An easing rule of thumb
Some suggestions for which ease to use when.| Rach Smith's digital garden
I was starting to get over the lettering practice by this week, as I had run out of ideas and felt like it was getting repetitive. I definitely feel like having to "finish" something every day is preventing my ability to focus on quality and perhaps improve my skill. So for July's challenge I'm going to dedicate 20 minutes a day to creative practice and post the WIP on Mastodon. I ended up with 27 pieces from the 30 days. I missed one day due to having 0 spoons and the last two because we wer...| Rach Smith's digital garden
Three-quarters of the way through this month's creative challenge! I feel like I'm genuinely getting better from all the practice, especially with my control over the Apple Pencil in Procreate. --- Thanks for reading this post via RSS! Let me know your thoughts by leaving a comment on the original post or send me an email.| Rach Smith's digital garden
I've been trying out a new thing lately - carrying a pocket notebook around with me and using it to capture diary entries, thoughts and tasks instead of my phone. This change has largely been inspired by that moment when I reach the end of a long day, and I'm staring at my Hobonichi daily page, finding it all too hard to remember and record events of the day. I figured, if I jot them down as I go, that end-of-day diary entry will be easier. Why a notebook? I could technically do this with my ...| Rach Smith's digital garden
Another week of lettering pieces. One thing I've noticed is that the need to publish something every day means they often feel quite rushed and I find myself wishing I could spend a little more time on them, and do a better job. The pressure is more positive than negative, because it is helping me get past my tendency towards perfectionism. But I think for next month's challenge (whatever that is, I haven't decided yet) I will set the parameters at 20 minutes of creative work a day, without h...| Rach Smith's digital garden
I've enjoyed my daily lettering challenge for the month of June so far! I've been having fun with trying different styles and brushes. --- Thanks for reading this post via RSS! Let me know your thoughts by leaving a comment on the original post or send me an email.| Rach Smith's digital garden
I love a good comedy series. It's my comfort television. These are my favourites over the years. 90s We only had free-to-air TV at our house, so it was slim pickings from the four channels available to us. I was always happy to watch a re-run of these shows though. The Simpsons The Nanny Keeping Up Appearances Fawlty Towers (my dad owned the VHS tapes) 2000s I was watching more Reality TV and crime shows in this decade, but there were a few DVD box-sets that my housemates and I would watch ov...| Rach Smith's digital garden
Today is the 30th, and tomorrow's post will be a notes & numbers for May, marking the end of the #WeblogPoMo2024 challenge. If you are a subscriber and are tired of having me pop up in your RSS reader constantly, I apologise, and it will be over soon. I don't intend to keep up the daily posting. I joined the challenge on a whim, and I've only resented the decision for about 20% of the days. That's actually pretty good for someone like me! Overall, I'm really happy I did it and I want to thank...| Rach Smith's digital garden
I was a very happy Arc user for a couple of years, but after The Browser Company announced they would no longer be working on it, I started to assess alternatives. Now I've ended up with a stack of browsers, instead of reaching for a single browser to do all the things. Polypane For dev work involving designing, layout and styling. Chrome For all other dev work. Horse For general internet usage. Horse is a niche one that I imagine is only appealing to a small subset of people, of which I just...| Rach Smith's digital garden
Recently I've been experimenting with adding title-less notes to this site, for thoughts the length of a microblog or social post.| Rach Smith's digital garden
Sometimes I get asked by newcomers how one can become a developer like me - specifically, with a job and career like mine. I find this sort of question impossible to answer. My personal situation is the result of the time I started, local and international economic forces, politics, and happenstance. I can't tell you how to recreate it from scratch in 2024! It does create a little thought exercise in my head though: if you were to remove all external variables, what traits in an individual de...| Rach Smith's digital garden
The whole “vibe coding” thing is another reminder that quite a lot of people working in tech don’t understand the difference between programs and products -- Dylan Beattie in The Problem with “Vibe Coding” Love the distinction made by Dylan in this post. I am still as in love with programming as I was 15 years ago. Product development, on the other hand, brings me to tears on a weekly basis. --- Thanks for reading this post via RSS! Let me know your thoughts by leaving a comment on ...| Rach Smith's digital garden
I have this story in my head, that the longer I go without writing a note here, the better that note has to be when I do eventually come back and post again.| Rach Smith's digital garden
I was texting with my best friend. Her mum has cancer, and my friend is going through the brutality of watching it take her piece by piece, just as I did with my own mum 13 years ago. I was thinking about how to respond to the latest message, too personal to relay here, when a suggested reply, animated in glowing colours to let me know it was "intelligent" popped up: Hang in there! My thought process was immediately broken as I contemplated what an absolutely obscene thing it would be to send...| Rach Smith's digital garden
This year I set a goal to journal every day in the hope I can write one of these 2024 year-in-review notes for my site. I didn't get to it every single day but I did it enough that I can look back and remember the year that was! There was a lot that happened this year so I've tried to pull out some threads/themes that particularly stood out or came up over and over again. Most of my focus throughout the year is on my kids, but I don't like to share much about them (for their privacy) so this ...| Rach Smith's digital garden
A conversation about the day's playground shenanigans with one of my kids had me asking him: "do you know what social skills are?". He replied "no, what's that?". After I explained, he was keen to tell me which skills he thinks he is good at (being kind and respectful, communicating with friends, being able to compromise within a group with different needs). He then said "the skill I don't have, is I'm too shy. I don't know how to talk to new people or at school I'm scared to ask to join in o...| Rach Smith's digital garden
Sometimes I've just gotta clear the house of extra stuff. When the energy hits I go through every area in the house and bin, give away or sell anything we're not using anymore.| Rach Smith's digital garden
Recently, my attention has been focused on building web apps to suit my very specific needs. The first one was a financial dashboard of sorts, where I took the data from my YNAB account and built out custom reports so help me make sure we're hitting our investment goal and spending according to our values. The second one (I just finished) was a digital recreation of the weekly layout from my Hobonichi Techo Cousin. Now my daily time-tracking data is going in to a database, and I'm excited to ...| Rach Smith's digital garden
I had a journal entry in my Hobonichi Techo Cousin for every day this year until July, where I have a string of blank pages.| Rach Smith's digital garden
I got an email from Let's Encrypt saying I need to renew my certificate. I couldn't find instructions to specifically renew certificates for Mastodon on Digital Ocean.| Rach Smith's digital garden
