Update for the week ending on Friday, Oct 16, 2020

TinyPilot

• Conducted a customer interview
  • Reached out to two potential interviews that the customer suggested
• Lots of work to try to figure out why one user is unable to get the web app to recognize any modifier keys on their physical keyboard
  • Added more debug logging to the server.
  • Added support for installing/updating TinyPilot with debug logging enabled
• Added support for right-hand modifier keys
  • Previously, TinyPilot just treated everything as left-side modifiers because I figured it’s rare for a scenario where the left modifier has a different result than the right modifier.
  • Added kind of ugly support in the UI for switching the manual modifiers
  • Added support in the UI for sending modifier keys by themselves (previously, they had to be in conjunction with other keys)
• Added unit tests for the JavaScript keystroke to HID keystroke conversion logic
• Got rid of some magic numbers in the HID keycodes
• Reached out to a Gridsome developer to hire them for tweaks to the Shopify integration on the TinyPilot website.
• Babysat reddit ads
  • Impressions: 12,881
  • Clicks: 208
  • Avg CPC: $1.73
  • Total spend: $360.68
  • Conversions: 0
  • Cost per conversion: ∞
• Fiddled with my Shopify template for invoice generation
  • Either I don’t understand Shopify or Shopify’s templating system is ridiculous, because it seems to not support access to important product fields like HS code (for int’l shipping)
  • My dumb workaround: save my product’s HS code redundantly in the ISBN field (which I otherwise don’t use) because the templating language offers access to the ISBN field but not the HS code.
• Worked with the vdesktop maintainer on a maintainable solution for offering config files.
• Played around a little bit to try to get TinyPilot working on Ubuntu for the Raspberry Pi, but it failed again.
• Did some inventory management.

mtlynch.io

• Continued working on blog post about code reviews.

What Got Done

• Made a little bit of progress on supporting a WYSIWYG editor for weekly updates

Hit the Front Page of Hacker News (eBook)

I’m considering writing a book about how to write articles that get traction on Hacker News, reddit, and other tech-oriented social networking sites.

• As a trial, I’m trying to turn my blog post series on hiring content writers into an eBook.
• I’m currently looking for a write-render workflow I like.
• Experimented with LeanPub.
  • I like the mission, but their edit -> render workflow is too slow for me (takes about 8 separate steps, ~60 seconds total. Hugo has spoiled me).
  • To their credit, I emailed them to explain why I was canceling my service, and one of the co-founders responded within hours with a pleasant email addressing my feedback.
  • I’ll likely still use their publishing service to sell the book incrementally as I write it and just bring my own PDF/mobi/HTML files.
• Tried Markdown -> pandoc, which has potential, seems a little clunky.
• I might end up just doing it in LaTeX, assuming I can find a way to do LaTeX -> HTML.
  • I used to write in LaTeX to prepare reports when I was a consultant, but that was ~10 years ago, and now I don’t remember whether I actually knew LaTeX or I just knew how to use my company’s report template…

Beekeeping

• Checked my hives post-mite treatment.
  • Successfully located both queens, who seem alive and healthy (mite treatments can kill them)
• Fed bees more honey to help them store for winter.

Misc

• Virtual meeting with my peer mentorship group
  • Presented a slide deck on making the power connector for TinyPilot
• Went through my standard process of upgrading a router (this is the second time in 5 years I’ve gone through this exact process)
  1. Router’s doing something wrong, so I troubleshoot for a few hours and factory reset the device
  2. I can’t figure out what’s wrong, so I flash it to DD-WRT
  3. DD-WRT fixes the issue
  4. “Wow! DD-WRT is great! I can’t believe I was using closed-source firmware that the vendor hasn’t updated in years when DD-WRT is open source and constantly receiving improvements!”
  5. DD-WRT starts crashing randomly within the first few hours of usage, and I panic that I’ve bricked my router.
  6. “I can’t believe I installed some random binary file that’s probably never been formally tested for my device! Why did I do this?”
  7. I manage to flash back to my original firmware.
  8. I spend $400 on a new router to hopefully defer this process for another 5 years.