Categories: review » weekly

RSS - Atom - Subscribe via email

Weekly review: Week ending July 30, 2021

| review, weekly
  • I noticed the boxwood in front was infested by caterpillars. They seem to be box tree moths, an invasive pest, so W- uprooted and bagged the shrub.
  • The apple scrap vinegar is starting to bubble. Whee!
  • I made peach sorbet popsicles. Yum! It looks like they're another great way to use peaches.
  • We built a few more LEGO Great Ball Contraptions based on free instructions: Pinwheel, Ball pump, Mini elevator, S-Capade
  • I started memorizing the major number mnemonic system and the first hundred digits of pi. I made up silly images using Numberblocks and taught the major number system to A-. She quickly memorized my stories and the mnemonic sentences for pi, responding with the right numbers as I guided her through the sounds in "My turtle Pancho will, my love, pick up my new mover, Ginger. My movie monkey plays in a favourite bucket. Ship my puppy Michael to Sullivan's backrubber. Have a baby fish knife so Marvin will marinate the goosechick."
  • A- noticed that the screen door was open, so we closed it and the main door. A short while later, before we headed upstairs, she noticed that one of our cats was right outside the door. Whoops! We let the cat back in. Whew.

Blog posts

Time
Category The other week % Last week % Diff % h/wk Diff h/wk
A- 36.3 42.4 6.1 71.2 10.3
Personal 7.1 9.7 2.6 16.3 4.4
Discretionary - Play 0.5 1.2 0.7 2.0 1.2
Discretionary - Productive 5.2 4.5 -0.8 7.5 -1.3
Discretionary - Family 1.5 0.2 -1.3 0.3 -2.2
Business 2.2 0.7 -1.5 1.1 -2.5
Unpaid work 10.3 7.7 -2.5 13.0 -4.3
Sleep 37.0 33.7 -3.3 56.6 -5.6

… It doesn't feel like I'm getting 8 hours of sleep on average. Hmm.

You can e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.
More posts about review, weekly

Weekly review: Week ending July 23, 2021

| review, weekly
  • We built a step-based LEGO Great Ball Contraption and modified it to go in a loop.
  • I started steno again. To my surprise, I'm now at ~50 wpm on the simple drills.
  • I updated my business books, fleshing out my GIFI table and cleaning up a few entries. Now the taxmap generated from my GIFI table matches the taxmap ledger file I had manually written.
  • We arranged flowers into two little vases. A- put one in the bathroom.
  • We harvested and dried some mint. We did lots of canning, too.
  • I revived my sourdough starter from the backup in the freezer. Room-temperature water and some time in slightly warm incubation seems to have helped.
  • We made steamed buns and meringue cookies. It was a little stressful juggling two recipes and worrying about the effect of the humidity, but it worked out.
  • I sewed a nose wire onto one of A-'s free masks from St. Joe's.

Blog posts

Time
Category The other week % Last week % Diff % h/wk Diff h/wk
Discretionary - Productive 1.3 5.2 3.9 8.8 6.5
Unpaid work 7.1 10.3 3.2 17.2 5.3
Discretionary - Family 0.0 1.5 1.5 2.5 2.5
Discretionary - Play 0.4 0.5 0.0 0.8 0.1
Sleep 37.2 37.0 -0.2 62.1 -0.3
Personal 8.6 7.1 -1.5 11.9 -2.5
A- 38.1 36.3 -1.8 61.0 -3.0
Business 7.3 2.2 -5.1 3.6 -8.6
You can e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.
More posts about review, weekly

Weekly review: Week ending July 9, 2021

| review, weekly
  • Ugh, I broke my journal database by C-c-ing too much in panic. Thank goodness I had a backup of the MongoDB and I had copies of many of the entries in my Org archive. I tried reconstructing other entries from my steno strokes. I ended up restoring my journal from the Linode backup by making a new node.
  • I wrote an Emacs Lisp function for generating my invoices.
  • We got sick with a bad cold.

Blog posts

Time

Category The other week % Last week % Diff % h/wk Diff h/wk
Sleep 30.9 38.0 7.1 63.8 12.0
Business 2.6 4.8 2.2 8.0 3.7
A- 40.0 41.0 1.0 68.9 1.7
Discretionary - Family 0.0 0.7 0.7 1.1 1.1
Discretionary - Play 0.3 0.3 -0.0 0.5 -0.1
Personal 5.5 3.2 -2.2 5.4 -3.8
Discretionary - Productive 9.7 6.4 -3.3 10.7 -5.6
Unpaid work 11.1 5.7 -5.4 9.6 -9.0
You can e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.
More posts about review, weekly

Weekly review: Week ending July 2, 2021

| review, weekly
  • Steno:
    • I added frequency-sorted completion with stroke information to Emacs, whee! I'm using the JSONs for completion info at the moment instead of checking with Plover directly, but maybe I can figure that out someday (or get the enabled dictionaries from the config).
    • I want to be able to undo with fewer mistakes, so I started to look into sending completion info from Emacs to Plover.
  • Other:
    • W- made chocolate cherry jam and canned more of the sweet cherries we bought. Tita Joy dropped off more cherries too.
    • A- and I started doing badminton drills. She really liked them.
    • We wrapped up the first year of virtual kindergarten. Yay!

