lesser daemon (Page 12)

06

Feb

What To Do When You Have Writer's Block

I am committed to writing on this blog every day for another ~77 days, and often I don't really have any good ideas about what to write. I usually think of writer's block in the context of, like, a tortured genius struggling to write their novel, not a Brooklyn dipshit who can't think of anything to post on his blog, but I guess it happens to all kinds of writers. Writer's block is tough for everyone, but I think I've cracked it: I've been developing a ten-step process for dealing with it when it happens, and I'm happy to be

2 min read

05

Feb

Setting Up Django With Vite On Windows Subsystem for Linux

This is documented piecemeal elsewhere, but I ran into enough small issues as a WSL user that it seemed worth writing up, and while django-vite is a cool tool I think it assumes a lot of domain knowledge that new users may not have.

Though I've been a fan of the HTMX minimal dependencies philosophy for a while, I am accepting the necessity of having some degree of JavaScript build pipeline: even if you're keeping all your logic on the back-end, there are plenty of things it's preferable to be able to install through NPM, and the Django ecosystem for

3 min read

04

Feb

Earning Relaxation

A short entry for the 21st day of my hundred days: I'm taking a sick day today, after a sleepless night of intense stomach pain (most likely because I ate too many almonds, which I did not realize was a thing until I was doubled over in pain at 2am last night). I actually tend to enjoy sick days, because it's a time when I feel like I've earned the right to relax. Most of the time I am so caught up in the things I need to do, or feel like I should be doing, that things that should

1 min read

03

Feb

Testing Is Good, Actually

Me not writing tests til I'm nearly done with a project.

After a mere ten years of writing code professionally, I have finally attempted to start a project by writing out tests for its core functionality first. Apparently this is a whole thing. Who knew?

I tend to fall into the Grug school of thought on testing. A lot of the time I don't think it's super worthwhile to start writing tests before I really understand the problem space of a project, especially since historically I've switched frameworks and tools so often that the first few weeks of work on

2 min read

02

Feb

Sunday Loop

Day 19 of this hundred days project and the weekend malaise is setting in. When I'm not following my set weekday schedule, I find it a lot harder to make time to write - weekends are full of tasks, social engagements, and things that pull me away from my desk (good) and make me forget to write (bad). It is, overall, probably a good thing that I do things like chores, exercise, and all the other stuff I have to do to keep my mind right, but man, do I really have to keep doing this every day for the

1 min read