Enjoy the detours!

log

Since March, I have used Cursor on and off for plenty of tasks. For example, I did a complete Redux to Redux-Toolkit migration for one project, in which I learned a lot. Mostly, for which tasks I should use Cursor and which not. If you start with Cursor, you should use it to implement a bigger feature, to learn all the quirks. It will take time, and I value the time using it for the Redux→RTK migration. And now, I typically use Cursor for smaller tasks. Or just break down the bigger ones and enhance them so they are suited for Cursor.

For a while, I struggled with the right model. The auto mode worked in some way, but I was not perfect. So I tried to explore the models directly and wanted to learn, which I can use for which task. But since Claude released Sonnet 4, I exclusively use this model for everything. It is astonishing how well Sonnet 4 works.

Recently, I have found a good workflow. I collect some Tasks and execute them one by one. And while Cursor/Sonnet 4 is thinking and working, I do some chores in the House. Which is a Win-win for all of us here. 😅

I trust Sonnet 4 so much, that I'm thinking of trying out Claude Code. Which, in theory, fits better into my terminal workflow. Cursor is a fork of VSCode which is too much UI distraction for me. But I appreciate the diff tool, which works good for me. And I never found a good one for the terminal.

21 of #100DaysToOffload
#log #dev #cursor
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It’s fascinating how time flies. In my mind, we are some days after celebrating the new year, and now we are almost half done with the current year. 🤯

Weiterlesen...

I don’t do it deliberately, but over the years I used some tools as to-do list without declaring them as such. For example, my open tabs in Firefox on mobile and desktop. Both are basically different to-do lists because I use them on different topics.

As next is my mail client. The inbox is also like a to-do list. Every mail I keep in here needs work. Not immediately, but I should do it every so often.

Messengers are also used as a to-do list. But more of people I should write some day.

My calendar is another one.

And the one I realized that I’m doing this, was Claude. I use the app on my phone and saw that I only kept old conversations, where I think I will later come back to them and continue my research.

On the last weekend, I thought about unifying them into one. I do some agile with my wife in the apple reminders app. We are having once a week after breakfast a short conversation on what we want to accomplish in this week. And then we put the to-dos into a list. We also have one list for each quarter with stuff that, we think, needs to be done in this period. So I already use the reminder's app for family stuff and some small to-dos that don’t fit in my to-do apps above. 😅

While I write all this, I don’t know whether I should unify all in the reminders app or just keep it as it is. Because, if everything is in one app, it could be a bit overwhelming? 🤔

19 of #100DaysToOffload
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After procrastinating this for far too long, I sat down and did a new setup of Paperless-NGX on my NAS.

For this, I followed the setup guide for docker-compose: https://docs.paperless-ngx.com/setup/#docker

This guide requires you to have Container Manager installed on your NAS. Under /volume1 I have created a folder called docker which has another folder called paperless in it. So the path will be /volume1/docker/paperless.

My adjustments to the docker-compose.yml file:

    volumes:
      - /volume1/docker/paperless/data:/usr/src/paperless/data
      - /volume1/docker/paperless/media:/usr/src/paperless/media
      - /volume1/docker/paperless/export:/usr/src/paperless/export
      - /volume1/docker/paperless/consume:/usr/src/paperless/consume

And a different port: someportnumber:8000.

My changes to the docker-compose.env:

PAPERLESS_TIME_ZONE=Europe/Berlin
PAPERLESS_OCR_LANGUAGE=deu

And the correct IDs for USERMAP_UID= and USERMAP_GID= which you can get from id -u and id -g. The guide will tell you this as well.

Notes

The guide uses docker compose ... to run docker-compose, without the dash. Synology uses docker-compose ... with dash, to run it. I was searching, why this was not working on my side. So, this could be one reason. 😅

Database Error

I've got this error: PostgreSQL Database directory appears to contain a database; Skipping initialization. Which resulted from an old installation. Because I wanted to a fresh start, I needed to remove the old data and found this command: 🚨 docker-compose down --volumes 🚨 Be careful, this will erase all related data.

Webserver Error

Because I'm stupid, I used the wrong timezone and got an error. ValueError: Incorrect timezone setting: Germany/Berlin The correct timezone I needed to set in docker-compose.env was: PAPERLESS_TIME_ZONE=Europe/Berlin.

Conclusion?

I've used docker-compose because I broke my installation for too often with the Container Manager. And in the end, it's just a UI wrapper which confuses me. So I go with docker-compose, which I'm used in the past for client projects. The setup was straightforward, excluding the errors I had, which were self-made in the end.

