Redesigned archives - The last few days I've been heads down working through bugs in my latest archives plugin for the static site generator. Consequently I haven't been posting to the website as much as usual. Sometimes life is just too hectic. You have to focus entirely on the most important issue and get it done. The archives plugin was the most important issue because I'm not currently able to effectively link to the linkblog or notes from the newsletter, and also because it's a pre-requisit for the next feature, which is a homepage that interleaves all the post types as they occur.

Previously I could only link to the newest links on the linkblog at the top level. That's not so useful, especially if linking from the newsletter, because depending on when the person reads it, the link will most likely not make that much sense since all the linkblog links will have changed. Compare that to the re-designed archives, where you can easily browse via a date to the correct location. And the links at the other end won't ever change. For example, here are the links for December.

I still need to adjust the indentation, and most importantly I also need to add permalinks to each day. With permalinks I'll be able to link to a specific day, and it will display with all the other days around it. That way I can have a link that points at the previous Saturday in the newsletter. Anyone that clicks on it can quickly scroll through all the other posts in the intervening days.

I've pretty much burned through all my build minutes for this month getting it working. There was a very difficult to spot bug deep within some nested for loops, which caused all the build times to 20x. That of course seriously compounded an already very tricky and stressful situation. I got it done, and am now anticipating the usual backlash from the world which innevitably ensues. There were already a few hints of something earlier, almost within seconds of completing the feature. And a domino effect of one thing after another triping me up on my journey to where I am now writing this post. That's just how it is. It's like clockwork, rather unpleasant.

Anyhow, the next phase will likely have to wait until next month now. #