2023 May ​

Lovely month in terms of many things.

I did get a scare with my lovely dog Rachel as we went to the vet but she feels better now. ♥️

She is however 15 years old at this point and the age does start to show. Trying to make her life as nice as it can be in the meanwhile.

KusKus ​

The big focus of the month. It's actually released over at kuskus.app.

Kind of crazy to think that this is actually my first real project where I can choose in which way the product goes. A first passion project that is quite complex too.

Big thanks to Damian and my brother for helping out. Damian especially is a wizard with Solid.

The setup we have right now is quite magic in that all global state is stored inside a Solid store.

Can see here for the code of main parts of it.

Specifically it shares 3 files:

• todos.ts exposes the store
  • the neat thing with the store is that onMount it loads data from Grafbase via GraphQL query. and loads the store with state.
  • then the store is passed to all components inside the app via context
• ActionBar.tsx shows how the context is consumed
  • specifically const todoList = useTodoList()
    • then you just mutate the store as if its a local signal and when mutation happens, there is an effect that will listen to changes and will send updates to Grafbase to persist changes in db
• TodoList.tsx is most complex part of code
  • it's filled with derived signals and all kinds of things that the app needs

It's actually a joy to develop with and I am truly starting to appreciate and get Solid's reactivity model. I wouldn't even know how KusKus would work inside the React model, perhaps you can make it as nice too.

In any way, the desktop and web app is done. Payment attached. AI works.

0 sales.

It's expected though. As neither of the current team are designers and it's utility focused. Friend of mine said the design reminded him of this building:

Which I agree. 😸

UI should delight and ours certainly does not. But it does this one core thing and that is sets the foundation to build all kinds of features on top.

For June though, the focus is on making the mobile app. Currently writing it with Expo and Tamagui. I briefly considered Capacitor too as I wish I could reuse all the fancy solid code that we already have.

But I do want to try Expo. I wonder how the above signal code would translate there. React has signals, kind of so maybe I can use that. Will see.

Beyond that, the big thing I want to do and is one of the main inspirations for building the app. Is that I want an app like Linear or Height that is also a personal task manager. All in one app. And where the team features are backed natively by GitHub as Ship app once did.

With design of Things and power of 2Do. Not yet there but soon.

If you're reading this and interested in helping out building the best todo app, do reach out on Discord.

Watched ​

Finished Succession. It's great.

Also started Silo. Lovely cinematography and premise.

Listened ​

Both last.fm & volt.fm seem to miss some songs I listen to in their trackings. 😿

I wonder if it's fault of Spotify not sharing or the way these sites use the API to get the songs that they miss out on things.

Wiki updates ​

Moved wiki to use VitePress.

It's lovely. And I wonder why I did not do it sooner.

Also made the wiki paid. Some pages are still free, specifically all ones linking from Everything I Know are free.

Maybe it sells some copies as I try to make my life more sustainable.

Reading previous journal entries is a progressive descent into madness as I tried to survive on less than 1 euro for whole month at times. 😺

Plans ​

Would love to write more here and share some images but the current system I have of sharing images is kind of annoying. Once I fix it, will update this entry.

One of the future apps I want to build after KusKus is a note taking app, the likes of Reflect but with social elements and open source.

And image organiser with ability to quickly share images/collections/albums like Pixave app.