Tool Sharpening: July 28, 2014

Monday, 28 July, 2014 — development improvement

For some background on what’s going on here, see the first tool sharpening post

In reference to the impact stress has on creative energy and drive I mentioned last week, I am pleased to report that this past week has yielded additional, positive, changes. For that, I’m thankful. A stressful early summer has broken and I’m legitimately able to focus on creativity and practice.

Taking advantage of that restored energy, one of the changes I made this past week was to take some of the advice I gave at my July 8 talk and set up some two hour chunks of time for practice and project work. I recommended two, two-hour blocks of time to build a code portfolio by working on a project. So, that’s now on the calendar. I also set up two more two-hour blocks for things like code reading, typing practice and similar activities. These are different enough that I want to address them separately. Monday and Wednesday are “Practice”. Tuesday and Thursday are for “Projects.”

I put the practice time to work, with the following activities:

• Updated the Markdown template I use to build these tool sharpening posts
• Updated the Markdown/ERb template I use to build a daily report
• Unsubscribed from several marketing lists I found myself on
• Unsubscribed from a few aspirational mailing lists
• Added better filtering around mailing lists I’m still on
• Added and updated some TextExpander shortcuts
• Updated BBEdit keyboard shortcuts to create a shortcut for <strike>foo</strike>
• Took three more typing.io lessons
• Fixed an issue with error messages from cron jobs on my web host not being addressed properly and thus going to my local mail junk filter
• Found a couple of Vim online tutorial sites to help me with my Vim fu.
• Working with BBEdit, I found notes on the Go menu, which I’d previously overlooked
  • I found capabilities to jump by functions, markers and jump history
  • Added keyboard shortcuts to interact with the same
  • Set-up a BBEdit palettes workspace to save state of palettes I want to have open
  • Such functionality, along with earlier discoveries with efficient text editing may mollify the impetus to go all in with Vim
  • All that said, improving my Vim skills is still something that’d be beneficial

I may yet decide I want to practice over two consecutive nights and work on a project over two consecutive nights. I staggered the schedule because I want to acknowledge that many times, my brain needs off-time for an idea to gel. While I work on practice, my hope is that project ideas and problems tumble and become smoother.

Until next time.