A Quiet Night In

It’s Friday. Pre-COVID-19 that would normally mean a normal to slightly-longer than normal workday, followed by grocery shopping, and some down time. So what does it mean in a post-COVID-19 world?

Well, pretty much the same, just with a few tweaks. It’s still work most of the day, just from home instead of the office (most weeks). Then, mid- to late-afternoon, I head to the other side of town to do grocery shopping. And finally, down time at home, by myself.

Moving a Git Submodule

A coworker asked me a question this evening about how to move a Git submodule to a sub-directory, and as it’s something I’ve had to look up multiple times in the past, I decided it would be good to post it here for easy lookup in the future.

How to move a Git submodule to a sub-directory

1. Delete the submodule reference from .gitmodules (normally 3 lines)
2. Check .git/config for references to the submodule and remove them, if they exist
3. Run git rm --cached <submodule name> to remove the submodule reference from the repository
4. Remove the old submodule folder
5. Recreate your submodule reference with git submodule add <git repo url> <local path>

I’m publishing this as part of 100 Days To Offload (Day 20/100). You can join in yourself by visiting https://100DaysToOffload.com.

Thoughts from Antigone

I had grand plans today on what I wanted to write about. It was going to be an impressive post all about the power of clarifying what it is you’re trying to accomplish, and the tools I personally use. However, while I’ve started work on that, I simply do not have the energy to write that post this evening.

So… what am I posting instead? How about a few of my favorite quotes from Antigone by Sophocles that I just re-discovered earlier today while transferring my notes on the play to my personal wiki?

Initial Thoughts on a Personal Wiki

Approximately two weeks ago, I wrote a blog post where I mentioned that I was interested in setting up a personal wiki, or something similar, as a way to keep an online commonplace book. I’ve been taking notes on the idea ever since, and today, I finally decided to give it a try.

Requirements

I had a few different requirements.

1. Easy to maintain & use
2. Markdown support
3. Accessible and editable on all devices
4. Web-based, so that I’m not handling syncing between devices
5. FOSS

Enter Wiki.js

After a decent amount of research, where I looked at pretty much every FOSS solution for a personal wiki, I settled on Wiki.js. There were a couple of features that lured me in.

Distractions and Time Tracking

Do you ever that weird feeling at the end of the day, when you know you were extremely busy, but you can’t point to any one thing you accomplished? Or do you occasionally wonder where all of your time has gone, and what the distractions were that kept you from accomplishing your tasks & goals?

As someone who loves studying productivity and ways to improve myself, those thoughts come up frequently. As in, on a more-than-once-a-week basis. When the thoughts reach a critical peak I generally try to do something about it, and improve my productivity. Sometimes my changes stick; sometimes they don’t.

VSCode for Markdown

Short post again today, unfortunately. Today, and this week in general, have been super busy. But a few quick thoughts today.

For most of my software development (C/C++) I prefer to use Sublime Text. I know it’s not FOSS, but it’s one of the better text editors I’ve ever found, and at this point I’m so used to it that it would be a pain to change (not that I don’t still consider it from time to time). And it works equally well on every platform I’ve ever tried.

Refactoring

Another short post today.

I’ve spent a large portion of the last few weeks refactoring code at work. For those not in the software industry, refactoring basically means cleaning up/reworking how a piece of software works, without changing the external behavior. Sometimes it’s simplifying the logic. Sometimes it’s renaming things to make comprehension easier. Sometimes it’s removing unused features. Sometimes it’s moving duplicate code to a common implementation.

I’ve been doing all of the above. It’s tedious at times. It’s fun at times. And it normally makes me feel good once it’s done. But it got me wondering… why don’t we use the same word in real life? For instance: if I’m reorganizing stuff in a room to make it easier to access? Sounds like refactoring to me. Or how about migrating from a few different note taking tools/methods to a single format? In other words, all of the small modifications/improvements that I make to my daily life that don’t change the end result, but improve the workflow… is kind of refactoring.