A friend writing about desktop environments reminded me of a few things as I consider a future switch to a Linux desktop.

I do not (usually) think of myself a hoarder, but any kind of reading online seems to result in a browser full of tabs (as xkcd humorously illustrates).

Even though desktop has more room to handle tabs, I find that even light research or troubleshooting can result in dozens of tabs, and after a point, only the favicon remains. When switching to a new task, I usually find it easier to close everything and start from scratch though I tend to bookmark to raindrop anything I might want later.

It has been 10 years since I moved to Japan. While I still mostly enjoy a lot about living in Japan, this year was more challenging than previous years. There is still uncertainty about what 2025 will hold but I remain optimistic.

While experimenting with yamdl to prototype an idea for a wiki-like django site, I was curious about the various lower level Django signals. To better understand them, I wrote a simple app config to log the various checks. To help them be more visible in the terminal, I have also somewhat randomly added some assorted colors.

import os
from pathlib import Path

from django.apps import AppConfig
from django.core.checks import register
from django.db.backends.signals import connection_created
from django.db.models.signals import class_prepared
from django.dispatch import receiver
from django.utils.autoreload import BaseReloader, autoreload_started, file_changed
from django.utils.termcolors import make_style

red = make_style(fg="red")
blue = make_style(fg="blue")
cyan = make_style(fg="cyan")
yellow = make_style(fg="yellow")
magenta = make_style(fg="magenta")
bold_yellow = make_style(opts=("bold",), fg="yellow")


class TestappConfig(AppConfig):
    name = __package__

    def ready(self):
        print(bold_yellow("ready"), __class__, os.getpid())
        if os.environ.get("RUN_MAIN"):
            print(bold_yellow("On app thread"))


@register
def test_checks(*args, **kwargs):
    print(red("test_checks"), args, kwargs)
    return []


@receiver(connection_created, dispatch_uid="print_connection_created")
def print_connection_created(*args, **kwargs):
    print(red("connection_created"), args, kwargs)


@receiver(autoreload_started, dispatch_uid="print_autoreload_started")
def print_autoreload_started(sender: BaseReloader, **kwargs):
    print(magenta("autoreload_started"), sender, kwargs)


@receiver(file_changed, dispatch_uid="print_file_changed")
def print_file_changed(sender: BaseReloader, file_path: Path, **kwargs):
    print(magenta("file_changed"), sender, file_path, kwargs)


@receiver(class_prepared, dispatch_uid="print_class_prepared")
def print_class_prepared(sender, **kwargs):
    print(cyan("print_class_prepared"), sender, kwargs)

After adding my new app to my INSTALLED_APPS setting, I get a similar output when I run it.

I have several Django projects, like my timebox or chore tracker project.

Two fields I will often add to most models is some kind of description/memo field and a url/more field.

from django.db import models

class Project(models.Model):
    # most of the model specific bits
    ...
    # common fields I add.
    description = models.TextField(blank=True)
    url = models.URLField(blank=True)

I will typically allow either to be blank, since both are intended to be optional.

A name/title might be enough as a quick hint or label, but often having a longer description/memo field is essential to provide extra detail once you have enough objects. I have mostly kept it as a plain text description (I will often use {{ obj.description|linebreaks }} to allow a bit of formatting), though other times I will consider allowing a full markdown description.

I tend to use my calendar and reminders to track a lot of what I want to do, but sometimes I want to manage the data externally and sync. For certain kinds of repeating tasks, I wanted to edit a list of tasks in a group, and it seemed like csv might work. While csv does not have a strong specification, many programming tools make it easy to work with. The initial format I thought about was something simple.

A friend recently wrote “our personal database , about how they maintain a postgres database for various projects. I wrote something similar when I wrote about my personal api , though Rubenerd’s post made me want to write a little bit more about it.

Since I am already using django for various projects, my personal API is also built on Django. While I could modify thing directly using something like pgAdmin, building on Django means I can take advantage of the models and admin built in to Django.

There have been a few times while working with Django , where I have wanted to triger something only if the instance changed. Since Django provides a robust signals system, I decided to use that for my prototype.

First we need to import the packages we will use.

from django.db import models
from django.db.models.signals import post_save, pre_save, ModelSignal
from django.dispatch import receiver
from django.forms.models import model_to_dict

Next, we want to handle our pre_save signal. We want to store a snapshot of the original object so that we can compare it later.

Recently there is quite a lot of back and forth regarding ActivityPub based projects and Bluesky.

Drinking more water.

Similar to a friend figuring out water this is how I get myself to drink more water.

1. A while back, I bought several 500 ml bottles from Daiso for about ￥ 100. At the beginning of the day I fill each of them up and put them in the fridge.
2. Keep one at my desk. If I have a bottle next to me, I will reflexively drink sips while working.
3. Any time I empty a bottle, I scan an nfc tag on my desk to record it, and then get a new bottle from the fridge.

As a bonus, this also means short forced breaks throughout the day to empty water.