Started the year by creating a quick and lightweight bug tracker 🙂 Been using multiple solutions, but none of them really worked for us. This one is customized to meet our particular requirements.

Within an hour of creating it, the wife has already added a bunch of projects - and that's not even half of the projects that I work on for our personal use 😛

#Tools #Development #Web
A web-based bug tracker showing…

@MakeAppPie It's possible that some people don't need the "why", or don't care 🙂But I definitely appreciate knowing the "why" because, for me, a "why" means that it's a principle that I can remember.

A "how" (again to me) is just something that I can do for that particular artwork, but it doesn't stick in my mind since (to me) it's just a way to do something for that particular artwork. It doesn't always translate (again in my mind) into something I can use in other artwork ...

I'm trying to think of a good example here. Ran into a very good one just the other day comparing two different courses but can't remember now. Old age 😛

I think it might have been setting up shadow and light for an object. The first course simply said "Do this" and showed setting blend mode to "multiply" and putting a darker colour on that layer to add shadowing. But they didn't explain what multiply did or why that produced shadowing. So all I knew was that I had to select a particular colour, set a particular blend mode and that was it.

Maybe that works for most people? It just doesn't for me 🙂

The other course explained blend modes and mentioned that particular blend modes will turn colours darker and others will make it lighter and how generally anything above "normal" is darker and below is lighter. That stayed with me and made much more sense.

I've been checking out art courses online and it's interesting how many great artists don't realize that showing "how" to do something isn't the best way to teach 🙂

You need to teach people "why" - that allows you to re-use the principle in other ways, not learn by rote.

#Learning #Art #Teaching

@paulk I have a self-published humorous science fiction book that I'd like to offer for consideration 🙂

Title: Sir Lanka Files
Link: https://books.farook.org/sir-lanka-files/

"Now You See Me: Now You Don't" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4712810/) was disappointing.

It telegraphed what was coming way too early - if you didn't foresee the major reveal at the end way before you got there, you weren't paying attention 😛 (And I don't blame you for not paying attention ... it wasn't that interesting.)

And the sequence in the middle with them trying to outdo each other doing tricks? Annoying! And pointless.

#Movies #English

"The Running Man" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14107334) seems hyper-violent (like a lot of stuff these days) but on the other hand, it managed to keep my attention to the end. So probably one of the better action movies in the past couple of years?

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14107334

#Movies #English #Action #SciFi

"Aaromaley" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt36587142) had a slightly slow start but it picks up quickly and really comes in to its own after the interval. It's a beautiful movie about people, relationships, and feelings. And to suddenly hear SPB singing "Anjali" - a feeling all in its own category ...

A beautiful, emotional, and heart-warming romance that's well worth watching.

#Movies #Tamil #Romance

I've been coding a web-based library interface to complement my book reading app.

The library simply shows our books and allows the wife and I to have separate user profiles showing the books we're reading, our reading history, and comments.

Working pretty good.

#Reading #Books #Coding #Library
A web-based library interface s…
A web-based user profile with t…

I keep hearing how Firebase has "generous" usage on the free plan. I started working on a library app with 4000+ books. Two data syncs and I was through my free plan 😛

Switched over to a local server with SQLite immediately. Might look at Parse again maybe?

#Coding #Platforms

@mdreid Yep, Matt writes a compelling story and he expands the world brilliantly in the first book. I really want to see what happens on the next level ...

But then again, I've got a couple of more writers to go through to see if I find more interesting writers who make me want to write 🙂

So moving on without going on to book 2 ... but that's mostly because I read slowly and I'm currently on a quest to find more inspiring writers. But the compulsion to move on to book 2 is very strong 😀

What with the storm and flooding in Sri Lanka and other stuff going on, I haven't had time to do a reading update. But maybe time to do one now to close out November?

After DNFing "Just One Damned Thing After Another", I started on "Clean Sweep". This one I liked 🙂

The story was engaging, and the writing was clean. It wasn't the kind of writing that made me want to write like that, but the story was good. And I finished the book in 4 days, which is a record for me ... Or I wasn't busy 😛

I'll be returning to this series!

Then I read "Dungeon Crawler Carl".

I knew Matt Dinniman a long time ago (before DCC) and he's a great guy. The book was interesting.

What interests me mostly about a book is the plot. Figuring out what will happen before it happens.

Couldn't do that much here 😛

For one thing, you know what will happen ultimately based on the premise - you know that Carl will make it to the end of the dungeon 🙂

For another, the plot points are like mini-stories. Each section of a level takes a chapter or two and is done. There are very few overarching plot elements which act as hooks. The main attraction is to keep reading to see what happens next.

But the plot twists as he progressed were entertaining and creative. So I kept reading, and reading, and reading.

Again, not quite the kind of thing I'd want to write myself, but definitely something that will keep me reading!

I'll be coming back to this series. Both Ilona Andrews and Matt make me want to come back and finish the whole series. But there are so many books ....

