I want to hit this new year running, specifically towards killing procrastination. This will be somewhat of a compact week due to getting back from the holidays midway through. As such, I’m going to mainly use it to start looking into Gales install (( I need to ping jfw to see about if it’ll work on a computer with UEFI. If not I may need to secure a new box as most of mine, save the cuntoo machine, are UEFI boot….)) and continuing with the mp-wp bot polishing. (( I should probably ping MP to see when he’s looking to have another try)) I think I will push the 2nd penance article to week 3.
Work plan for week 2:
- Start looking into Gales install. Get organized, ask questions, start reading, etc. Specifically, I need another computer in order to test this thing on, so that’ll be step 1. After that I will start diving into jfw’s articles on Gales, and also look at Linux From Scratch documentation. Due Sunday [Estimated time: 7 hrs | Actual time: ~6 hrs ]
- mp-wp bot code review and server testing. Specifically, I’d like to first read through the previous specifications on my blog, in the logs, etc. and then make sure that my code is indeed completely to spec. Then I’d want to get an instance up and running on the server I procured for MP, and run it through a predefined series of tests. After that, I aim to produce and publish a vpatch with the changes I have made since the first. Due Sunday [Estimated time: 6 hrs | Actual time: 6]
- Spend time researching remote work /abroad work opportunities throughout week: Due Sunday [Estimated time: 1 hr | Actual time: 1]
Total estimated time: 14 hours
Total actual time: ~13 hours ((See ‘Timings on tasks’ below))
Things that I need to think on for future weekly plans:
- Install Gales
- Penance article series (Two articles remain)
- Finish auctionbot autobidding [Estimated time: 16 hours | Actual time: ]
- How to make the most of my current geographic location
- Other remedial/learning debts that need paying
- Somewhere down the line I’d also like to slim down my archive-process and publish it. As of now it relies too much on python where it doesn’t need to; lotsa kludge, etc.
Timings on tasks per day
I was a little unorganized coming back from holidays this week. I spent some time over that holiday reading about Gales, with an additional ~3 hours spread out over Thu, Fri, Sat.
Sunday I got back on track with time measurement, and I clocked in two hours of mp-wp-bot work in the morning, with another 4 in the evening for a total of 6 hours.
[…] week: Week 2 [Jan 2 – Jan 5] Procrastination has been marked as my #1 enemy [↩] i.e. because I *don’t* want to waste away […]
Pingback by ejb plan: week 1 (dec 23rd - Jan 1st) « Young Hands Club — December 24, 2019 @ 2:26 am
For the mp-wp bot, do you have a clear idea as to what exactly are you trying to do there? You keep going on about “polishing it” but that says ~0 so not very helpful as such.
Comment by Diana Coman — December 24, 2019 @ 1:19 pm
I do not have a clear idea, honestly. I suppose my thought process was that I would suss out that idea within the time block allotted here. In retrospect I guess there is value in me explicitly stating that though.
Comment by lobbes — December 26, 2019 @ 9:21 pm
Well, it begs the question – why are you after this undefined polish in the first place?
Comment by Diana Coman — December 27, 2019 @ 10:10 am
I see what you mean. Well, specifically what I would like to do is read through the code once again as well as thoroughly test the thing for bugs. I had also made quite a few changes to it since the original vpatch and would like to wrap those into another patch once my testing is complete. In addition to that I still have the server I procured for MP that I would like to test for running the code as well.
Comment by Eric Benevides — January 3, 2020 @ 4:53 am
So what you want to do is a review + update. What’s in those changes and why are they needed? Do you have otherwise any further features to implement from the original requirements?
There’s certainly nothing wrong with a code review but make sure you have a clear plan and understanding as to what you set out to do because otherwise you’ll really just chase once again the “wouldn’t that be nice” and end up only worse for it. Maybe try to clearly set it out and/or talk it through.
Understand that “thoroughly test the thing for bugs” is a very dubious proposition as stated. For one thing, there’s the good old “testing can at most *find* bugs, not show you there aren’t any left” and for another, the “thoroughly” is either very well and painstakingly defined or just wishful thinking.
Comment by Diana Coman — January 3, 2020 @ 1:07 pm
Thank you, because I think I was absolutely going down the “wouldn’t that be nice” path. Tbh, I am not happy with the code I wrote for that bot, so much so that I could spend another 3 months on it easily trying to make it better. However, at a certain point I need to just accept that it kind of is what it is.
So instead I want to take a more structured pass on it to see if it is performing to spec. As such, I’ve updated my plan to reflect this.
I think I hear you on the bug testing point. This is a form of that “cannot enumerate bad” thing isn’t it? Or rather, “look at what it should be doing, not all the potential things it shouldn’t be doing”.
Comment by Eric Benevides — January 4, 2020 @ 12:11 am
I can readily believe you when you say that you are not happy with the code you wrote but remember perhaps that writing code is still writing text and therefore words/code massage might not help much because what you don’t like about it has deeper roots that in turn require different effort expenditure from you. Otherwise put, as annoying as it might be, you might have to put up with yet a lot of shitty code before you get to the point where you can write better code.
Do you automate those tests at least?
Comment by Diana Coman — January 4, 2020 @ 8:45 pm
[…] was fortunate during the timespan between when I wrote my week 2 plan and now, because while I was away for holidays I had the opportunity to give a first-pass read both […]
Pingback by ejb plan: week 3 (Jan 6 - Jan 12) « Young Hands Club — January 5, 2020 @ 7:30 pm