin view as making people authentic human beings. While the nuances of these values and practices vary across different ethnic groups, they all point to one thing – an authentic individual human being is part of a larger and more significant relational, communal, societal, environmental and spiritual world.
We are not individuals. We are part of a larger entity and we cannot be our true selves without it.
This speaks so much to my way of seeing the world and I am excited to dig deeper into it and look for books from African authors discussing it.
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Oh Linux
I had the gall to dare to run apt-get update & upgrade, thinking it would be simple. But, I believe, it updated my video drivers and caused the computer to lock up in boot UNLESS -- and the stupidity of this boggles my mind -- I unplugged the third monitor from the computer and suddenly it booted correctly.
To say I am annoyed is an understatement. For now, I am just living the 2 monitor life, and rather than chase down the problem, I am inclined to continue to do so.
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Now on Ubuntu
I've written before here about my woes getting linux to run on my personal laptop. There was an issue with the network driver for the laptop that wasn't allowing it to be used. And obviously, not having wifi and bluetooth on the machine, proved a problem for me to make regular use of it.
I had found that there was a patch for the kernel which should have allowed the hardware to work, but that it had not been adopted by the core of the OS yet. I am not hardcore enough to try and delve into applying my own patch ahead, so I just left it be and stuck with Windows 11.
Well, yesterday, I decided to give Ubuntu a try and to my utter shock - it worked! We'll see if I stick with it or not. I had been hoping to try OpenSUSE, just as something new, but it just wouldn't work with the hardware. But, here I am. Happily on Linux once again.
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