Update for the week ending on Friday, Jan 24, 2020

WanderJest

This was mostly an infrastructure week, so there aren’t many user-visible changes, but the work I’m doing this week sets me up to move faster in the weeks ahead.

I WAY underestimated how long this stuff would take, though. I knew I wanted to add support for user-supplied show reviews, and I knew that to get there I’d have to:

1. Move all my baked-into-source-code data to a proper Cloud Firestore database ✅
2. Add server-side logic for validating + accepting user-supplied show reviews ✅
3. Add show review functionality into the web UI
4. Add CSRF protection
5. Add tighter CSP policy
6. Add user accounts (via UserKit integration)

I foolishly thought it would be a day or two of work, but step (1) alone took most of the week. I’m done with #2 and partially done with #3. Steps #4-6 should be easy because I’m mostly just copy/pasting what I already implemented on What Got Done, but it’s going to be a lot of copy/pasting.

Other than that, I:

• Moved the show filter UI elements into a collapsible container so they take up less page space
  • Before vs. After
• Added the first “show recommendation” for Tricia D’Onofrio’s Tasty Tuesday Comedy Showcase
  • Currently, I’m the only user who can post reviews because user registration isn’t open yet, but I want to get the server-side logic and UX in place first.
  • Screenshot
  • The other neat feature I like is that the review shows up on all other instances of the same show series and links the user to the specific performance to which the review refers.
• Created a script to tear down and reinitialize my local database
• Re-did my end-to-end tests using a firestore emulator instead of baked-in data
• Attended a local comedy showcase and spoke to two comedians about WanderJest
• Added a daily backup service for WanderJest’s firestore database
  • Basically copy/paste of What Got Done’s version
• Fixed a bug where clicking show filters in the web UI would cause the page to lose most shows
  • Added a Cypress test for exercising all the filter UI elements
• Added sitemap and robots.txt
• Ordered WanderJest business cards

What Got Done

• Added page views to What Got Done entries
• This started as an idea for WanderJest, but I decided to do it on What Got Done first so that I could easily share the source
  • What Got Done PR #391 (though there were lots of little fixes afterwards to make it actually work)
    • Screenshot
  • Standalone CLI for pulling pageviews out of Google Analytics
    • Screenshot

mtlynch.io

• Continued working on my “Second Year as a Solo Developer” post.

Is It Keto

• Fixed an inconsistency between a review of Gatorade Zero and Powerade Zero
  • A reader emailed to say we dinged Powerade Zero (written in 2018) for sucralose and ace K, even though Gatorade Zero has the same sweeteners and we deducted no points.
  • Re-wrote a lot of the Powerade Zero article, recycling some text from Gatorade

Misc

• Co-hosted the Indie Founders and Side Projects meetup with @dtq
  • I think one of our largest turnouts ever at 8 or 9 people
• Figured out what was slowing down my Synology NAS
  • It was their dumb “Universal Search” app
    • Thanks to Matthew Lewis for the fix
• Clearing space in my house by purging some stuff I don’t need
  • Got rid of a bunch of stuff I no longer need via my local Buy Nothing group
    • Shot glasses
    • Salt and pepper shakers
    • Google branded water bottle
  • Put up an old Charles Barkley trading card up on eBay
  • Put up my Mad Men canvas print for sale 😢