What I done did in July
It’s been way too warm
I built an editor for Reciprocal.dev
After some time interviewing potential users and iterating over the UX for an editor I finally started writing the code to implement the editor.
It took me about a week to get the initial parts of the editor working as I had to essentially rewrite the way I was rendering the existing map that we had over at https://examples.reciprocal.dev but as the editor removed a number of aspects to the data structure this was made things a little easier.
One big win was that I finally started to understand how to build a stepped line that can be have it’s edges extruded. It’s a piece of logic that I really struggled with but once I understood the way I needed to traverse the SVG commands to make it happen it all fell into place quickly.
I’ll be doing a bunch of posts on what I learned when building the editor soon.
I started de-Googling my life
At the start of the month I found myself with some time to start de-Googling my life and start trying to get more control over my data, of which Google is the biggest collector (followed by Apple but I’ve decided to trust them for now).
I wrote about my experiences porting over my photos to iCloud from Google Photos and how my Johnny Decimal set up made this task really easy but the next (and largest) task was to move away from Gmail.
I’ve had a Gmail account since around 2006 and had previously used Johnny Decimal to sort these emails which made things a lot easier when archiving everything.
In order to do the move I used Google Takeout to get a .mbox archive of my emails which I then put in to my filesystem for access when needed and I started the task of updating every single login I used to my new ProtonMail account.
Once aspect from the Google Takeout that was revealing of how much Google knows about you is that in the archive there was a combination of Google Search history, Google Analytics history and Android history that were so detailed that it would be easy to get a good idea of what I was thinking at the time (a lot of searches for apps to solve an issue, hits on a website with ‘best apps for X’ and an Android download of an app).
I’ll be doing a deeper dive into this at some point in the future as I think it’ll make for an interesting side project.
I bought an Apple TV
As part of the de-Googling I decided to stop using the Chromecast and Google Home set up I had for my home automation and moved over to Apple TV and Homekit.
While Homekit is doing nothing more than allowing me to manage the lights in my flat (and via Homebridge control my Dyson fan) it was the Apple TV that was the big change.
Compared to Chromecast the Apple TV experience is far more engaging, instead of just being a means to play content on a bigger screen the Apple TV feels like a hub for all your shows and I really enjoy that.
I do wish they’d stop pushing the arcade & music side of it (I have other things like Spotify and a Switch for those) but I also had a nice suprise when Crypt of the Necrodancer randomly appeared as a playable game on the Apple TV.
The one place the Chromecast wins is with being able to adjust the volume of the output via the app as you have to use the Apple TV remote or your actualy TV remote to do this which isn’t as convenient at bedtime.
I half-heartedly played Go Fest
In previous years Go Fest has been a big deal with me travelling across the globe to play at the different events or play from home like last year.
This year Niantic seems to have been pushing for people to go out again and I just wasn’t feeling it. Before Go Fest they had a collection event where certain Pokemon were hard to get, this meant that I was out a couple of days in a row when I don’t feel massively comfortable doing the weekly shop.
When Go Fest itself required even more time outside I was basically tired of the FOMO pushing me to go out of my comfort zone.
