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2025/07/15 #

Quite podcast sad

For over a week now I have been having loads of issues downloading podcasts. Seems to have started sometime around when I upgraded to the latest Android version. At least the latest version that was offered to me, I see some are already on the next version. Anyway, my podcast app is suddenly having loads of difficulties downloading podcasts, and many downloads just keep failing. Once they fail, there is no way to restart the download. You tap the right buttons in the UI and nothing happens. This didn‘t used to be like that.

That combined with my cell network provider suddenly restricting bandwidth for some reason. That‘s been happening since the last time I topped up. The end result is I can hardly listen to any podcasts. For me this is a really big deal. Podcasts are one of the few remaining things in life that are good about the world. I had hopped it was just a temporary glitch that would sort itself out, but it just seems to be getting worse. I hate to say it but it‘s made me quite sad.

I openned a suport ticket with Pocket Casts and they have replied, but it just feels like nothing is moving forward with it. #

My start to the day using the new task based workflow:

Me: So lets get started with task-001.03 - Can you gove a short 1 paragraph summary of where we are within in the fuller parent task (task-001), just so we remember what we are doing, at a high level.

Gemini: Of course. It's great to be back at it.

At a high level, we are in the middle of a significant refactor (task-001) to align the frontend with modern architectural guidelines, primarily by decoupling the UI from the data-fetching logic. So far, we have successfully established the foundational directories (task-001.01) and isolated all direct, low-level API calls into a new adapters layer (task-001.02). We are now moving to task-001.03, where we will build the repositories layer. This layer will act as a clean, stable interface on top of the adapters, allowing the rest of our application to request data with simple, semantic methods (e.g., tokenRepository.getAll()) without needing to know the underlying implementation details of axios or the API endpoints.

According to our workflow, the very first thing we should do is formally put the task in progress. Here is the command to do that:

backlog task edit task-001.03 -s "In Progress".

With the task now active, we can begin implementing the plan.

I thought this was a pretty darn good start. The last few days have been quite complicated by the "fog of war", so this level of clarity was a breath of fresh air.

Me: Awesome summary Gem, I have updated the task to in progress, let's press on.

Today’s links:

  • Devcontainer for Nix - I started wondering what other options were available for devcontainer setups and it occurred to me that this might be a great place where Nix could be useful. I haven't used it before but from what I‘ve heard it makes it very easy to build and configure your entire OS. Anyhow I went searching and found this project which looks interesting. github.com #

  • Photos: The Scale of China’s Solar-Power Projects - Some of these pictures are ridiculously mind blowing. The amount solar panels on regular people‘s roofs is very impressive, and looks to strike a good balance existing within places inhabited by humans, but some of the more industrial style installations are absolutely ghastly, and really have a sort of maximum dystopia vibe. www.theatlantic.com #

  • rcourtman/Pulse: A responsive monitoring application for Proxmox VE that displays real-time metrics across multiple nodes - The other thing I've been hearing about for quite some time now, probably a few years, is Proxmox which is an open source virtualisation environment. Everyone in the Linux communities are constantly going on about it. Feels like every man and his virtual machine has a Proxmox running in their home lab. Well, this project is a cool UI to proxmox, so you can see all your VMs and their utilization in one place. github.com #

  • Introducing Kiro - "A new agentic IDE that works alongside you from prototype to production" - Reading the blurb on this, it looks basically to be an advanced version of what I just setup with VSCode Devcontainers / Gemini / Backlog.md, a way to manage complex software development using advanced AI tools. Strange that this should find it‘s way to be just a few hours after I got my setup functional. Classic everything-you-can-do... behaviour from Worldo. This happens every time I build anything. Like 95% of the time, and I‘m not even kidding. I‘ve documented this on the blog a lot over the years. Hello old "friend". That aside, probably a sign that this is the direction things are going. kiro.dev #

  • Dollar Collapse and Network States with Balaji Srinivasan Ep#639 (TFTC Podcast) - Despite the somewhat gloomy title, this episode is ultimately very hopefull. Somehow amoungst all the failed podcast downloads and internet connectivity issues I‘ve been having, this episode found it‘s way to my phone. I really needed a dose of Balaji clarity to recharge the battery today. Faith in the world restored, at least for a little while :) podcastindex.org #

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