- Micro.publish
- Micro.publish Changelog
- Unit Testing With Doubles and Fixtures
- Pair Programming, TDD, and Rotation?
- Solitude - JPEG, SOOC with a Fujifilm X100V
- Engineering - JPEG, SOOC with a Fujifilm X100V
- Road - JPEG, SOOC with a Fujifilm X100V
- Portico - JPEG, SOOC with a Fujifilm X100V
- Court - JPEG, SOOC with Obscura 3
- Support - JPEG, SOOC with Obscura 3
👨💻 Downloading Xcode, but not the new one…
Week 2023-36
I’ve been working on version 2.0.0 of Micro.publish, which will introduce the ability to edit Micro.blog posts originally composed and published through Obsidian. I’ve managed to allocate a small fraction of my daily time to this project, and progress has been quite promising. I already have it functioning, and I’m currently in the testing phase before releasing it.
I made a change in my online presence, deleting my old Matrix account, which had been lying dormant, and creating a new one using the omg.lol server.
Also part of the recent changes, I decided to remove Bluesky from my phone and disabled cross-posting to Bluesky and Nostr. I’ll continue cross-posting to Mastodon but have enabled the “Automated Post Deletion” feature for posts older than one week. In the case of Bluesky, I went ahead and deleted all of my posts there.
I went on a trip to Lithuania for our Apple Team off-site. We spent our time in cabins in the countryside, and the remarkable thing about our getaway was that work was the only topic we deliberately avoided. During my stay, I made the most of the picturesque setting to capture numerous photos.
When returning home, I was warmly welcomed by scientist and tinyScientist at the airport. tinyScientist seemed frozen at first when he saw me, but quickly jumped into my arms once we reunited.
Last but not least, exciting news, tinyScientist just sprouted his very first tooth!
📷 🎸 The best “meeting room” in the office.
📷 Team off-site
Every now and then, we organize an off-site event for our entire Apple Team. Since our team members are based in different countries, coming together is a fantastic opportunity to foster stronger connections.
On this occasion, we rented cabins in the Lithuanian countryside. We spent our time there engaging in various activities such as playing cards, tabletop games, soccer, basketball, as well as enjoying some drinks and delicious food.
Our group consisted of over 30 people, including Product Owners, Engineering Managers, Team Leads, Software Engineers, and Quality Assurance.
Obviously, I dedicated some time to taking photos. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my Fujifilm X100V with me, so I had to use my iPhone. The pictures are unedited and captured using the RitchieCam app, following the SOOC (Straight Out of Camera) approach.
Week 2023-35
Earlier this week, I published Micro.publish 1.7.0, which introduces support for YAML frontmatter/Properties for titles and tags. I am so happy with all the feedback I received and all the coffees I was gifted!
I renewed my subscription to Obsidian Sync. I had canceled it a while ago, but I realized that Obsidian is the best solution for note-taking and syncing notes between different devices. I need my Zettelkasten on both my personal and work devices.
We took tinyScientist to two doctor’s appointments this week. The first was a routine checkup with the pediatrician, and the second was a follow-up appointment with a specialist (related to the surgery he had earlier this year). tinyScientist is doing well!
I am very particular about color schemes and wallpapers, but this week I found the perfect wallpaper for my computer and phone.
I also updated several entries in my Digital Garden:
and the Micro.publish page on GitHub, which is the content displayed in Obsidian’s Community Plugins section.
I received some very sad news that my favorite barista in the city passed away suddenly. Not only was her coffee amazing, but she was also a wonderful person. She always treated tinyScientist very well, and he loved her.
Last but not least, it was my work anniversary. I have been with Nord Security (NordVPN) for two years now. Every year, we receive a gift from the company, and this year I got a baseball cap with the NordVPN logo on it.
Week 2023-13
Personal
tinyScientist is officially six months old. I was browsing some of his early pictures and it’s crazy how much things have changed in such a short time. This week he tried Parsnip and Potato. He loved the first, but didn’t enjoy the latter that much. Pumpkin is still this favorite.
Browsing Disney+ I found Devs, a Hulu TV Show I had no idea existed. It’s an 8-episode miniseries about free will and determinism where Nick Offerman runs a tech company with quantum technology to… It doesn’t matter, it’s Nick Offerman. Interesting show, watched the entire thing.
