The Artur Kunz Blog

Welcome to my new Habit Diary. In the last two weeks, I thought a lot about my blogging. First, I was unsatisfied with my current formats, and now I am just inspired to write my novel more than just a scene per week. If you are interested in a grimdark Scifi novel, then you can read it  here . I want to finish it this year, and for that, I want to write a new scene every day. I can't maintain the same blogging activity, but I don't want to pause all blogging. I decided to write a Habit Diary every two weeks, where I describe my current routine and how I plan to change it to hopefully achieve excellent results in all my projects. It is probably something I can maintain, and I believe that it could inspire you to change something in your life, too. Let's start in the night before every day: Around ten in the evening, I will turn off all electronics and begin writing the first version of a new scene for my novel or respectively a Habit Diary every second Tuesday night. I have...

Last week I wrote that only some legal writing and the admin area are missing. I forget about one thing: The registration process. I decided it needs to be a four-step process, but I will talk with David about that again. Usually, I implement details how I see fit and then speak with David about it. I don't want to write for every single thing. That is what I did last week. There is now this menu at the bottom of every page. There are symbols for social networks (not linked, though and kofee doesn't have that many social networks) and links to legal texts. It still needs something like a "terms and conditions for usage", so that we are legally allowed to use their logos and images on our website. Legal stuff is such a complicated mess. I prefer writing code :D This is the first step of the registration process: Mail and Password you want to use for the account. Those are the information that firebase authentication will save for us. Then a verification email is...

My first approach to this blog was to just write anything. Soon categories emerged: DevDiaries, Tales of Nowardo and this kind of post: ArtursAdvice. The first two are well defined, but coming up with topics for ArtursAdvice is a struggle every single time and I feel doubt. My doubt means that I need to reflect on what I did and that is what this post is about. ArtursAdvice should help you achieve your dreams and ambitions. Maybe the articles helped you, maybe they didn't. The problem is, that I am not absolutely convinced of my previous articles. I presented ideas and strategies to you, that I read somewhere or came up with myself. They sound good, but do they work? I don't know. And that is the problem. I can't do that anymore. It feels dishonest to present something I am not fully convinced about. I need to change my strategy. I need to write differently. I noticed that my DevDiaries had surprisingly a lot of readers. I wondered about this since all I write about is, ...

Jarek woke up from a horrible nightmare. He was almost killed my a plant and lost his gardening suit and his grandfathers knife. Then had to kill a flesh-eating okapi with his teeth and if that is not awful enough he had to seek refuge in a bunker full of probably horrible people. Then he realized it was not a dream but what actually happened. His leg still hurt, his hand was still burned, but he felt much better. Another day and he would be ready to go home. "Those bunker#3 people seemed to be not that awful after all", Jarek thought, "I am still alive and they treated my wounds." Just now he realized the humanoid creature squatting in a chair next to the bed. Jarek crawled to the other side of the bed and eyed the man from his frog-like legs to his smirking face. "Great! Enough sleep. Time for your first lesson. Here is a knife. Try to hit me.", the man said with a squeaky voice and throw the knife to Jarek. The knife fell in his lap. The frogman jumped ...

After my last dev diary, I thought about what actually is needed for a minimum viable product of my voluntary work job-search site and it is actually not that much. I didn't really develop a lot this week. The only thing I implemented is the option to hide the options. Even that is not that important right now, but it was fast to do it. There are just some texts missing and then we can make it available for the first organisations. We will first introduce the website to five organisations so that they can give us feedback. Before it can be released however there are some legal texts, that we have to put on the site since the Germany law demands it. An admin area is needed as well. We can't allow anyone to put content on our site. We have to allow every NGO's representation first and we have to see every change they make. The admin console should allow us to make them visible or invisible. That is what I plan to develop next week. I also started a second project, th...

"Forget about goals, focus on systems instead", that is a line from the international bestseller Atomic Habits written by James Clear. If you don't know him, James Clear is a self-improvement blogger  with great articles. If you want to improve yourself I recommend you to check it out. His book Atomic Habits promises "an easy and proven way to build good habits and break bad ones". If that is your goal then his book will help you. Those of you, that are not familiar with the concept of habits, might wonder what "forget about goals" and "focus on systems" is all about. Those are fundamentals that are explained in the first chapter really well. I will try to give you a short explanation, so you can understand why people including me are so fascinated by habits. James Clear defines a habit as "a routine or practice performed regularly; an automatic response to a specific situation." You probably already knew that but did you knew th...