Blog posts

Time

Category The other week % Last week % Diff % h/wk Diff h/wk
Business 0.6 2.6 2.0 4.3 3.4
Personal 4.5 5.5 0.9 9.2 1.6
Discretionary - Play 0.1 0.3 0.2 0.5 0.3
Unpaid work 11.1 11.1 -0.0 18.6 0.0
Sleep 31.5 30.9 -0.7 51.8 -1.1
Discretionary - Productive 10.5 9.7 -0.8 16.3 -1.4
A- 41.6 40.0 -1.6 67.2 -2.7
You can e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.
More posts about review, weekly

Weekly review: Week ending July 16, 2021

| review, weekly
  • I got my second COVID-19 vaccine, whew!
  • I accidentally set the oven to 160F for an hour instead of 120F for one minute because I didn't check it, assuming the Warm setting was what I had set before. This cooked my sourdough starter, whoops! I'm trying to revive the one I stashed in the freezer, but it's going more slowly than I remember. The last time I had to restore yeast from backup, I had used the yeast I dried, so I guess it worked better. (Spoiler alert: the sourdough starter came back after a few days of feeding, yay!)

Blog posts

Time

Category The other week % Last week % Diff % h/wk Diff h/wk
Personal 3.2 8.6 5.3 14.4 9.0
Business 4.8 7.3 2.5 12.2 4.2
Unpaid work 5.7 7.1 1.4 11.9 2.3
Discretionary - Play 0.3 0.4 0.2 0.8 0.3
Discretionary - Family 0.7 0.0 -0.7 0.0 -1.1
Sleep 38.0 37.2 -0.8 62.5 -1.3
A- 41.0 38.1 -2.9 64.0 -4.9
Discretionary - Productive 6.4 1.3 -5.0 2.2 -8.5
You can e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.
More posts about review, weekly

Weekly review: Week ending June 25, 2021

| review, weekly
  • Household:
    • I placed black mulch and moved some of the strawberries to the ground.
    • We canned cherries in syrup and we also made chutney.
    • I rubbed lots of aphids from the petunias.
    • I made a splash skirt and a splash gown for A-.
    • I made bike streamers for A- using foil gift wrap. She liked them a lot.
    • We moved the cabinets upstairs.
  • Steno:
    • I tried to add current stroke display to Emacs, but I can't figure out how to deal with ligatures. I did get clippy to save to a file and to show Spectra, though.
    • I described my Emacs setup.
  • Other:
    • I figured out how to add images to my blog posts in Eleventy.
    • I learned more about using jq to filter through the dictionary.

Blog posts

Time

Category The other week % Last week % Diff % h/wk Diff h/wk
Unpaid work 4.7 11.1 6.4 18.6 10.7
A- 40.0 41.6 1.6 69.9 2.7
Business 0.0 0.6 0.6 1.0 1.0
Discretionary - Play 0.1 0.1 0.0 0.2 0.1
Discretionary - Productive 11.3 10.5 -0.8 17.7 -1.3
Sleep 32.5 31.5 -0.9 53.0 -1.6
Personal 7.8 4.5 -3.2 7.6 -5.4
Discretionary - Family 3.6 0.0 -3.6 0.0 -6.1
You can e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.
More posts about review, weekly

Weekly review: Week ending June 18, 2021

| review, weekly
  • Steno:
    • I added Clippy output to Emacs so that I can get better at writing.
    • I added a Plover stroke log to Emacs and tweaked my briefing workflow.
    • I started trying to edit subtitles with my hilariously slow stenoing speed :) I think I did three minutes in the last hour. Granted, most of that was taken up by tinkering on an interface for editing subtitles with stenoable commands like "delete …".
  • Gardening:
    • We went to the garden store and bought mulch.
    • It's a good thing I checked the dwarf cherry tomatoes. A few of them were already ripe.
    • I swapped seedlings with a neighbour.
    • I trimmed the tips of the peppers so that they can grow bushier.
  • Sewing:
    • I ordered some fabric so that I can sew dresses and a swim skirt.
    • I took my sewing to the playground and did a few stitches while waiting for A- to be done with the splash pad.
    • I was a little frustrated because the glove I had been hand-sewing was a little too small for A-. I cheered myself up by sewing myself a glove using a simpler construction method.

Blog posts

Time

Category The other week % Last week % Diff % h/wk Diff h/wk
Discretionary - Productive 6.7 11.3 4.6 18.9 7.7
Discretionary - Family 0.0 3.6 3.6 6.1 6.1
Sleep 31.0 32.5 1.5 54.6 2.6
Personal 7.0 7.8 0.8 13.1 1.4
Discretionary - Play 0.1 0.1 0.0 0.1 0.0
Discretionary - Social 0.2 0.0 -0.2 0.0 -0.3
Business 2.3 0.0 -2.3 0.0 -3.9
A- 43.6 40.0 -3.6 67.2 -6.0
Unpaid work 9.3 4.7 -4.5 7.9 -7.6
You can e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.
More posts about review, weekly