Writing and things

Status Updates

Yes, I still exist.

I’m still around. Daily stuff tends to get in the way of regular blogging very easily for me. I’m working my day-to-day job (meh) and also trying to implement tools and rituals that can help me with both overwhelm and executive functions.

There are some big changes in the works for me. Not something I’m willing to put on the Internet just yet, but it’s a big one.

Projects

I’ve been working on a little meditation timer app. Something that I just want to publish to get over a hump. That way I can say "Hey! I did something with all the learning I’ve been doing!" And maybe so that I can put something more on my resume for future applications?

Something I still kinda have a hard time figuring out is how to really dig into Swift APIs. I watch YouTube videos of people that really seem to understand how they work, and when I go to read the documentation from Apple, it just seems way over my head. I’m sure it’s mostly a matter of the correct perspective, lens, or even distance (metaphorically speaking) from the topic. I’m just not sure how to bring that into the correct focus.

One thing I do want to update is my blog. The platform of WordPress is fine, I guess? I just want to have a bit more control over the page. I may do something with Ignite but that may take a while. Mostly because I do enjoy working in Obsidian a lot, and I need more tools to streamline publishing to a static site. There’s a lot about the tool that I don’t understand, and I want to so I can use it for silly little things.

That’s it

Thank you for reading.

TIL 2026.1.10

Today/This week I learned


– Some Hosting services are easier to use than others.
– I guess I had filed a charge dispute on my last List/Host service but the still got paid? I dunno. But because of that, they wouldn’t let me update payment or anything without showing documentation that the chargeback was cleared. Except they had double charged me?
– They didn’t have any clear “contact customer service” tool, so I said “biff this” and went to a different provider.
– I’m going to have to sort through what I’m using on their services and downgrade where I don’t need it.
– DNS listing is stupidly complicated. There should be easier tools to do this stuff. MX record? AAA record? Can you just give me an album and I’ll listen to it on my lovely cute new record player?
– It’s been almost 6 months since I posted anything? Crap. I’d like to be a *little* better about that.

That’s about it. I gotta work this weekend, so y’all remember to be nice to your customer service agents.

TIL 2025.7.28

Today I learned

  • Order matters in a timer! In my app, I have a timer that does a few simple things. Before I fixed it, it first subtracted a second from my secondsRemaining variable, and then it checked to see if that was 0. I was getting a weird bug that would make the GUI pause just enough to notice at the last second. SO I rearranged a few lines to do the if secondsRemaining <= 0 first, and nest the subtraction line in an else block. Fixed the pause! YAAAAAAAY!
    • I’ve had this same silly issue on a few versions of this timer for ages. It never really just clicked to try a slightly different order on the timer. This is amazing.
    • I still may be getting a bit of a Off By One bug somehow? Ugh.
  • This is has been a major feature I’m adding for the MVP. I feel like there may just be one or two small things I want to add and then go through for Accessibility.
  • I wonder if it’s okay to link to the BuyMeACoffee thing in the app? I’m not sure IAPs allow for a "I like your app, have a $1" type things. That is something I gotta figure out. A simple redirect/deep link?

Other things?

I let my developer account lapse due to budget reasons, so it looks like it’s time to reactivate it. Also, I wonder if it’s better to publish an app under a business name or my personal name?

TIL 2025.7.16

Today I learned

  • I’m trying to cram too many things into a single function.
    • The downfall here is that I want to name things that are easy to remember, and have functions that are only differ in by a line or two so that makes things…fuzzy
  • Also, who cares? Are you gonna see my dirty code? NOPE!!! So I’mma make 2 different model methods so that I can call them based on an enum state.
    • Clean it up later! Make the dumb thing work!
  • Timer objects will run until you call .invalidate() on them. This causes problems if you invoke a timer more than once without stoping it (or realizing that you created 2 timer objects). I will make the timer fire more than once a second.
  • I think I’ve just about finished part of my MVP on this silly app. I have one major feature I want to build. Most of the logic is already there, since I’ve been using a modified VM architecture. My logic is all chilling in one ViewModel object with my preferences all wrapped in ‘@AppStorage’ properties.

I know it’s been (literally) 2 months since I last posted a TIL. Life gets in the way! My schedule is still flexible, and I have to be that way too. Thanks for reading!

TIL 2025.5.16

Today I learned

I know it’s been a hot minute since writing a "TIL", and that’s okay. Can’t expect profound content on days that I just want to watch YouTube videos and read.

