Enjoy the detours!

Turns out, February was not going as I planned it should go. There was hope to do more progress on #TheMonthProject. There was progress but only little. So in some kind I see it as failed, but there were other parts that needed more attention. First, more time with the Kids. Second, our basement made progress, and we decided to outsource some work so that I have more time for other stuff. We also had someone who is helping in the garden, to prepare it for spring, which gave another chunk of time I could spend elsewhere.

So what happened? As I've already written, I got a call from an old project which required help, and I started to jump in last week. My day is mostly packed with the work for my clients, the work in the basement and spending the rest time with the family. And when there is some spare time, I'll have a break and watch a Series or play a small game. For example, Silo on TV+ or A game about digging a hole on my steamdeck.

But I've learned something from doing #TheMonthProject. I will continue to write on my progress of the side-projects. This made fun, despite it is more effort. :)

On the weekend, I've tested Cursor on a small side-project and it was interesting. With 2 prompts, I was able to create a new feature in minutes, which would have taken maybe some hours. The result was working, but far from perfect. Plenty of errors and warnings. Still, the app was working as it should. Then I've started to ask if Cursor can optimize the code. It produced a lot of new code, rewrote types which were already imported, and in general made a lot of chaos. :D In conclusion, it made fun to explore what is possible, but for now, I don't see me using it on a professional basis. But I will continue using Cursor on this little project. In the end, I think it is only a matter of how one is writing the prompts. It's like a child, where you have to be as wordy as possible and set clear boundaries.

So, the February was busy without progress. But only on my side-projects. I made progress on my client projects. I made progress on my fitness level by working out continuously (It's nice to have a better form on the sets each week). I made progress by completing a book and started a new one. I made progress by completing 3 audiobooks. I made progress in our basement.

It looks like the February wasn't that bad regarding progress. :D

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09 of #100DaysToOffload
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I think I found some words to describe my music taste.

It needs to make fun, be authentic and honest. (And needs to have guitars and drums in it, some harsh vocals are also a must-have and a nice breakdown hurts nobody). Simple, isn't it? 😅

The metal genre is what I call home. But I'm flexible in that. For years, I was dead against other music genres or rejected everything with clean vocals or crossover elements. (for example, metal with electronic sound pieces in it) But I realized that I'm not happy with this in the long run. And I see it now with my oldest. He is also interested in this kind of music but needs some happy parts in it. So I've decided to be more open about the music. Sure, I have some restrictions I've written in the previous paragraph.

There are some music genres I still don't connect with. For example, Pop, Rap or RNB music. And also a massive turn-off is, when a Band finds its formula on how to write their music. When the songs are so obviously written for the masses that they have no soul in it. Just repeated “hits” from the former records to please the masses. I can understand why one is doing this, and I don't blame them. It seems to work for most of the bands, but in my case, they've lost me and don't play them anymore. I have no problem if they change their sound by experimenting, as long as you feel it in their songs, that they have put in their heart and soul.

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08 of #100DaysToOffload
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This update is small. I've fixed a small bug on mobile view and updated the CHANGELOG.md, which I forgot after the last release. Now everything is as it should be.

Here, on the left is the bug and on the right the fixed version.

Sadly, I don't have time for more at the moment. But I think it is better than nothing.

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07 of #100DaysToOffload
#TheMonthProject #pelletyze
Thoughts? Discuss...

Sadly, one week without progress on #TheMonthProject. The weather was dry and cold, so I spent a lot of time with my oldest in the woods. Goofing around, throwing stones into the frozen pond, collecting sticks for a bonfire we plan to do, or just talking and playing with our invented superpowers. I needed this time. And today it also snowed. So I fetched both kids earlier from the Kindergarten so that we can sled from our small hill in the woods and build a snowman afterward.

Besides spending some quality time, I've had a lot to do in one of my projects. Where most of the work is now done for the big release. Now I can slow down a bit here and can concentrate on other things. Funny coincidence, I've got a call from one of my old projects, that they require help. Because I have so much time to spare, I said yes. (This was a joke, I never have time to spare.) 😎 There is always something to do, but I like to help and to build a better reputation.

After this call, we've decided that I need to outsource some work in our garden. Mostly removing old plants and roots, dinging a pit for our pool in summer and some other small stuff, which takes a lot of time. I like this work because you don't have to think a lot here. Just do the work. Some kind of meditation. But I know that I don't have this time until the springs comes. So I have to admit that we need help here. Besides my projects, we also have the basement, which needs to get done. My wife decided that it should be done until her birthday in April. The help with the garden is now a good compromise. And I'm happy with this solution. 😀

That's it for today. Just some random things that came to my mind about what's going on in my life right now.

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06 of #100DaysToOffload
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Today, just a small update. Yesterday I forgot to commit my changes. While I was on, I prepared the new release, which I thought I already did it in December.

