BUILD 27/30: Short Productive Sprint Day

⊕ show captionAbout the Title Picture: Checking pantone colors versus the closest process color (CMYK) equivalent. You can see there is quite a color shift!

Today was one of those days full of small errands structured around dropping my car off at the garage for 100K mile maintenance, winter snow tires, and NH State Inspection. Because I would be constantly waiting for a call from the mechanic, I knew I wouldn't be able to get into "the zone", so I gave myself a bunch of gathering tasks that could be interrupted at any time.

Small Bursts of Activity

I had a lot of pleasant interactions, brightly sharing stories and being curious with great enthusiasm with everyone I talked to.

• I told the master mechanic and his boss (his wife) that he looked like Anime Colonel Sanders, and when I showed them the picture they totally saw it too.
• I dropped off a big check at my printer, and talked to one of their account reps about business card printing there. Basically, it's $100 to set up and then the per-sheet cost based on the number of sheets and cuts.
• I also asked if I could look at one of their Pantone Color Bridge guides, as I had lost mine and they cost $450 to replace now. I looked up the CMYK colors that I could use for my new business card design to ensure they looked as bright as they could despite the limits of this color process. I really do need to get my own color bridge (or find my ancient one), but I decided I would only do this if I actually had a billable design project to cover the cost.
• I ordered print sample kits from two commercial B2B print resellers, 4Over and GotPrint.
• I wrote a preliminary spec for my front-end web design needs. Not having a solid front-end stack for the web is holding me back on several fronts.
• I used Claude to suss out how Patreon's OAuth authentication worked, asking it to generate minimal boilerplate and then asking questions about API best practices. With this conceptual model confirmed, it'll be easy to focus on writing test code.
• I gathered rough numbers for 2024's income so I could compare it to this year. I'll need to estimate my income for next year to see what I might qualify for in the health plan marketplace, and there are only two weeks to get that finished.

All in all,not a bad day. I didn't get a call about my car, so tomorrow will be another day of waiting and doing low-intensity tasks that chip away at the big hairy projects!

BUILD CHALLENGE COMMENTARY

There are only three more MONTH OF BUILDING days left, likely to be finished before December hits. Tomorrow I will probably work on adding smaller images to pages, as this will be useful for making a layout like this:

⊕ show captionFigure: This left-aligned layout from 2014 New Thing a Day is currently not supported by this website code!

It will be nice to have these kind of image layout options, among others to create exciting collection pages! This could easily take up the rest of the Month of Building!

I also had an epiphany today: I really like the printing industry on a primal level. I probably like it better than software, truth be told. I'm reminded of stories where artists/painters similarly love the texture and scent of their materials, which contributes to their joy of making.

Maybe this is worth considering for next year's Groundhog Day Resolutions? Something to think about!