  • Episode 1 of "MurderBot" is pretty good. I’ll be catching up on the other dropped episodes next week since I have to work all weekend.
  • I’m working through 100 Days of SwiftUI and getting better ideas on how to style things better. It’s real easy to just make bare-bones apps that look like a newbie app, but it’s just as easy to add a ZStack with some gradients to make things look a little fancy.
    • I mean, in the 2nd lesson Paul took a simple flag guessing game from "eh" to "oh wow, okay!" look.
    • It gives me ideas, inspiration, AND a nice review of SwiftUI layout!
  • I’ve been reviewing my old App Ideas, and thinking about the best thing to publish/get out there.
    • I’m following great advise out there of "Take an app you like, but make it yours."
    • So I have a few of these ideas, but one or two will require me to re-activate my Developer account. (I had to cut costs and that was an easy cut at the time.)
    • And here is a bit of a shame-less (ish?) plug for my Buy Me a Coffee link! (I’m only a little sorry it! I do like coffee…and tea.)
  • I get easily sidetracked by research that I think may help my daily flow.
    • I use Obsidian to blog, and write Daily Notes. I tend to keep these files in folders, but a lot of other Obsidian users don’t do this. They use tags and links to make their notes more relational.
      • I would like to do this, but just not exactly sure on the "how do I start?" portion. I mean, I like folders. They help keep things organized?

That’s all for today. If you read these, feel free to comment if you want? Or strike up a conversation on Mastodon. I’m happy to chat with people! Please keep in mind, that a lot of my chats are pretty asynchronous due to my job. But say hello. You can find me here: Justin Seal.

TIL 2025.4.18

Today I learned

  • More confidence. No really! The more I work on projects, the better I feel about building things!
    Now, I can hear you saying: “Justin. That’s the point of practicing.” Yes yes yes. I get this…like as a concept but my wild brain just doesn’t believe it until I do it a lot.
  • I was (gasp) overthinking my JSON conversion project. I was thinking I had to have two different models. One was the existing/incoming data, and the other was the new/outgoing data. Nope. I read and re-read the Codable Protocol documentationand a few other helpful things. I learned that I just had to write the correct logic to decode (in this case it the init(from: Decoder)) and then what ever custom encoding method (the encode(to:) method).
    • The last bit I’m fussing with is taking the flat incoming JSON, making a check to see if one of the object is a parent object. If it’s not, I want to make it into a child object that is contained in an array of the parent.

TIL 2025.4.15

Today I learned

  • That I was messing things up with a tool called Macup. I was using it to back up my preferences for a few applications to my iCloud folder. Yeah, that’s a small to medium sized “don’t do that” for you.
    • It sounds like a good idea, but it’s also redundant since I use Carbon Copy Cloner to back up my full hard drive to a local SSD.
    • The unexpected results include: Applications not seeing registrations. Applications showing the “What’s New” dialog at every launch.
    • It also messed up my git configuration.
  • So that’s a fun mess to untangle.
  • Also fun? It was causing my Obsidian tool problems with publishing my notes. SO one tool caused a LOT of issues!

TIL 2025.4.9

Today I learned

  • That sometimes, you can spend a lot of time spinning your debugging wheels only to find that you should delete your app from the Simulator since something got frelled up on the ModelContext or something.
    • I just kept getting a crash when I was trying to run my app. It was telling me I was passing a nil value to a non-optional thing. So I went back like three fixes and was still having issues. Took a swing to delete the app on the Simulator. Boop. Works, loads, no crash.
  • Error reporting on Xcode is kind of a stupid beast.
  • My Obsidian publishing tool is failing. Just returns a Status 500 when I try to post. So that’s annoying.

Other thoughts

  • I’m using SwiftData for this very simple app, and after the hardish part of set-up, I feel like I’m more up and running on this.
  • I got side-tracked on using Comparable protocol for an “`enum“` that didn’t have associated types or values. I had to back up and rethink what I was trying to accomplish. I might have overworked what I’m doing, but ‍‍♂️. It works!
  • From here, I want to add a little more complexity to my Model (this will take some research), and make the UI a little less clunky looking.

TIL 2025.4.7

### Today I Learned
– That it’s okay to just work for 10 minutes on a thing. Then I can do this check:
“`swift
if brainIsWorking {
doMoreWork(on: Project)
}
“`
Notice how the doMoreWork(on:) doesn’t have a time limit parameter? Yah, that tends to be the issue after I get going. But recently brainIsWorking has been returning false after check. Or this check hasn’t actually been called since it’s in the workOnTheThing(thing:) method.

– Sorry not sorry for using this comparison for how my I’ve been operating recently. ‍♂️ It’s just kinda how I’m doing these days.
– This is also a reminder that recovery from any kind of burnout is *not* linear. We will always have rough/hard/bad days/months/(or even a)year. And it’s important to be gentle with yourself. It’s OKAY!

TIL 2025.3.17

Today I learned

  • Maybe not so much as learned but remembered: Break things down.
    • I tend to over complicate things by getting into the details (a plus/minus of being so highly monotropic), but when that just results in errors I can remind myself to break it down into silly small steps.
  • Don’t forget the print tool.
    print(foo)

    • It’s such a simple little thing, and yet I (again) over-think problem solving. The print command is one of those things you can learn as a beginning coder and then just fly right past when you feel more intermediate (note I say feel here).

This reminds me of a Zen parable:

Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era, received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen.
Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor’s cup full, and then kept on pouring. The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. “It is overfull. No more will go in!”
“Like this cup,” Nan-in said, “you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?”

  • Using LLM tools are a good starting point for building better things.