So, I just did some small clean up tasks. Updating the CHANGELOG.md, and tagging the current commit with the version number v0.5.0-alpine-shepherd-boy. Because I'm a massive fan of the series Better Call Saul, my version names will have the names of episodes from BCS.

And that's it for #TheMonthProject update #3. Furthermore, this is post 5 in the #100DaysToOffload challenge. The pressure to complete round 1 did something to me. I already have 5 posts within the first week. Which makes me happy. Seems like I'm now in some flow of writing blog posts. 🥳

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05 of #100DaysToOffload
#TheMonthProject #pelletyze
Thoughts? Discuss...

Today, I've implemented a “delete all” button. To have the opportunity to just delete all entries. This is just a convenient feature so that I don't have to do it directly in Supabase. I don't know if a real user would need this, but it was easy to implement and saves my some steps. Most of the delete logic is already implemented, I just needed to generalize the button and the action. Doing Server Actions in Next.js is straightforward to implement.

The most time was used on the question, where I should put this button. While on it, I also fixed some minor style issues for desktop and mobile.

That's it for today's #TheMonthProject effort. Going +50 min on this simple topic feels a bit long. But anyway, progress is still progress. 👋

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04 of #100DaysToOffload
#TheMonthProject #pelletyze
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I've completely missed season 3. I thought it will air in spring 2025. But now I'm happy that it is already there, and I can watch the whole season without waiting.

The last 2 seasons were on point, and I'm really hyped for this one.

Sadly, I planned to work on my side-project this evening, which I have to postpone now. Because watching Bleach is more important. 🫠

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03 of #100DaysToOffload
#log #anime #bleach
Thoughts? Discuss...

After spending some family time, the House is now relatively quiet because 50% of the Family members are sleeping. Which is a good time, to do some side-project work.

For some time, I'm working on a pellet analyze site. I collect the data, when and how many pellet bags I refill in our tank. Which will give me then an overview of how many pellets we used in the past. With this data, I can see at which time we turned on the heating in the house or have a before and after view after we did the house insulation. It's not much and I keep adding some smaller features. Currently, it will give me a number, on which I can roughly estimate how we need for the year. Because the storage is nearly empty, and I need to get more.

For the app, I've created a small script which will fetch the current price of 1t of pellets. It is running inside a cron job. And by occasionally checking the app, I can see when the price is good and should order new pellets.

Lately, I've found a bug, where the fetched price is not the same as I can see on the page of the supplier. So I've done some investigation and found out, that I missed a combination of query parameters. While I was on it, I removed some I didn't need anymore. I'm happy that the page of the supplier is stable without changing the API a lot.

That's it for today. This was my contribution to #TheMonthProject. I've done a minimal introduction of my pellet analyze side-project and fixed a long-overdue bug. 😃

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02 of #100DaysToOffload
#TheMonthProject #pelletyze
Thoughts? Discuss...

Looks like I'm done with the challenge. 🥳 I've counted all the posts, just to be sure that I have not forgotten something. The current count is 100 because I did one post which is not included in the challenge. Which is the page about #TheMonthProject.

It was a nice experience and definitely helped to get going with my blog. Which I thought I will abandon after 2–3 months. So I'm happy that I'm still writing after 1 year.

I never thought I could write 2 posts per week. Then the pressure increased to write 1 post per Day. Which I handled also quite well. After I got ill, the pressure increased one more time and I needed to write 2 posts each day. Which was also doable, but nothing I would want to do over a longer period. I wrote each a day a freestyle post, where I just started to write down what's in my head and the other post was some kind of planned, with more structure and images. I liked how naturally it felt and worked out. But, as I said, nothing I want to do regularly.

What I also learned is, that I liked to write but with the pressure in the end, there is not much room for improvement. Maybe a focus on less post would be better. So that I can write a post and review it multiple times before publishing it. But on the other hand, writing and publishing the post without a good review helped to get the post out in the wild. So, I've learned something but don't know what to do with it. 🫠

One of my best posts was my first one about Paperless-ngx. It still gets views. Another post got posted on Hackernews (not by me). Which was a big surprise and got me plenty of views in one day. These 2 posts are my best and leading by a wide margin.

Furthermore, I'm planning to take the challenge again and start it on February 1. Which will give me a break and free my head a bit. This time I want to focus more on technical post's. Because that's the reason I started this blog. I also played a bit with the write.as API, and maybe I can do some statistics how many technical post's I wrote already on this blog and on my first challenge. The 1. of February is also simpler to remember than the 21. of January. It should start together with my #TheMonthProject which will help me to make a productive month.

It's insane that I really did it. I'm so happy right now. 😃

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100 of #100DaysToOffload
#log
Thoughts? Discuss...