!rant: I could rant about politics and ecology, but I will rather go out on the street to join developers for future later today! It's possible to work AND campaign on the same day, but it's impossible to save humanity without changing anything.

!dev but why can't I use messenger services like WhatsApp or Telegram in the browser without my phone powered and connected? Why are both services still so popular anyway?

Oracle while trying to install their database on Windows 10 (both, at least, only inside a VirtualBox): sorry, but the path containins space character. Which is because either your UI dialog failed to properly escape or your installer failed properly handle a native file path, Oracle! Nevermind totally ignoring the OS's UI style and cropping your own error message in the second line.

Emulating a mobile browser in desktop Chrome does not show any virtual keyboard even when tapping into an input field. Same error in Firefox (and same in Vivaldi).

I thought there had been an emulated soft keyboard in the past, or was that only in Opera mobile emulator?

Is there any browser that runs on Linux that still does a proper mobile emulation?

In legacyCode, somebody mixed jQuery data-toggle with custom JS triggers that toggle the target's DOM node, and to "fix" the mess, set display: block !important.

Took me too long to remember that Firefox dev tools show JS events (while my Chrome dev tools don't - why?) now I'm on the right track towards a solution...

While internet downstream is usually, and luckily, fast and reliable in my hometown, upstream / upload is always much too slow. Uploading 1 item: 14 min left...

Trying to delete a text field in a WYSIWYG Low-/No-Code Page Builder for WordPress...

"Notice: You cant' save an empty text field." - only Button: "Ok fine!"

Parody? Usability?

What is worse than editing legacy CSS code? Trying to style a page using only no-code / low-code tools. Simplest things like a border only on one side seems nearly impossible or requires hours of trial-and-error with drag-and-drop-modules and their arcane option dialogs.

Google Search Console insists there is "content wider than screen" on a one-pager I did which works very well on all tested sizes and devices, and scores 90+ on Google PageSpeed Insights.

"Validation failed - see details."

Clicked on "see details", and only saw the 1 URL I already knew, which seems to be working fine for everyone. If Google detetcs an actual issue, it would be really helpful to provide some details, otherwise this kind of false-positive crap only serves to care less about their tools (which is a bit of a shame, as they do provide a lot of value most of the time).

I have to make !important fixes to an existing legacy CSS codebase.

Helping to fix legacy code on a staging server. No version control (at least not that I am aware of). Besides rare code comments, no way to see the author, time, or even purpose of customizations that have been made. No fun!

"Captcha entry is incorrect
Enter the characters and try again."

Dear Amazon AWS, I can read, but I am a developer, not a clairvoyant! Why you keep presenting unreadable garbage to me? And concerning your UX writing and tone, there sure is room for improvement.

Today on GitHub: this must be the new "autopilot", probably slackbot's brother, suggesting me slightly funny arbitrary repository names.

"Great repository names are short and memorable. Need inspiration? How about shiny-fiesta?"

German bureaucracy, German tax offices, German pension insurance: of course we should feel very lucky and grateful for those institutions but currently, all they do is keep frustrating me with their kafkaesque bureaucracy. Don't they have anything more useful and productive to do than bother me with their bean counting?!

There appears to be trouble with my network connection.

How to make google search results relevant and useful as a user LOL

As a webmail user, I want to be logged out automatically without any reasonable reason, to be able to read your notice that I have forgotten to log out, once I log in again.

fix available via `npm audit fix --force`
^ will actually downgrade packages
wtf

Germany trying to fight Covid with digital tools (at least not another app today): registered for a test with QR-Code, Webform and E-Mail. After being tested by friendly people, I received an email that contains a link to a download of a PDF document.

Inside the PDF, a QR code, and a bureaucratic text like during the time of the Prussian emperor: "Bescheinigung über das Vorliegen eines positiven oder negativen Tests (Antigen Schnelltest) zum Nachweis des SARS-CoV-2 Virus".

Okay, we have a national "Corona Warn App" using Google's bluetooth based distancing detection, that also allows to add a test by scanning a QR code.

Scanned the code, got

"QR code is invalid".

Despite the unfriendly UX writing and the unhelpful description, another proof of the state of digitalization in Germany in 2021.

I am not even surprised.

At least my test result is negative.

!dev and !important
I look like my avatar

StackOverflow feels like a digital version of McDonald's, Costa's, or Weatherspoons - it's hard not to bump into one, and if you're hungry you won't go an extra mile to find something decent.

Tips for staying productive?

What is your definition of productivity, and why does everybody seem to care about productivity?
How can we stop selling efficiency and focus on effectiveness instead?

How I try to stay productive:

I seem to be slightly less distracted if there are other people around me. Probably because I have to make an effort to focus, which stops a part of me secretly searching for distractions when there are parts of work that I would rather avoid (like googling error messages). So I used to spend some time of the day in a café or in our family kitchen.

Taking breaks an going for a walk, preferably in the forest (when I work from home).

Prioritization of tasks also helps to focus and do one thing after the other. That said, sometimes it inspires me to do more than one task at a time.

Writing down what I did and want to do (in an actual note book on paper) helps me start a new work day, especially after a weekend off.

Is this DevOps, full-stack, or even just ordinary web development madness, when Docker, npm, and IDE plugins keep bitching around with unhelpful warnings and error messages, until hours after researching contradicting recommendations and tutorials and a lot of trial and error, the tools finally begin to behave in a helpful way again?

"docker-compose is already the newest version (1.25.0-1)" after apt-get upgrade docker-compose. Actually there is 1.29.1 which includes the bugfixes I wanted, but apt seems to prefer the buggy version for stable LTS Ubuntu at least. Wasted 3 hours with seemingly broken repositories until I found out.

StackOverflow gamification gave me 329 karma or whatever, which reminded me of the vintage computer game Paradroid. So I now have the rank of a wheeled robot that looks like a jester!

Do I really need to build and publish a plugin using a gradle-based workflow in IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate, only to customize some UI colors in my PHPStorm IDE? Feels like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

But probably I am just entitled and spoiled by using CSS for web development all of these years. At least I am sure that I definitely never want to do any Java-related development again :-)

Bought a series on Amazon, "Normal People". Trailer was English, my profile is set to Germany/English, but when I started the film, it was the German dubbing audio, with no option to switch to English. Could be worse, as I am a native German, but often 80% of the original atmosphere of anything gets lots by translation and German studio speakers.

Just in case staff at Amazon wonder why I rarely watch nor buy anything from them, this is one of the reasons. Of course they wouldn't, I'm just one in a million customers, but fuck them anyway.

git commit -am "trying to make the fucking database work locally"

If there are British travellers, why is there no British developper?