Last week Bear released Bear 2 Beta on TestFlight and, as a big Bear fan, I downloaded it to try. The editor was rebuilt from scratch, adding features users were asking for a long time. One of my favorite features is backlinks, something all Obsidian users know well. Currently Bear supports [[WikiLinks]], allowing one to link another note (as Obsidian does), but the new version implements backlinks, showing which pages link the one selected. It also shows pages that mention the page but don’t link them (Unlinked Mention). This is big! I exported all my Zettelkasten notes from Obsidian and imported on Bear and will use it for now on. And it’s a native application, and I’m a sucker for good native applications.
I’m using Arc from The Browser Company as default browser in my work computer for a few months, and I’m loving it. The way the tabs are managed, the different spaces, and profiles, the pinned tabs, etc… I’m the kind of person who can’t handle multiple tabs open at the same time, quickly getting lost in a see of tiny favicons. Arc changed that completely, I can easily keep several sites open simultaneously and, more importantly, find my way in it.
Thursday Arc released Arc for iPhone. It’s not a browser but a bookmark manager. It gives access to Spaces, Easel, and Notes one has on their computer. And offers the ability to create new tabs by importing URLs from other apps via the iOS’ share sheet. Still not sure how useful it is; time will tell.
Work
Most of the time I work from home, but if there’s a day I like to go to the office, this day is Monday. It’s the day I have most of my meetings (Retrospective, Planning, 1-on-1s), and it’s the day the kitchen is restocked. Big day.
On Wednesday we had a public Meshnet Meetup, open to the community where the team talked about the feature and technical details and concepts on networking and how the whole architecture was designed and built. My macOS team works on Meshnet, and I’m happy to see the company promoting and talking about what we’re building openly. We even released some of the libraries as open source software. And, as in most meetups, tons of pizza and beer.
During March I experienced 4-day workweeks, but this week I had two days off, Thursday and Friday. Finally used all my vacation days from 2022.
Hacking
I finished the Now Pages support on my omg.lol app for macOS. The implementation allows the user to update their Now Pages and keeps a history of previous edits, in case the user wants to roll back a version.
Additionally, I’ve added a way to share the Now Page as a Status in the Statuslog.
Next week I plan to add the Webpage feature, so that users can edit their pages. Once that’s done, I will decide on how to release the application. I don’t know if Open Source or not, if AppStore or direct download (as Micro.blog and NetNewsWire). But I want to get it out before implementing the blog support, which will be a bit more complex.
Photography
First year I managed to complete Micro.blog’s March Photo Challenge. I created a category and added all my photos there,. These are my favorites:
I’m planning to write a blog post (or Digital Garden entry) about Obscura 3, the setup I have, and why it’s my favorite iPhone camera app.
Week 2023-12
Earlier this week I deleted another internet account: OpenAI.
We - Nord Security - hosted the CocoaHead Berlin on Wednesday. It was great, full house, and we had too speakers from Nord Security. Bob from NordLocker talked about SwiftUI and Ieva from NordVPN about fastlane, screenshot automation and the iOS strategy to inject mock data for App Store screenshots.
Speaking of work, on Thursday I had a long training on Leadership (and Management) at the company. Earlier this year I got a new title/role, going from Senior Software Engineer to Engineering Team Lead, which means I’m half of the time Software Engineer and the other half Engineering Manager. It’s a brand new world to me, so I went back home exhausted. There’s a lot to process.
On Friday I had another day off, still taking 2022 vacation days before the end of March (German regulations, vacation days from a given year have to be spent before end of March of the following year). I took tinyScientist to a coffee shop around 9am, where we had coffee with a friend and talked about iOS and macOS development, leadership and management, and layoffs. tinyScientist got bored with all the talk and decided to take a nap in his kinderwagen.
In the previous weeks I finished two features of my omg.lol native client: Statuslog and PURLs, and during this week I started working on the Now Page. I still don’t know how I’m gonna distribute the app, if via AppStore, or directly for download as NetNewWire and Micro.blog do. Same goes for pricing, I still haven’t decided if it’ll be a paid app or not.
Finally, the most important thing which happened during the week: tinyScientist had his first solid meal. We were not expecting him to eat (we thought he would only play with the food), but he loved pumpkin. As result, he had pumpkin four days in a row for lunch.
👨💻 Starting on Monday I’m no longer a Senior macOS Engineer at NordVPN, but a macOS Engineering Team Lead. I still code, but have a team to manage.
📷 NordVPN Apple - iOS and macOS - team outing in Lithuania. Taken with an iPhone at 7am.
