Comments Systems and Covid-19

I haven’t kept with my blogging schedule, but it’s been a week of setbacks!

• I applied to Recurse Center but didn’t make it into the Spring Batch. This was a super bummer that had me questioning my fitness as a programmer, and I can apply again for Summer. Maybe this is a blessing in disguise, as the rejection experience has really helped me sharpen how I present my interests to specialty communities. It’s also true—and this might have been a one reason for the rejection—that I have a ton of non-programming work to do to reboot my design business. After talking to a friend who attended, this might have been the wrong thing to say, along with my rather “meta” look at programming as a whole as part of a continuum of expression. We’ll see how it goes if I apply again in the summer; apparently 6% of their rejected applicants make it in later.

• I have caught COVID for the first time. Not only that, all my visiting house guests have COVID also. For a while I was isolating in my bedroom, but apparently that wasn’t good enough as I still needed to eat and use the bathroom. So far I’m actually feeling OK; I’m being careful to stay super warm and hydrated, and I have an enormous collection of cough drops to help keep my lungs from coughing themselves into a spongy bronchitis-ridden mess. I know…super gross!

In brighter news:

• I’ve added a new feature to the website: commenting! I’m using self-hosted Comentario and wrote up the instructions in Digital Ocean Docker Primer, which uses Comentario as the example. This was my first time using Docker, and the experience was less odious than I thought it might be once I figured out what it was doing.

• January 22 was Japan Curry Day so I made my favorite Japanese curry pre-mix, House Java Hot using the slow cooker method for extra tasty russet potatoes that retain their bite and shape! The Russet is the king of potatoes as far as I’m concerned! At the time I was still quarantining myself so I put it all into an old Mr Bento lunch jar for the full treatment yumminess! 😋

⊕ show captionHappy Japan Curry Day! I ate this while quarantined in my bedroom, and all was right in the Universe that day.

• I’ve made some pretty good progress on my 2026 Groundhog Day Resolutions plan. It is a good thing I wrote them down somewhere because I’ve already forgotten them! I remember they were good, though; I’m looking forward to getting into them with y’all come February 2nd.

• This year we’ll be doing the GHDR Mastermind Group again in my Discord server. If you’re interested, come by the server or ask a question in the (gasp) new commenting system. That will help me verify whether it works or not too.

That’s today’s report! Thanks for coming by!