Anna stood at the counter of the Three Moon Shine Bar and enjoyed a Green Dream, the only thing that helped her calm down as a voice interrupted her peace: "Ahoi, I heard you are looking for business opportunities." She turned around and examined the man that approached her. He looked old but not as old as his clothes. She lost the interest when she noticed the toe coming through his left boot. "Thread-level zero; recommended elimination method: punch to the face", said her warrior-brain. She couldn't turn it off and she had to spend a lot of strength not to act on it. She told him with clenched teeth to go away: "Whatever you want, you clearly couldn't pay us. You know I am a Hyper, so don't overextend my patience." Hypers were female genetically modified warriors, that were used by the Gori dictatorship to fight a rebellion against them. Hypers had hyper-stamina, hyper-speed, but were also hyper-aggressive and hyper-active. The dictatorship w...

Last week happened a lot. I had a talk with David on Saturday, where we talked about a lot of features and changes to be implemented. The card design changed again, quite a lot. Maybe you notice one of the hardest to achieve changes ever made: The rows can overlap in the height. Before this change, the Test0 e.V. card would be pushed back down, when expanding the Card where I am with a hat. Now it doesn't. I achieved that by having three columns on the upper-level grid system and in every one of these columns is another grid system with one row that wraps all the columns in one column so they are like an own feed and only push back the card under them. I have a function, that distributes the data on the three independent grid systems. The construction has a disadvantage though: It is harder to design to look good on all devices. Another big change is the profile pictures in the upper right corner. Last but not least the three questions every organisation is asked are displayed...

You will need to hold a speech. Maybe you know it because you have to hold a presentation tomorrow or you maybe don't know it, yet. Sooner or later you will need to hold a speech or a presentation or just need to convince your best friend, that pickles are better on a sandwich than fresh cucumbers. Whatever it is you need to speak about, you might wonder where to start. This blog post is here to help you out. It won't tell you all the cool stuff you can put into your presentation, it will help you make a presentation where you can put cool stuff in. Step 1: Collect Data Before you can talk about something you need to know the stuff you are talking about. You don't need to be an expert when you attempt to write a speech, but you should be familiar with the topic when you hold it. You don't want your friend to surprise with a fact about pickles, you didn't know before. In the time of the internet, this is quite easy. Just google the word and open up all results on...

Commander Oswield sat in his enormous armchair and stare into the air as he often did when he had to make a difficult decision. Despite the huge size of the armchair, it seemed tiny in comparison to the man in it and at the same time he had an elderly look. He was often compared with a mountain: Huge and ancient. After a minute of starring, Flenk became inpatient. "So, what do we do about the digging-creatures plague? We don't want to end up eaten alive as it happened in bunker#7. Do we?", he asked again. Flenk tended to use chairs different than other people. He had squatted in the seat across Oswield and seesawed from side to side. He was not what one would expect the second most feared warrior of the camp to look like. He was small and thin, but what his opponents had to find out was, that he was also fast, nimble and precise. Just as Oswield was about to give an answer, someone came into the door. It was Gidgig, one of the warriors of "the camp". That was h...

Last week I didn't spend as much time as I hoped to spend on developing the voluntary work search platform. The reason was mostly that I was done with other things by 16. At 16 o'clock I couldn't sum up the energy to start something new. Maybe I should change my plans so that I always start working on the project at 14 o'clock. As soon as I start working on it, I will get motivated to solve the next and the challenge after that until it is 18 or even 20 o'clock. Despite that, I managed to change the card's design as agreed with David and I changed the impact areas, for categorisation of organisations, to what David figured out would make sense. The chips on the top are the impact areas. Before that change there were six, now there are ten. Maybe it is time to change the user interface. I could put the selector on the side. Then I would probably not use chips but checkboxes. I will speak about that with David. If I make the change, I will only make it for de...

Before I started this blog and opened my profile von Twitter, I was convinced that I had couldn't possibly fit another project in my schedule. No way. Well, here we are. How did it happen? I will tell you, but first, let me explain the situation before I started so you understand the mentality shift. Maybe you know the phrase "do good and talk about it". Before I started, I already had one personal project I dedicated most of my time on. It is a job searching platform for voluntary work. So I did good, a lot, but I rarely talked about it. On the one hand, I wanted to progress with my project as fast as possible, on the other hand, there are advantages to building a community on social media. First of all, on the internet attention is power. Whatever project you want to start, it will have more success if you can generate more attention. Second of all, finishing a project is great, but the next step is deploying and advertising your result and that comes back to generati...