17 of #100DaysToOffload
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Hui, it surprises me every time how fast time can fly. I prepared some post, but the needed some finish and because there was nearly no time or motivation to write, so I avoided looking into my backlog of posts.

In the last month, I was sick and also focused a lot on the work with my clients. Besides that, there is life. The spring arrived and we have lovely weather here. Maybe a bit to dry, to get the garden ready but still nice and manageable.

Plenty of topics in the last month arrived, which didn't involve sitting on my laptop. We are still working in our basement. So I did lie out more rooms with new a floor and prepared the stairs. They required a new color. At the moment I painted the stairs 3 times. The next step is to sand them and add one more layer of paint. Another topic is, that I bought a lawn mower robot, which is really nice and saves some time eventually. Another thing is that we lease one part of our property to an elderly woman. Sadly, she has issues staying there or taking care of the garden. So she will stop leasing, and we have to take care of the garden.

I also realized that I have too many client projects and I need to stop at least one. It's taking too much energy from me. It's hard for me to stay in a good mood, and I quickly react irritably when something is wrong.

Tomorrow we will finally install our new solar power system on the roof. Which is something I'm waiting for a long time now. We can finally use the sun for our home to produce energy. And we have a lot of sun here. 🌞😎 We both work from home most of the time, so our benefit will be huge. Installing the system will be a challenge because I have acrophobia. The good thing is, it takes some time, and then I'm used to the height and have less fear then. Let's see how tomorrow will work out. Maybe I can share some pictures.

Another thing this month, I've tried Cursor AI and wrote some toots on mastodon. I will plan to write more about my journey with Cursor. Because I've learned a lot.

That's it. Just some words that poured out of me before going to bet. :D

16 of #100DaysToOffload
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We had a nice family weekend trip. The purpose was to escape a little from our normal routine and to explore the rural land not far away from our hometown.

The first trip since I can remember being with my wife where I did not bring more technical gadgets than my phone and kindle. Usually, I take my notebook with me, on every trip. Newly, also the steam deck and iPad, just in case. Just to avoid possible boredom. (Writing this down and reading it again sounds as if I'm addicted to my gadgets. BuT i cAn stOp, iF i WaNT!)

But don't have these gadgets with me, it was refreshing just having the phone with me. I carry the notebook just in case if I'm bored and can use this time to be productive. Which is somehow good but sounds like an excuse. Without it, I was able to focus on other things. I was able to go through a lot of notes in my notion. Clean up many of my to-do lists. (Yes, there are multiples) And then there were my +99 open tabs in Firefox. I was capable of transforming 50% of them into new to-dos. The rest were mostly articles I want to read some time. I did it with a bunch of them.

At the beginning of the year, I've created 6 to-do lists in the Reminders App. 4 for each quarter. 1 for the current week and 1 for the backlog. Together with my wife, we try to go through the open to-dos and sort them every Sunday. What needs to be done in the ongoing quarter? Which tasks of this quarter can be done in the next week? These are questions we tackle on a Sunday after breakfast. (Or we try it) And it works. We both have a better overview of the things that need to be done. Before, everyone had their one agenda and these agendas collided very often. On this weekend, we thought about this approach and edited many tasks. And we were happy with the result. I'm excited about the next quarter. :)

That's it. 👋

15 of #100DaysToOffload
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Disclaimer: The Title was generated by GPT-4o mini in Raycast because I had no Idea what to put in there.

So, I arrived at the Hotel and I had around 5.5 hours on a train. A lot of time to do something and make progress. What I'm ended up doing was watching Severance and reading through some articles I had put on my to-read list.

Three reasons why I did not put out my notebook or steam deck:

  1. The person who was sitting next to me made me uncomfortable, I didn't want him to watch me, while I code or played on my deck.
  2. I wanted to continue to watch Severance because it is so captivating.
  3. My initial plan was to watch a Severance episode and then start coding, but I was so demotivated, I just wanted to watch. :D So, I think, I needed the break. Because I was coding a lot in the last week.

This Hotel room is nice. Now I know why it was so expensive. It has this enjoyable little corner with an armchair and ottoman. Here I can sit with the notebook on my lap and the iPad next to me, to watch some Videos. Something I NEED in my home office. Never thought I would need this, but this is now a must-have. 😎

That's it for today. Tomorrow I will spend nearly the whole day at my client. I hope that we as a team will go out for a soda or bear. 🤞

12 of #100DaysToOffload
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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

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.

08 of #100DaysToOffload
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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.

06 of #100DaysToOffload
#log
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