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Ahh yes, I know the feeling. My current list of projects:

- There's no speciality grade coffee in Zambia, and all the coffee beans in Zambia are from Zambian coffee farms. I've bought a small roaster and will start sourcing speciality grade coffee beans from Malawi, Kenya and Ethiopia and roasting for a few of the small stores and cafes around us.

- Converting a beat up Suzuki Samurai into a capable 4x4 rock crawler/off road vehicle to enter my own team into the Elephant Charge 2025 https://elephantcharge.org/ec-charge-2025/.

- Growing and propogating cuttings of coffee plants in my backyard to start an outgrowers scheme in on the border of Zambia & Congo.

- An emotion recognition app that has animated fruits and animals that dance and respond to emotion. I'd like to create something a bit more responsive for my child than the YT videos that exist (Unity).

- Helping my wifes company prototype and spec out some lease management software.

- Sourcing the equipment and ingredients to process my own coffee cherries into green coffee. I'll likely buy coffee from nearby growers and start processing as my own plants still have a couple years before they produce any fruit.

- Migrating a Flow project to Typescript.

- Learning Haskell by building a back-office API for another project in it.


Good job! You sound like a great grand parent and your grand child sounds like they're doing really well too.


> ORMs are the devil in all languages and all implementations. Just write the damn SQL.

I think I might get this tattooed on my chest.


Wow, I am in exactly the same position. I grew up in the 90's using all the versions of Windows. Notepad became such an essential part of my workflows that even after 10 years of being on a Mac, I still mentally "reach for" Notepad. I have yet to find a suitable replacement.

Thanks for this, will take a look. (One thing that comes close is Stickies on MacOS)


If you open the TextEdit settings, you can change the default format from "rich text" to "plain text", and setup other default settings if you want (font, wrapping, default window size, etc.).

After a 5min config there, I don't notice a difference from NotePad, but I was never a "NotePad power user" though. For example, never used the ".LOG" feature.


What makes (plain-text) TextEdit insufficient?


It refuses to open files it doesn't like the filetype of, it won't save as an arbitrary filetype, it defaults to being a variable-width font and it has a few too many bells and whistles because it's clearly meant to edit RTF files, I'd say. Sometimes you want something completely spartan.


It opens anything — the "Open" dialog will allow you to select any filetype and you can also drop any kind of file onto the TextEdit icon in the Dock to open it.

As for plain-text, you can go into the Settings and switch it into plain-text mode, which it remembers.

You can even set it not to append ".txt" to the filename when saving, allowing you to enter whatever file extension you want when saving.


Both Notepad and TextEdit are some of the most insufferably feature-void applications I've ever used. Even for a basic note-taking app.


That's part of the charm. I think I've mostly replaced Notepad with Clipy.


I would recommend TextMate: https://macromates.com

It's feature-rich, but it just shows´an empty text window on startup. Can't remember if that's the default or I configured it that way.

For larger text files I use vscode.


Sublime seems like a good replacement - cross platform, Open anything, gets out of your way, automatic saved buffers, etc.


I went from a Full Stack Software Engineer -> Lead -> Eng Man -> Burnout -> Wild Mushroom Exporter in Zambia.

Currently trying to become a wild beekeeper dropping hives anywhere anyone will let me while coding on side projects at the same time.

I recommend beekeeping. Go on a course somewhere, learn a little, get a hive, make mistakes, learn, scale, profit.


What, was goat farming too pedestrian for you??

(Just a little joke, based the meme of developers quitting their jobs to start a goat farm.)

Also, I'm allergic to bees.


I thought the meme was woodworking or metalworking


I would have said something about a microbrewery.


I think microbrewery might be a little 2010, you probably want to start a coffee roastery.


>I recommend beekeeping. Go on a course somewhere, learn a little, get a hive, make mistakes, learn, scale, profit.

Oooof, I don't... maybe you know the secret, but being an amateur beekeeper and watching what the pros do, it looks darn hard to reach scale.


Yea absolutely, I had a real eye opener moment when I spoke to a friend who keeps some random beehives on his farm. I thought I was going big with my 20 hives, and plans to scale up to about 60.

He casually drops that he has 250 hives, and that he's not that into it...


A friend in South Africa does bee tech[0]!

[0] https://web.bluebeansoftware.com/whats-all-the-buzz-with-sma...


This is their dedicated webpage: https://hivepulse.co.za/

Too cool! Might give it a try.


Curious! What do the hives you drop look like?

I'm assuming no-touch hives are designed differently than honey-extractive hives.


Kenyan top bar hives is what you'll find in Africa and what people are familiar with. I'm trying to phase in more Langstroth hives for sanitary reasons.

https://www.beekeepingnaturally.com.au/natural-beekeeping/th...


Can you elaborate?


Yes, please do, I've been considering changing careers as well. (Currently software engineer)


Surely that's a joke "I am old now (almost 30)"


I feel you. I now just use email in my web browser via the respective providers recommended website, aka mail.google.com, microsoft.office365.exchange.email or whatever it is they are calling it these days.


This is fantastic!.

Time to start speed running!


4 minutes and 31 seconds, any%. Need to do some better routing.

4 minutes and 21 seconds after few more attempts.

3 minutes and 59 seconds. Sub 4 is good enough for me :)


My competitive side got the better of me and spent too long playing this :|

3 minutes 33 seconds after ~10 attempts

routing is definitely fun, I enjoyed figuring out which bounce pads to take

---

3:20 after some more tries, I think sub 3 is possible

3:14 even with the game glitching me into the abyss on the last level :(


I got 2:57 — required a near-perfect run but still room for improvement


4 minutes 58 seconds.


I'll post my slowest time at the bottom of the stack: 5 minutes and 59 seconds didnt work on FF, and only 1/4 screen on brave index-dffbfc39.js:4603 expected expression got ?

Anyway great fun, and much easier than what I remember of the Amiga version, very forgiving controls, thanks and well done.


3 minutes 25 seconds here


I burned out in 2021 quite badly. Moved to Zambia (from UK) and switched from primarily software engineering to wild mushrooms.

Still coded as a hobby and explored the parts of it I enjoyed.

Now in 2024 I'm back in the game and loving it! Glad I had the privilege to take such a long break and try something else. The key take away here is it took me years to properly recover (and therapy).

Go easy on yourself, don't get swept up in the frenzy of work. Work to live not the other way around.


I'm tired of fixing my own AI generated code.


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