Neal Wilson ✅ @neal@social.typica.us

A roaster friend just reached out with a problem that the project I've been working on lately might be useful for sorting out, so despite the fact that I'm not satisfied with the current state of things, I've put up the very much WIP and have my first outside of my company tester. It's not really in such bad state as it sounds like there. I should just need a few good extended sessions to slam out the rest of my to do list.

Made some UI decisions today. Might change them later, but it's enough that I can build the features, see if that'll work well enough, and change it later if it turns out I've made a horrible mistake.

I don't understand puzzle naming.

I keep seeing what I assume is some kind of anti-spam detection technique of including a couple random lines that look like they came out of an 18th century melodrama and I can't imagine that actually works very well, yet I keep seeing it (I'm not using a spam detector).

Got one item off my to do list today.

Decided that between the fall promotion and current content it's fine for me to have a Paramount+ subscription for a little while. Is there a recommended viewing order for all of the Star Trek that came out after Enterprise? (currently going through Lower Decks)

Finishing up payment processing stuff for CRUCS today. I'm going with a pay what you want model for this where you can use it without paying for it, but I'll also accept money.

Taste testing yesterday's production test batches. These were roasted against plans adjusted in CRUCS (I copied in the milestones from the initial exploratory roast and then made adjustments intended to get something easier to do with a larger batch size and based on the initial sensory observations) and the results are quite nice.

Or at least that's what I would be working on, but the cat says no so I guess I'll have to finish that up later. A nice side effect is that the settings fields will start out displaying their current values instead of whatever the browser feels like inappropriately auto-filling (Firefox wants to do crazy things when I change the forms).

Working on adding settings persistence to CRUCS using Window.localStorage. For example, I have graph defaults set to 20 minutes by 500F which is a nice safe default for most of the roasting machines still running, but there are also a lot of faster machines being operated by people who don't need a duration that long or people who prefer °C. They can change their preferred settings once and CRUCS will keep the updated settings. Settings (or anything else) are never sent back to the server.

Left the cat curled up in a blanket when I went in to work. Got home to find her in exactly the same spot. Of course, now that I'm back she wants to sit on me instead.

Tasted the test progression from the new coffee that got delivered the other day. Used the not quite finished yet CRUCS to make a couple tweaks to the plan before doing the production test. This is a lot faster than the old internal tool I made CRUCS to replace (I also wrote the old tool).

Today's coffee delivery contains a claim I haven't seen called out on a bag before. Not sure what it means, but I'm pretty sure most plants are technically solar powered.

me: *trying to do anything*
cat: hello, I sit on you now.

Today's coding seems to be mostly tests.

Out of one of the coffees I've been using for my espresso blend so I spent some time at the shop sorting out a new blend.

Knocked out the platinum trophy in Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster today. Had to go back for 3 treasure chests and 3 enemies that were missed on the first run through.

Looks like I might be seeing a trend on to ship order size again. Prior to taking orders online people would tend to place larger orders so the shipping cost wasn't too bad (I charge whatever USPS charges me). I got online ordering set up a bit before COVID started and average order size went way down (number of orders increased). Over the past month average order size is back up to what it used to be. Haven't looked into this any deeper to gain insight into why, just thought it was interesting.

Room reservations for the event I'm going to have been a lot more hassle than it should be. Resort web site and front desk chat were completely useless. It looks like I might have to make arrangements to stay somewhere else on my last night, but I'll see if the email contact I was given comes up with something useful. Car rental reservation also had a going sideways moment.

The cat has been sitting on me for most of the past 4 hours. I've had to move her a few times but she's quite insistent that my lap is where she wants to be.