Weeknotes 2024W42

Wrote real life documentation

I’ve taken an interest in technical writing recently. I’ve always been mildly interested in it but since I’ve been writing more here, it’s become even more compelling. So, I thought I’d give it a try in a low-stakes way that wasn’t just me babbling on my website with no feedback or consequences.

Two weeks ago, I started a forum for my friends and spun up another this week for a different project. Both of these use NodeBB instead of the more popular Discourse. It’s smaller and has less support behind it, including the documentation.

In both of these instances, I followed the recommended install docs step-by-step and wrote down every snag that I hit where the docs didn’t line up with reality. I went back and made those changes to the docs, as well as updated a few dependency versions and reworded some things for clarity.

NodeBB didn’t provide much for guidelines for contributing to their documentation besides saying that “all are welcome.” I made my changes clear, pushed to GitHub, and made a pull request fully expecting them to throw it away or tell me it’s all wrong.

Instead, my updates were accepted and merged in a few hours! It’s not wildly significant but some documentation that I wrote for a major open-source project now exist online and will be used by people.

I think I really like technical writing.

Went to Essaouira

I went to one of my favorite places in Morocco this week, maybe for the last time ever. The main goal was to get gifts for people when I go back home in a few weeks. My second goal was to enjoy a day off.

It started with an excellent fish burrito from a little place called Fish Burger. Incredible. At one point, a French-speaking woman came and seemed angry about something. She was filming everybody and pointing her finger at staff before going around to each table asking if anyone speaks French. She stormed off and about five minutes later, a wine bottle came falling from the sky. A few open bottles of water also came down on everyone eating. They called the gendarme and we didn’t hear from her again.

As I was shopping, I went down an empty alley and found a man carving stuff into tiles. There was a beautiful one that had الصويرة (Essaouira) written into it. I don’t know why I didn’t buy it but I was thinking about it the rest of the day. I went back a few hours later and he took 20 dirhams off the price without me asking just because I came back. He was very sweet.

It was a little emotional for me realizing that I probably won’t be back there anytime soon. It’s an incredible city that became a place of respite for me during these last few years. I made lots of incredible memories with my friends there. Leaving Morocco is going to be harder than I thought.

Drafted a logo

I stumbled upon Inkscape this week and I am impressed. Why didn’t anyone tell me about it!? It’s a program for vector graphics. It’s been a while since I’ve been on MS Paint but it feels pretty dang similar with some more sophistication.

I made a decent first draft of a personal logo. My initial sketch was a three-dimensional cube with a “W” carved into each side. A bit like the Middleman logo with more depth. I added lots of high-contrast colors like I have on my website, using the exact same color tokens.

Someone asked me what the point was, where the logo was going to go. It’s a good question! I don’t really like the idea of having a personal “brand” but it would be cool to have a little icon for Open Graph images or as a favicon. Plus, it was just fun messing around with Inkscape.

Bits and Bobs

Wrote up how I solved that online treasure hunt from last week
Started packing by organizing stuff into three piles: stuff I’m taking with me, stuff I’m giving away, and stuff I’m leaving in the apartment. It’s crazy to think I’ll be home in three weeks after two life-changing years here.
Created some lesson plans to get started on a digital literacy manual as one last project before leaving.
Listened to Für Elise by Jon Batiste. Very excited for this to release next month.
Finished reading Entitled by Kate Manne. Very difficult to read in terms of the topics involved as well as the language. It was incredibly informative though.

Links

Math Encrypt by k4rim. Turns any positive integer into a math equation.
Nature’s many attempts to evolve a Nostr by Gordon Brander. Walks through different network architectures from traditional centralized ones to federation to peer-to-peer to Relay—a fundamentally different one being explored by Nostr. Users own their keys (like peer-to-peer) while still being able to scale (like centralized servers).
Alt text selfies by Olivia, Bojana, and Finnegan. A collection of self-portrait descriptions using text. Reading how people describe themselves makes me smile.
On feeling connected by Henrik Karlsson. Karlsson describes giving as “an act of potency.” I’ve been thinking about better language for “serving” or “giving” that doesn’t sound so zero-sum. When I do things for others, it gives me life and meaning—positive sum. I don’t quite know how to convey that succinctly yet. “Potency” is close but not quite right.
Emily McDowell on Reclaiming Creativity, Navigating Burnout, and Finding Balance on the Good Work podcast. I love when Brooks gets vulnerable and goes back and forth with the guest. He talked about approaching uncertainties with an “open-handed posture” and I really needed to hear that. I need to trust myself to respond to things with integrity. I completely trust Present Me yet it’s so hard to do the same with Future Me.
Can you run the UK economy? by the Financial Times. You’re the chancellor and you need to create a fiscal plan that doesn’t tank the economy. Citizens did not particularly like my tax plan.
Haves and choices by Mandy Brown at everything changes. On the difference in mindset between saying you “have to” versus saying that you “choose to.”