New Year, same procedure. Locked away from the world, having every day ressemble the previous. Hello welcome monotomy! So monotone that there's not much to write home about, although there are some pictures that could be sent home but as usual I'm letting them pile up before taking action. Most care goes into xURBAIN these days, aiming at having something live by the end of the month (since I failed to get it out by the end of the year).
It's worthwile to mention a beautiful end of year week at the cottage, with a bunch of friends and surprise guests that created a unique atmosphere and ensured a lovely start into the year. I was already convinced that our cottage was probably the second best idea of the last decade (the first being Maximilian), but this week after Christmas confirmed this yet again. A beautiful place, filled with beautiful people. Work to make the place even more beautiful and livable continues, the final piece is expected to be done by 15 October 2035. Everything's on track for now, with the dwarf's extension making good progress and the cork floor being cut and glued. Next episode: adding the doors and finishing the bathroom. By end of May this year.
Fri:25.Dec.20 Lachen-Speyerdorf.de
Christas at home, in "quarantine" but with cat Rouky. The latter opens up ever more, is more and more curious and courageous. And is already a frequent traveller. He followed us (in his box, not really by choice) to the cottage last weekend, Germany now. And back to the cottage again afterwards. My xURBAIN side project is very close to it's minimum viable version, the biggest piece left to going live being deployment. Can't wait to bring this 100% Google—and other evil and privacy trading conglomerates—free application online.
In the meanwhile I am enjoying the days at my parents place, almost as usual despite the corona frenzy. Plätzchen, Sekt, Hilfe Es Weihnachtet Sehr and Raclette we on the menu for December 24th, and Geschenke for Max. Ours stayed behind on Pantin, a rushed departures can be blamed. Poor Max and poor boys, but I guess that they won't even notice. A little voice in my head screams PUT THAT PHONE DOWN, I better follow the advice. Back to family time.
Wed:16.Dec.20 Pantin.fr
Oh boy, over one month of radio silence! My side project is eating up every spare moment and is progressing at high speed, allowing me to feel more and more at home in the world of React and the little tech universe I created for a cause. I am optimistically aiming at getting something out this year, but this remains highly ambitious and rather unlikely. Possible though. In the meanwhile we have a new flat mate, Rouky joined our family two days ago! A cat he is. The second lockdown is over since yesterday, a new phase of nightly curfews started (stay home from 20h to 6pm). Tomorrow we'll get back to Maupertuis for a coupe of days, the second time since Lockdown 2 thanks to a 24 hour visit two weeks ago which was initiating bringing more family to Mailly-le-Château. Yay!
Fri:13.Nov.20 Pantin.fr
A week of being geek, until almost going crazy. About a month ago I started a new side project, slowly. Its goal being promoting the countryside and fostering the urban exodus. My expertise and motivation in the field will drive and guide me, but until there's something to promote and position I will have to build a tool, and go through the dark zones of setting up frameworks, mastering new coding languages, envisioning and writing functionality, and so forth. I'm certainly a couple of months away of putting something out there, especially if I hit walls like I did this week: an issue in an underlying framework caused a major setback, from formatting and reinstalling my entire machine (freeing tons of disc space and upgrading to Catalina along the way) to understanding what's actually happening under the hood to identifying and eliminating the problem. Things are now running (locally through Docker) again, an API Platform/Symfony in good old PHP (version 7.4 and not 3, with which everything started back in the nineties for me) powered API that is feeding a React with Redux driven frontend app in fancy ES6 (also known as Javascript, quite a despised language back then), which is making massive usage of Leaflet-powered and GeoJSON fed maps (of course, I love maps). We'll see where all this leads, at least to yet another boost of my developer skills.
P.S. And yes, it's Friday 13 again. Probably my favourite and most posted weekday day combination!
Mon:02.Nov.20 Pantin.fr
Back in Pantin, back to school (for five year old Max), back in lockdown, back to 100% homeoffice. And the next Tour de France will go through the Morvan, I can't wait for July 2 next year and a extra long 248 km stage. Now will follow one month of being locked away at home, I will need to put a new running routine in place... it's been almost 3 weeks since I didn't exercise! But hard work with Berni the Builder at our cottage has been equally challenging, and even lead to major progress of the Zwergenzimmer und -bad (it's not bad, just black and white).