#Reading #Books #MiniReviews
A screenshot from a reading app…

"Sunny Sanskari Ki Tulsi Kumari" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt30742355) was a fun movie! Didn't expect too much from it but as is usual is the case when I don't expect much from Varun Dhawan, he surprises you 😛

Another great Bollywood romance!

#Movies #Hindi #Bollywood

I have a lot of notes scattered across multiple apps - OneNote, Affine, Apple Notes, Obsidian etc. So I decided to combine all of them in one place 🙂

Getting everything into Obsidian was easy enough since Obsidian has a bunch of useful importers. So that was done, but then I needed to be able to sync the notes across the local network to other machines and with my wife.

Sure, Obsidian has their sync functionality but that's a paid subscription. Then there is at least one open-source sync solution but it seemed a bit heavy for my needs. So, as one does when one is a developer, I decided to write my own 😛

I wanted something which only syncs over the local network, is easy to deploy and install and is light-weight. I think have all those boxes ticked. It's a tiny Go server for the server-side and an Obsidian plugin for handling the client side.

And in case anybody is interested in using it (or testing it, or contributing to it), I decided to make it open-source. You can find it on GitHub here:
https://github.com/FahimF/GoSync

#Obsidian #Sync #Go #OpenSource

So the wife and I did our cartoons for this week based on a Facebook video ... or at least, my/our reaction to it 😛

https://write.farook.org/idle-thoughts-05/

#Cartoon #Drawing #Art
Two cartoons by different peopl…

I don't think I've ever DNFed a book before. But this week I DNFed two.

So, overall progress has been three books this week but I'm not happy about it since I DNFed two and started the third yesterday.

I'll discuss why I DNFed each one (broadly - no spoilers).

"A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking" - this one just felt so slow, and a very abbreviated world-view. Action was sparse and when I finally ended up reading about climbing up a poop-tube (you'll know if you read the book 😛) for two whole chapters, I gave up.

"Just One Damned Thing After Another" felt much better at first, except that the main character was supposed to be smart but they keep not seeing the obvious.

They do say that they aren't smart sometimes, but if everybody else says they are, then are they all stupid?

Then there was the sex 😛 The first 8 chapters read like a Victorian romance - glances and sighs. But then it suddenly becomes a bodice-ripper in around chapter 9 or 10.

I could not recover after that and gave up soon after. It just felt so disjointed after that.

#Reading #Books #Thoughts
A screenshot from a reader app …

Another double-cartoon from the wife and I 🙂

https://write.farook.org/idle-thoughts-04/

Any resemblance to real people is purely unintentional 😛

#Cartoon #Drawing #Art
Two cartoons by two different p…

@Scienceisnotopinions I've been going through multiple sites which claim to find you similar books but so far have not hit upon one which gave me something that I really loved based on the criteria I specified 🙂

I use my own reader because it gives me more flexibility than Kindle does. Maybe I should write my own recommendation engine but then that'll take time away from reading and other stuff. So probably won't 🙂

Recently, I've been reading different authors instead of sticking to a single author. I'm trying to find an author whose writing I really enjoy without nitpicking. So far, not a lot of success 😛

James Butcher's first book looked promising, but the second not so much...

The second telegraphed what was coming so much that I kind of knew where we'd end by as soon as the first "big" plot twist started 🙂

That's actually when I decided to read different authors and figure out one whose writing I really liked enough to keep reading them.

I read a collection of golden age science fiction stories as a palette cleanser for a couple of days. It was good but not compelling.

So back to fantasy I went since most of my TBR pile is fantasy 🙂

Next one was Ben Aaronovitch and "The Rivers of London".

Better, but the book felt a bit disjointed. It was almost as if Aaronovitch wrote parts of it at different times. Sometimes the characters seemed to forget basic things that they knew earlier and so on. And the timeline seemed to shift a bit.

I'll come back to the series later.

Now reading "A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking" by T. Kingfisher.

I'd heard a lot of praise for T. Kingfisher and so my expectations were high. Maybe too high?

She writes like I think I would 🙂 But the story is in fits and starts. There's action and then lulls...

I'm only halfway through, but it feels as if it could have benefitted from a bit more action. I'm going to finish before I make up my mind, but so far, I think I'll probably move on to the next author since the writing, at least in this one, is not what I was looking for.

The last bit of writing where I really felt energized was P. Djèlí Clark's "The Dead Cat Tail Assassins" — now that was a great and wonderful ride 🙂

I'm looking to have that kind of magic. Am I asking for too much?

#Reading #Books
A calendar view showing reading…

We (the wife and I) did two more cartoons - this time about that ever popular Sri Lankan food, hoppers!

https://write.farook.org/idle-thoughts-03/

#Cartoon #Drawing #Art
Two cartoons by two different p…

And the wife and I managed to get another cartoon done today 🙂 I'm not sure if I can sustain this pace though. I guess we'll see?

The story behind today's cartoon is here: https://write.farook.org/idle-thoughts-02/

#Cartoon #Drawing #Art
Two cartoons by two different p…