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Journalλ︎

A journal of thoughts and experiences from commercial work and community projects 🌐 powered by Material for MkDocs

Practical.li provides free online books covering practical guides to Clojure programming and development workflows. Practicalli Engineering Playbook contains specific guides across the full spectrum of software development.

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All sponsorship funds are used to support the continued development of Practicalli series of books and videos, although most work is done at personal expense and time.

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Its the final countdown

Its the Dragon Ride at the weekend and I am almost over the flu that knocked me out for the last week or so. I had some trouble with a heart rate monitor, but managed to resolve the issue.

There are engineering works on the train route I take for the Dragon Ride. I got in touch with GWR support via WhatsApp and they said 'the train should run on time', with a caveat that the train could be cancelled if the engineering works overran.

Luckily a friend can take me in their car and put my bike on their bike rack. This seemed the more reliable option.

I am still fighting off the remnants of the flu, which keeps persisting despite serious levels of vitamins and paracetamol. I am taking the opportunity to sleep as much as I can this week.

Today was the first session of the AI School from Google. The first session was a fluff piece, trying to inspire, but I found it too much hype and lacking in substance. Hopefully it gets better as the week progresses.

OMG its hot

Temperatures over 30 Celsius means more cycling, as moving on the bike is an excellent way to keep cool.

Practicalli tasks this week:

  • Attend Clojure Dev Call 26th May (Missed, watch video)
  • Fit Dell monitor to arm, with RogueOne laptop
  • Fit LG monitor to arm, with RangerOne laptop
  • Check OBS setup for creating screencasts
  • Review scripts for Neovim screencasts
  • Update book publishing workflow to use Zensical

Bike maintenance tasks this week:

  • Bianchi flight controller adjustment
  • Bianchi new bar tape
  • DONE: Ribble deep clean chain, cassette & derailleur
  • DONE: Ribble fit Fulcrum wheels with Vx disc brake rotors
  • DONE: Ribble adjust brake disc calipers with Vx disc brake rotors (the back rotor is good, getting Erick to sort the front)

From cold to hot

A cold but sunny start to this week should turn into a mini heatwave by the weekend (maybe). No excuse to go cycling several times this week.

Practicalli work this week was on the Sustainable Life and Cycling books.

The Megalinter GitHub workflow generated a failing issues on the Practicalli Journal repository yesterday, indicating it failed because it couldnt find something to check.

Its an opportunity to review linters Practicalli uses to support quality of docs and code.

Took the Bianchi in to get a new bottom bracket fitted. The bike has lasted 20 years and a lot of kilometers. Unfortunately there wasn't a Strava back in 2006 when i got the Bianchi bike, so most of the distance on the bike was never captured until 2019.

Resiliance is coping with chaos

The week started full of promise but quickly fell to pieces 🤣 By the middle of the week I was starting to get some traction again and things were good again by the weekend.

A fairly pragmatic view of 'AI' tools was discussed in the DevEx Summit 2026 online conference.

After a false start, I have a fully working road bike again and am back on the road again. A nice long and hilly ride to end the week and a lazy Sunday recovering and organising camping gear for the Dragon Ride trip.

May the Forth be with you

May the fourth (be with you) is a celebration of Star Wars.

As it also happens to be a public holiday (bank holiday) in the UK, a few friends and I did a celebratory cycle ride to Chiddingstone cafe for some delicious cake.

Training Training Training

The weather is much nicer this week so more training for the Dragon Ride in June. A typical ride at the start of the week with a huge 180km ride to Brighton and back mid-week.

Added the Practicalli install scripts for Neovim to the Neovim and Engineering Playbook websites.

Debug kaocha and Portal

When testing updates to the Practicalli Neovim config with Practicalli Project Templates, I discovered an error when using Koacha test runner via a REPL connected editor when Portal wrap-portal middleware is included in the REPL startup. The issue was resolved in the latest Portal release.

Tested the Debian Linux post install scripts on a spare laptop. Apart from the Zsh install script failing and a couple of TUI tools that need the output files renamed, everything seems pretty good.

A couple of nice rides over the Easter weekend in the UK and one just before the weekend, already has my distance for April at 288 km (and 3,480 meters climbing). There are some sunny days this week, so its looking good for 1,000 km distance this month.

I travelled 753.6 km in March this year and have a current total distance of 1,943.5 km for 2026.

To relax over the long weekend, I started a Netflix subscription after hunting through websites to see if there were enough shows on Netflix that I actually wanted to watch (not that easy a task as all streaming services are very secretive about what shows they actually have).

I was disappointed that season 2 of 3 Body Problem wont be release until then end of 2026 and with fewer episodes (6 rather than 8).

Movies

  • Kung Fu Panda 4 is the latest in the film series, seeing Po become the reluctant mentor. The best part of the film is the authentic Chinese music version of "Crazy Train" by Ozzy Osbourne.
  • K-Pop Demon Hunters visually stunning although not that deep a story line, enjoyable to watch anyway.
  • The Electric State is a fun Sci-Fi adventure with Millie Bobby Brown and Chris Pratt.
  • The Uglies a coming-of-age sci-fi movie with an interesting plot. Seems to be part one of a two part film, but unclear if the sequil will be made as it took 18 years to get around to making the first one.

Rick and Morty Series 9 should be released on May 24th on Adult Swim, so I'll keep an eye out for it on Channel4.com from then on.