triptych

This is supposed to be my dev log, but there's not been a lot of that lately due to work. However, today I'm going over some things from Svelte, and I want to say that as someone with lot of obligations, do not let yourself get discouraged if you have a run of days with no “progress”. Each day is a learning experience, and you just have to hold on to your dreams and ideas, and be persistent. Even if you only spend 15 minutes on your personal projects – that adds up.

15 minutes a day for a year = 3.8 days or 91.25 hours. That's a lot!

Work is really taking up all of my headspace lately. And I feel like someone who is missing a meal each day. Kinda off.

I am, however trying out the Calm app, and it's pretty cool. Yay #selfcare .

Work basically sucked up all my time today. And energy. Which is ok, sorta.

Need to explore RiTa. The tutorial from The Coding Train was intriguing.

Tomorrow – going to Build something small and generative...

Tonight – playing with codepen:

Time is something you always seem to have enough of, before you are out of it. Take time today to rest, to think, and to be thankful.

Got a lot of work done at Work, but not much otherwise. Kinda frustrating.

My motto for today is AAAA. Always Adjust And Adapt. What does this mean? When you are living life and trying to be a creative, or build something – be it an app, a career, or just writing a story, you will find that you must constantly be adjusting your plans around work, family, health, and other unknowns. That's ok. Adapting means that you take things that originally are challenges, and turn them into advantages.

For instance, you have to take the train to work. That kills like say 45 mins of your time during the day. Instead of wasting that time, use it to jot down notes, or meditate, or read documentation.

Adjusting is also necessary for your mental health. You might say to yourself “I'm going to write 1000 words today” but then life happens and you just don't get to it. Instead of feeling like that was a “fail” look at what prevented you from writing. Learn from it. Perhaps you weren't able to get to a computer – then get Google Docs for your phone. Or perhaps you just felt too tired, next time get up a little earlier and write say 200 words in the AM.

My point is that instead of constantly feeling like your plans are “foiled” take each day like a science experiment where you test your current hypothesis on productivity against the reality of the day, and each night consider your findings, then adapt and adjust for the next day.

You will feel better, actually get stuff done, and grow as a person.

Today I want to shout out to Pixabay for having cool images you can use in your blog posts.

I'm going to try to learn some more Godot today, and noodle on my Web Building tool Nodez

P.S. I almost forgot “And”. The most important A word on this list! And means always add more things. Every day, do X ... AND something else! Keep adding new things to your life. Always have an “And” ready to supplement your day!

I'm keeping a daily “journal” now here on write.as (which, I highly recommend for your own uses BTW) and I'm sitting on the porch in the cold morning air and thinking about making things that make things. To be honest I envy those folks who have made game making tools and simple apps that create things. I want to be one of those folks. It's a big motivator.

I could just go play the Switch, but instead I'll fire up a new version of Godot on this crappy old windows laptop and start plugging away.

Webassembly

Have you been watching? #webassembly is blowing up, folks. Everything from super fast #javascript encoding / decoding to running Swift in webassembly. It's truly becomming a universal executable format.

Microsoft

It may seem like #microsoft is doing something new – with all the announcements about Chromium / Edge, buying Github, putting Linux in their OS, etc. But actually if you read between the lines they are doing what they have always been good at: learning from their mistakes, and iterating like crazy. Just like when Word was a crappy word processing tool, they looked around, saw what the best tools were doing, then copied that. They were bad at it at first, of course, and made mistakes, but they learned from each successive iteration – like an adaptive bacteria. I have no doubt they sat down and thought about what makes developers tick, and why so many developers use Macs. Chrome. Unix based tools. Open Source. Great code editors (Visual Studio Code?) If you look at it that way, each one of these actions is not random, it's a systemic adaptation to eventually get you as a developer to go “huh, Microsoft is cool again, I'll go use a new Microsoft Surface instead of getting that iPad.”

This is not a bad thing, because we all benefit. It's just you should keep your eyes open. They are not doing these things because they are “good” or “right”. They are doing them to survive. It's just a side effect that they benefit you, because that's what companies do. It's not “bad” it's just “survive”. So before you wonder why Microsoft has “changed it's tune” or “turned good”, realize it's simply the next iteration of the Terminator. Just one that's going to be nice to you and fix you breakfast.

(Photo by Rock'n Roll Monkey on Unsplash)

As a paid user of write.as, I've added a feature to this blog that lets you subscribe via a mailing list. If you want to catch my posts via email, scroll down to the bottom of this page and add your email address.

It's amazing that with all the advances on the web, we still consider mailing lists as a core, essential part of reaching out to people. Probably because email is such an important part of our lives as a citizen of the internet.

Goals for the weekend

• decide on a method to publish a static site, either Saber or 11ty right now.
• work on outline for Godot book
• start playing around with web editor for Godot
• play Warioware DIY

I just saw the new Final Fantasy remake trailer out, which just reminds me how I only play most games for a few hours before something new comes along. I never finished the original, even though I have like 4 different copies of it.

But, it shows you how powerful storytelling is. I was reading about Humongous Entertainment was founded on letting kids have adventures and not be talked down to, but allow their creativity to blossom.

These two different sets of games illustrate how it's not about graphics or explosions, but that real storytelling can be so compelling.

It just drives home how much I need to build tools to let folks tell better and more compelling stories.

Free and Open Source software. My life would be a much more boring and hard one without FOSS. The web is the ultimate expression of open standards. Anyone can publish apps, stories, games, and ultimately any creative work.

We have been given keys to a very bright and expansive kingdom. Let's not fritter it away by willingly submitting to arbitrary walled gardens like Facebook and Instagram.

I need to just sit down and get a site up and running. I used to be able to do this. So I can do it again.

This might be a controversial opinion, but I'm thinking that maybe having Microsoft Edge be Chromium based is a good thing for the web. And why, You say? Shouldn't there be more competition in browser engines? Shouldn't we have lot of different implementations which keep the browser vendors honest?

I am realizing that this is exactly what's going to happen.

Instead of being off in a corner trying to get developers to adopt their code and platform, Microsoft has opted to “join the team” and contribute to a major open source project. This means that they will be there if Google tries to commit code that's suspiciously biased, or will be competing on a level playing field with Chrome over features and performance. And yet, they will both be trying to make Chromium the best it can be because they both benefit, and they can use any “wins” they make to the codebase as good PR for their company.

Instead of Google being the Big Boy in the room when decisions about Chromium are made, Microsoft gets to have a say as well and can hold Google's butt to the fire when it comes to code quality and performance. Instead of seeing this as “less competition” I see this as “fiercer competition” as they both vy for developer's mindshare. And we all win when the core codebase is improved.

Google can't just pout and fork the codebase, because they will essentially be ceeding victory to Microsoft, who will be seen as the generous company coming in to help keep Chromium alive.

Also, Microsoft is betting on this codebase in other ways with Electron, Visual Studio code, and more becoming web-based (or already are).

The only loser I see here is Firefox.

They are left out in the cold while fighting for user's rights. If they could just stop stumbling over their own feet, and double down on WASM and RUST, they could really make a big impact.

STOP SCREWING UP MOZILLA! WE WANT YOU TO SUCCEED! But it's hard when you keep punching yourself in the face with Mr. Robots, Broken Plugins, etc.

Anyway, take heart. Competition is good, and what Microsoft has done is take the competition back to Chrome and to fight on a level playing field. I bet Edge will gain a big boost of users if Microsoft can keep it up and innovate on top of Chromium.

( Image by Jan Vašek from Pixabay )