Projects
I have been slowly working on projects this week.
Software
For software, I just have been developing web applications as usual.
ContactList
I am so close to releasing version 0.6.0 of ContactList. The greatest difficulty of the project has been implementing a markdown editor for text fields. I have attempted to implement a multitude of such editors such as django-mdeditor, CKEditor and multiple forks of each but I kept running into problems with trying to implement it with the custom Bootstrap build used by the application. It is also my first time using npm, Bower, Node and Bootstrap.
The Website
I recently had an idea to write the website in Rust again but using the Rocket instead of Actix Web. The "backend" code, being the small amount of Python, of the current website is quite simple and may not be difficult to implement in Rust.
SLAG
During this week, I just have been working on some fixes for the SLAG Discord bot.
PC Hardware
I have done some work on PC hardware this week.
"Tetrachlorofluoroethane" ("R121")
This week, right before leaving for the business trip, I brought out the Lenovo ThinkPad X200 Tablet that I acquired from 2nd Life Inc in late 2020. At this time, I decided to give a proper codename, which is now "Tetrachlorofluoroethane", shorthand "R121". For reference, Intel-based laptops without ECC memory support get codenames of HCFCs. The laptop was of great importance for myself throughout 2021 so it was appropriate to assign a codename.
After testing two Qimonda IMSH2GS13A1F1C-10F SODIMMs with the device, I decided to restore the device and use it for productivity tasks again. Since I was quite limited on time, I had to pull out an SSD from another laptop that already had Linux Mint installed. The battery was already replaced in presumably 2021 so battery life held up.
The ThinkPad X200 Tablet is quite a unique device. It does not have a mousepad but instead it has a Wacom pen "touchscreen" along with the classic TrackPoint mouse in the keyboard. The laptop display can be folded and be transformed into a tablet, but a quite heavy and bulky one, which is expected from such kind of device from 2009.
As I already had Steam installed on the SSD that I put into the system, I tried out Steam Remote Play with the sandbox game Space Engineers streamed from "Polybutylene Terephthalate". With an external mouse, the game was playable but it was difficult to see some text due to the small size of the display. For locally running games, I tried Geometry Dash which used minimal amount of resources.
For actual productivity tasks, I used VSCodium to work on some projects. Despite VSCode/VSCodium being Electron-based applications, it ran just fine on the Intel Core 2 Duo L9400 and 4GB of DDR3-1066.
Personal
As I mentioned in the post about the last week. I did turn things around in Week 7. I met new friends and had new experiences.
Smith Mountain Lake, Virginia
From February 14 to February 16, 2024 I returned back to Smith Mountain Lake for a two-night trip for a follow-up meeting for an insurance job that I assisted with in early August 2023.
This job was quite important for me, parts of the building reminded me of certain experiences of my early childhood and such parts became a slight inspiration for some of the creative projects that I have worked on in late 2023, early 2024.
Gallery
SLAG and maps for Portal 2 - February 15, 2024 - ASUS Zenfone 9"/>
