• I’ve been trying to reduce dopamine-cycling apps. I’m largely done with reddit, twitter is long gone, and today I’ve removed Instagram from my phone.
  • Whilst unfollowing everyone on twitter, I made an effort to check if they had a blog or a newsletter and follow those instead now. Instead of doomscrolling, I have a never shortening list of newsletters and blogs to read now. Hopefully this will start flexing my attention span back to pre-web2.0 levels.
  • I still have a compulsive habit to pick up my phone everytime my brain gets bored. But I pick it up now, and then realise “there’s nothing for me here” and put it back down and go back to what I should be doing. Progress?
  • Some eclectic CD purchases this week. Bought new in bold, otherwise second hand. With these, my Plex tells me I have 114 albums now.
    • Royal Blood (debut), How Did We Get So Dark (Royal Blood), Typhoons (Royal Blood). This was an exciting moment when I realised I missed this band when rebuying all my favorite music.
    • What’s the Story Morning Glory? (Oasis). An attempt to widen by music interests. This band seems culturally important around my generation, so I figured I’d get it.
    • Save Rock and Roll (Fall Out Boy). An oversight that I didn’t already own this.
    • Inhale/Exhale (Those Damn Crows). A recommendation from a friend.
    • Night Visions (Imagine Dragson).
    • A Night at the Opera (Queen). I’ve never listened to Queen before, not specially. There are two songs on this album which could be found on My Checmical Romance albums. Really pleased I’m branching out into stuff I haven’t usually listened to.
    • The Best of the Ratpack. Sinatra’s Classic Collection of 30 Songs, The 3 Divas. Class charity shop finds. I think of these as part of my education.
  • I spent much too long on a bug this week where two ActiveRecord models were related with non-standard names. 
    class SellingListing < ApplicationRecord
  has_one :appraisal, class: ListingAppraisal
end
  
class ListingAppraisal < ApplicationRecord
  belongs_to :listing, class: SellingListing
end

    The bug was that listing.appraisal.listing would never be populated if the listing hadn’t yet been saved. And if it had, the appraisal would do a database query to collect it by ID. I spent ages trying to get this to behave as I needed it to. In the end a collegue remembered the “inverse_of” argument, and everything made sense again. Anyway, the generic lesson is you definitely aren’t the only person struggling with this bug. Just google around some more. The most basic software developer lesson, but somethings I end up focusing too much on solving the issue than debugging it.

  • I’ve been using Proton Mail for a while now, and really enjoying it. Feels like freedom. A win over Big Google. And I’m not just saying that because they’re doing a referral scheme now where you can get their Paid package for free for a month.
  • Diablo IV’s open beta was this weekend. The servers were being absoluately battered, but that aside I really enjoyed it. I’m shocked at the £60 price tag, with a monthly subscription for unlocking more content, but I will probably poney up when the time comes.