#013 - Productive
When your intention matches your action
Hey there,
I finished the browser extension I’ve been talking about for like a month now. It’s called WDYNIF? (short for What do you need it for?). It’s currently only available for Firefox. You can download it here: WDYNIF? This week, I just sat down for a few hours of heads-down work to finish it. In this process, I needed to several times revise how the extension should actually do stuff, as I realized I did not quite know. Next time, I should probably figure that stuff out ahead of time. Anyway, I’m happy with the result.
Just to describe what the extension does: Every time you open a new tab, an overlay appears above the actual web page prompting you to enter a reason for why you want to open the page, and a time estimate for how long the tab will be needed. For the set amount of, the overlay will disappear even if the URL is changed (which was more work than expected). After the time has run out, the popup reappears, prompting the user to again give a valid reason as well as a time estimate. If none is given, the user is instead free to close the tab. The extension really only operates on self-honesty and giving the user a moment to breath and think about what they are doing. It is designed to keep you from mindlessly switching tasks / opening tabs.
I stumbled upon an old marble chessboard. While the board was intact, most of the pieces weren't. So I did what any reasonable person would do and 3d printed an entire set of chess pieces. It looks so good!
Remember the Projects Page I mentioned last time?? The one, I was finally able to publish after 3 months of trial and error, giving up and picking the project up again? While I was quite happy with the web page back then, when I created it, today - maybe because of the hackish way the page was published - I am not pleased with it anymore. I think I will need to rework it. Although, reworking here actually means to scrap the whole old page and come up with an entirely new design and concept. I'm currently thinking of a terminal website with some slight CRT effects, but that might be because I am writing this text quite literally in a terminal stylized like a CRT TV (Cool Retro Term).
Also, I'm searching for an excuse to build an isometric pixelart game. I don't have any specific idea what the game should be about or if it should even be a game or rather a website or maybe a game on a website just as a proof of concept or maybe something different entirely. Let me know if you have an idea.
Additionally, this week had me think a lot about creating a library website for myself, listing all the books I've read. I’m not quite sure what it is with me and websites, but I kinda like doing them just as a little project. I worry, I might just not have enough projects to talk about on all those sites…
On the topic of reading, I am still reading UpTime by Laura Mae Martin, currently I'm not getting much new insight, but the first like ~100 pages were great. Also, I started reading The Penguin book of Japanese short stories, which - as the title might give away - is a short story collection. Currently, I've read the first two short stories, although the first "short story" The story of Tomoda and Matsunaga by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, a story that in a good way reminded of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, was actually a novella.
After two weeks, I caught carried away again in the Minecraft (sandbox game) redstone (think of it as electricity) sphere. I found new interest in Logial Redstone, a port of the community focusing on building computers inside this computer game (sounds weird, I know). A good introduction is this series of videos from a guy called Mattbatwings. I set out on a quest of building a typewriter inside Minecraft, wish me good luck.
Then, as for the weekly challenges or rather priorities:
The reading and having a daily schedule priorities from last week worked out great. The going to bed at 10.30 PM, not so. At least at the end of the week I didn’t even know anymore, that I had set that challenge out. (Go laugh at me now)
Especially the daily schedule priority had some great benefits on me, as it allowed me to not only work until the late afternoon, but also in the evenings by placing a midday sleep at 5PM and also by planning to have some kind of work finished before 3PM.
For this week, my priorities are:
preparing an internship I’ll be attending during the next two weeks
write a blog post concerning this weekly report and the idea of the digital “gym buddy”
work on the typewriter in Minecraft
Ole370’s Weekly Report will return next week…