Weeknotes: Week ending 11-18-2022: Ficography progress and Django Admin TILs

TILs

ficography

Ficography is my attempt to build a better system for tracking the fanfiction I want to read. I spent some time this week creating sample data, making the Django admin work, and getting it set up to work with HTMX using django-htmx and Tailwind using pytailwindcss.

I'm trying to use Simon's tips on documenting stuff in issues, but I find it easier to document things in PRs and just commit/push frequently. That may change as I write up more issues; we'll see. I love adding a ton of screenshots and context to my work, though, and I tend to write TILs on a lot of the things I do lately.

I'm also experimenting with using a 30-minutes label for my issues. I'm a busy person -- I have a job, I help with a conference, I'm a mentor, I have a small child, I have other hobbies that I like to spend time on, and it's coming up on peak baking season. I want to split my side-project work into very easily-managed chunks, something I can fit in before my first meeting or right before going to pick up the kiddo from daycare. It's worked well so far.

It's freeing to have a side project where I am letting myself be a little messy. There is test coverage, for sure! But I don't have coverage installed yet, and I know that stuff like the sample data command is a bit brittle. But at the moment, the audience for this project is just me. So I'm doing what I want. YOLO and all that.

Client work

My work with the client I have had for the last two-plus years is coming to a close, and I'm embarking on a new adventure with a new client this week. I'm sad to leave my old client and I am really proud of the work I did there. As I prepped to separate from them, I wrote up transition notes based on Jacob's post on maintaining a transition file. His post is specific to keeping the file personal for yourself, but I adpated it for public (within the organization) sharing. I included:

  • My main development responsibilities for the last year
  • Anything I was currently working on
  • An intro to the services that I was more of a "core" maintainer on that other engineers might not have a lot of context on
  • A list of the people I worked with on those services, including people from other areas of the company
  • Any errors that I'd been trying to debug
  • A short explanation for where I felt the code could use improvement, or areas I was watching, especially since I'm leaving right after having shipped a couple brand-new features that haven't gotten a ton of use yet

Reading

Personal accomplishments

  • ✅ Went to the dentist for a cleaning
  • ✅ Cleared off the sewing table to make room to actually sew
  • ✅ Dragged out a WIP quilt, got it sandwiched, and quilted about 20% of it.
  • ✅ Made the first batch of Christmas cookies and royal icing for decorating. I'm happy with my icing consistency this year, which I put down to Quick and Easy Royal Icing Recipe on YouTube.
  • ✅ Put away Halloween decorations
  • ✅ Called the cat behaviorist back to give an update on my cat with complex behavioral issues
  • ✅ Clipped about 5 of said cat's nails, which might potentially be my biggest accomplishment of the week
  • ✅ Booked hotels for travel

Miscellaneous

Lacey Willliams Henschelweeknotes, django, django admin