Jarek barely survived his encounter with the Kukuruza. The first thing he did was lying down. His heart was still pounding. He had to calm down. He had to think. “I have lost everything today.”, he muttered to himself, “my armoured suit and even my grandfather’s knife. What will become of me now?” It was a painful loss. Almost as painful as his broken leg and scratched face. “Stop this!”, he yelled at himself,” I can mourn my losses when I am in safety. I didn’t survive the vines to lay down and die now.” He repressed his thoughts about his past and his probable future. If he couldn’t focus right know there would be no possible future. “Step one”, he said to himself, “check pockets.” He had to use his left hand because his right hand was still burning from the Kukuruza juice. Three Kukuruza bars, a bottle of water and a bottle of Kwirza, fermented Kukuruza juice, were all his pockets revealed. The Kwirza was exactly what he needed right now. He drank the bottle in one go. “Step two”, ...

"Sleep well, good night and ring alarm on the sight of white light...", Jarek sang to calm the Kukuruza, a two-meter high yellow glowing corncob formed plant. It had closed its impenetrable shell as it heard Jarek kicking a stone while trying to sneak up to it. The singing worked. The Kukuruza lowered its shell.  While Jarek continued singing good night songs from his childhood he raised his harvesting tool, a chainsaw formed like a two-handed sword, into position. After the second repetition, he rammed the sword into the unprotected flesh of the Kukuruza. It screamed so loud, that Jarek's ears would bleed if they hadn't been protected. Splinter flew through the air, acid juice squirted out of the wound and Jarek had to duck a vine. Thanks to his gardening uniform, an Exoskeleton-Suit, he was well protected. Suddenly a vine grabbed, levitated and slammed him and the floor. Jarek could barely take a breath as it levitated him again.  This plant was much stronger t...

If you read DevDiary #0 then you know what I planned to do this week and if you read DevDiary #0.5 then you then what I did or try to achieve on Monday after the free learning weekend on Vuemastery.com. I continued the refactoring of my code and added a few changes to the system, that were comfortable to make during refactoring. The main menu is now in the mid of the page. David suggested it, so I tried it out. Looks kind of nice, but the navbar is pretty dominant now. He also suggested to make it white, which would probably help. I also changed that every account can have only one organisation. If you have an organisation, than there is no option to create a new one. This is how it look like when you don't have an organisation. You have a button to create one. I also modified the Login System. Previously there was one button for Login and one for Registration and that looked weird. Now there is just one button depending on what you are doing to do. You can switch ...

I started to use social media with other intent than to entertain myself around two weeks ago after listening to Gary Vee telling me I should do it for a month. I didn't really have a strategy, so I just started, which is an absolutely valid strategy: Just start simple and adjust on the way. The more you walk the clearer the path becomes. Ten minutes ago a sudden inspiration hit me. In Germany, we say "Geistesblitz", which is "Mindlightning" translated literally. Since you are probably not here to learn German words, let me explain the five-step strategy. Every step consists of asking on a specific question. Who do I act as online? I don't mean faking something, just setting a focus. Your profile should always represent what you really are, but you don't have to show all of your personality. Confusing? Here is a Venn diagram to make that point clearer: Your focus is just a part of your profile and your profile is just a part of your personality...

Last weekend you could watch all the courses on Vuemastery for free. Actually they extended it to today, but I learned a lot already I want to implement what I learned in my current project as soon as possible. I could learn Nuxt.js today and make a Nuxt.js project tomorrow. Nuxt is like a framework for Vue, which is a framework itself. I am convinced of it's features, especially the best practice oriented structure and the possibility to make my app more search engine friendlier. I will definitely turn my App into a Nuxt.js App, but not right now. I have just bought the yearly membership at Vuemastery.com so I learn it whenever I like. My priority right now is to have a running minimum viable product as soon as possible and that collides with spending a few days learning Nuxt.js and figure out how to make and Nuxt App do what my Vue App does. I will give me just this one refactoring day, because my code has gotten really messy to a degree where I have to search for over half a min...