shinyhappyrainbows

So many charlatanesque self-help books bang on about visualisation - "Imagine what you'll look like when you're rich and famous, see the lovers hanging off your arm, the Ferrari and HumVee in your garage..." It's nausiating bullshit... But is it? Athletes use visualisation. From seeing themselves, how they move on the field, how they'll hold themselves on the podium, how they'll scoop up a ball and pass it, how each stride will fall in a marathon. I've never been an athlete, but I've been a commuter cyclist, as well as a cycle tourist, and athletic visualisation has helped me get up at 4am, for a 5am work day start, and hammer down the main drag on 2 wheels, 5 days a week, rain, hail or shine. It's helped me visualise the downhill at the end of a climb, the big meal at the end of a 100km day. Visualisation works. I recently discovered that I am a little bit of a graphical artist. I never was for most of my life. To quote Mel Brooks, I could ...

Go brought me to a shuddering stop. I think I may have had some environment issues because I had some early install problems. These seem to be tricky to fix, so I may come back to Go later. Meanwhile, I've been trying Rust, learning from " The Rust Programming Language ", AKA "The Rust Book." So far, the experience has been as easy as Arduino and C/C++ was when I started that journey 8 years ago. Challenging, but steady progress. And in sorting out a problem with my Rust installation, I may have hit upon the solution to my Go installation issues, too. Looks like Homebrew language installs might be a little problematic. Maybe my Homebrew install is buggered. Will come back to that, too, but after my Rust learning. So, I'm as far as Chapter 2, "Programming A Guessing Game," where the reader is guided through constructing a command line guessing game. It has been a surprisingly easy experience. Rust has a syntax like C but feels... "easier....

 Checking my email, I noticed the same notifications from Apple, Google, et al, that my app was live. Well, I thought, I'm at the workstation, now, lets see the stats and download a signed copy. I opened the email in my phone and clicked on the store link, the appstore listing looking like a million or more others. The name, "Standard Groups", prominent to the right of the app tile, 3 simple figures holding hands in a circle. "Connect with the people you care about," in light contrast. I tapped the "Get" button on my screen and the download was quick. One of the few truly free apps on the store, these days. No in app purchases, no ads. Sometimes we have to do something for the benefit of the common good. I paused a moment to reflect. I turned back to my workstation. Logging into the Developer Connection portal, the stats on the landing page were surprising.  "It's been live for 12 hours, roughly, wow!" I whispered to myself, "more th...