LostFocus

Hi, I'm Dominik Schwind, friend of the internet. Here is /now.

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Disappointed

If there is one thing I should have learned by now, something that I know in theory: expectations always end in disappointment. Especially in my field, because computers and software are inherently disappointing. And yet, in my optimistic[1] naïveté I keep running into it.

This week I was trying a piece of software for work – it doesn’t matter what it was, it’s not their fault – and because I knew it in a different context where it worked really well and is very useful, I figured it would work really well and be very useful in our workflow as well. I excitedly told people about it and everything. If it worked it would automate away a tedious task that nobody enjoys.
And of course, it does not work. It works a bit, but only in a way that adds more tedium, which is pretty counterproductive. (Even though it is a pretty obvious analogy to almost all technological progress.)

Usually I’m quite good at having a little shrug in these situations and looking for some other solution, but for some reason this thing really brought down my mood today. Ugh.

Filed under: blogposts that should have been a therapy session. But yeah, I do feel a bit better after publishing it, thanks for asking.

  1. I’m as surprised as you are.  ↩

Let’s see if this thing really brings me abundance, prosperity and good luck.

Let’s see if this thing really brings me abundance, prosperity and good luck.

It’s interesting to watch how PHPStorm gets slower with every release – only on the Intel MacBook Pro, though. Still super fast and snappy on the M1.

It’s interesting to watch how PHPStorm gets slower with every release – only on the Intel MacBook Pro, though. Still super fast and snappy on the M1.

Week 2, 2023

I knew it would happen sooner or later and it happened pretty soon: I’m already not super motivated to write these notes on the second weekend. I know for sure that if I hadn’t made a big deal out of them and added the peer pressure this year, it would be quite certain that I forget about them at all again.

It was a bit of a struggle to get back into work mode – I was pretty tired for no real reason all the time, even though I managed to keep my sleep rhythm more or less stable during my two weeks off over the holidays. And yet I quite liked being back “in the office.” There’s something to be said about working with people you actually enjoy spending time with.

Don’t call them resolutions

Not good, but good enough: I stopped taking photos on my walks, there just wasn’t any real motivation. And I didn’t fill my Apple Watch rings on Friday, which is a bit of a bummer. But oh well, it worked again yesterday and I’ll be out of the apartment today as soon as I have finished writing this thing here.

Websites

I haven’t really done much this week – I fixed a couple of small bugs on weeknotes.cafe and I think I should write a little text of what it is about at some point soon. I did see many people starting their year with week notes so maybe I should open it up to the public soon-ish. Before I do that I want to make it a bit prettier, add a reminder feature and maybe add an option to set the language per post including an option to filter the post list? I don’t know. Marc and I also talked about the option to post via Webmention, which would be pretty neat.

Things I learned

This is something I know I knew, but somehow it tripped me up this week and now I’ll remember for sure:

<?php
class A {
    public function something(): self
    {
        // do something
        return $this;
    }
}

class B extends A
{
    // do something
}

$a = (new B())-&gt;something();
echo $a::class; // A

Oh well.

The internet

Those numbnuts at Twitter removed the ability to use Tweetbot, so I guess at this point I’ll even stop sneaking a peek once in a while. What a bummer.
Meanwhile I really enjoy being a tester for Ivory and I like elk.zone as a desktop client.

Those little Lego otters are better than they need to be.

Those little Lego otters are better than they need to be.

It’s honestly rather annoying that “Dominik at the shops” has a very different opinion than “Dominik at his desk” when it comes to buying a lot of snacks.

It’s honestly rather annoying that “Dominik at the shops” has a very different opinion than “Dominik at his desk” when it comes to buying a lot of snacks.

last.fm in 2022

Not sure what it tells anyone, but why not post it after Marc and Markus posted theirs?

A screenshot of my last.fm scrobble stats - 2019 was the year with most plays, 2022 wasn't too bad, either.

Week 1, 2023

I admit: it is a bit funny that every year I try to get into the rhythm of writing weeknotes and every year the enthusiasm peters out pretty quickly. This year I have a plan though: I bullied talked my friends who have a blog into writing these articles, too and we’ll try to remind each other on the weekends. The hope is that at least one of us remembers and that the social pressure is high enough to actually get to typing.

So how was my week? Well, I wasn’t at work and yet – I didn’t do a single thing that I planned on doing during the week. Not even the stuff I was actually excited about, which is tackling one of the big still unopened Lego sets. It’s not even that I did really much else. I didn’t watch a lot, I didn’t game a lot. I did read a book, which isn’t really worth mentioning, and I read and archived a lot of articles in my Pocket account. I’m also caught up on the Omnibus podcast, which I wasn’t for the last couple of months.

Don’t call them resolutions

  • Taking a daily walk and fill the Apple Watch circles: so far, so good.
  • Taking a camera with me and take a picture during that walk to get back into photography: meh. I forgot on Friday, didn’t even bother copying the picture to an internet-connected device to post it yesterday and felt pretty uninspired on the other days. This one is probably the first to go.
  • Writing weeknotes: Well, here i am.
  • Find another way to post links instead of just posting them as content- and contextless “Likes” to my blog: hmm, tbd – for now I’m mostly filling up my Pocket account and I haven’t decided what to do about them, yet.

Websites

I did consolidate a lot of my smaller side projects on one beefier virtual machine instead of a couple of small ones. And I updated PHP, all the dependencies and WordPress plugins and whatnot. That was a bit of pretty mindless copying and deploying and scripting, but in the end things are looking a bit more manageable and more up to date, so all is well.
And because I can never have enough side projects and domains, I registered weeknotes.cafe – right now it is still very minimal, but it’s a beginning. If you want to list your weeknotes there as well and we’re mutuals as the youths say, let me know.

Things I learned

A lot, probably. And I promptly might have forgotten most of it – I did read an awful lot of things when cleaning out my Pocket account and there was a lot of new stuff in there, which will pop up again in my brain in three months and that I can only source with “I read this article somewhere”

I also figured out how to run dependabot for a self-hosted Gitlab instance and will probably explore the possibilities further next week.

Morning Earworm #8: Catallena

I often wake up with a random song as an earworm – and now I note them down for your enjoyment.

And this morning it was this terribly catchy k-pop song: ORANGE CARAMEL ‘까탈레나

I always enjoyed existing in commercial spaces in the morning, just when they start to open up. Back in the days when I was courting my ex-wife, she used to work in an office near a fancy shopping mall. We often had our breakfast together in one of the cafés in there and when she […]

I always enjoyed existing in commercial spaces in the morning, just when they start to open up.

Back in the days when I was courting my ex-wife, she used to work in an office near a fancy shopping mall. We often had our breakfast together in one of the cafés in there and when she went off to work, I used to just hang around the mostly still dark mall, watching the clerks open up the stores, experiencing the building slowly wake up.

Hm.

Hm.

It’s honestly a bit ridiculous how happy I get when having some pasta with a simple tomato sauce.

It’s honestly a bit ridiculous how happy I get when having some pasta with a simple tomato sauce.

Sounds like the Asobo ATR is going to be a bit hardcore. Let’s see how well that works with my more casual approach to the MS Flightsimulator.

Sounds like the Asobo ATR is going to be a bit hardcore. Let’s see how well that works with my more casual approach to the MS Flightsimulator.

For someone who told himself and everybody who didn’t hide fast enough that he wouldn’t do any New Year’s resolutions this year, there sure is a lot of stuff I started the day before yesterday. It’s all pretty doable right now, the real test will start when most of my time outside of being a […]

For someone who told himself and everybody who didn’t hide fast enough that he wouldn’t do any New Year’s resolutions this year, there sure is a lot of stuff I started the day before yesterday.

It’s all pretty doable right now, the real test will start when most of my time outside of being a viking sleep is consumed by work again.

I like benches. I wonder if I like the idea of benches more than the actual benches, though. I hardly ever use one.

I like benches. I wonder if I like the idea of benches more than the actual benches, though. I hardly ever use one.