Michiel van Vlaardingen

As an experiment to use Claude code I’m working on a new project: YalaLoop. It’s a cross-platform audio player that allow you to loop sections, slow them down and change pitch. It’s built with flutter and should go into the app stores soon.

Experience with Claude Code so far

Working with Claude code has been both great and frustrating at the same time. Some key points:

• Run it inside a container
• If it doesn’t get it right after the third attempt it’s better to abandon and figure things out yourself.
• You need to actively ask it to do better and refactor to keep things manageable
• It’s great at tedious stuff like making C libraries work with Flutter
• It tends to try to solve the symptoms instead of the root causes, often adding all kind of state flags instead of a general solution.

Experience with Gemini + Aider

While waiting for my Claude code limits to refresh I also tried Gemini with Aider. The advantage is that it’s fast, but it’s really over-eager by default. It helps putting it in --chat-mode=ask. However Gemini is still too over-eager in changing things up. What I did find it useful for is proposing refactoring ideas, that I then let Claude code execute.

In October 2013  PayPal changed a bit of their server infrastructure. They announced it well, with multiple warnings about requiring the Host: header to be sent with verification requests.

Now suddenly my PHP IPN scripts did not work anymore, data was coming in but nothing got verified.

Checking the response quickly points out that PayPal is now redirecting requests to use HTTPS, but our old scripts are still based on years old example code using fsockopen on port 80.  fsockopen doesn’t know about HTTP redirects.

So, to get your PHP PayPal IPN notifications working again, you should replace the fsockopen line with:

$fp = fsockopen('ssl://www.paypal.com', 443, $errno, $errstr, 30);

Update: A few days later things stopped working again… it seems PayPal now adds a newline character behind the VERIFIED response, messing up the sample script. This can be resolved by replacing:

$res = fgets ($fp, 1024);

with

$res = trim(fgets ($fp, 1024));

As you have seen,  I’m way better than before in posting regularly on this blog.  I’m still doing the same things, so there is not more to write about. However, I do follow a new system for posting.    In the past I would post when I was inspired to do so.  After a while inspiration dries up and you run into the ‘I have to write something…. ‘ problem and it will start to go downhill soon from there.

My new approach is to decouple inspiration,  writing and posting.   Instead of  going from idea to post in say 30 minutes.  I now just write down everything that could potentially be a blog post, without putting the burden of actually writing it on myself.  So I just create a draft post with the title and whatever flows easily from the mind.   Sometimes it is just the title,  at other times it is almost a full post.Because I do not force myself to write the whole post, I’ve collected a lot of drafts that could grow into a post.

At other times I might not feel inspired at all, but I do feel like getting something done. This the time to finish posts. Maybe find some relevant links or creating an illustration. When done, I either schedule the post  or let it rest for a bit until I feel like it is time to post again.

To make sure that I don’t forget about posting, I’ve also set up a repeating item in my Google calendar.  With the drafts already there, it takes no effort at all to actually get something out there if I didn’t already.

Using this approach I have gone from a single idea to post action  to a buffered approach that’s can cope much better with prolonged lack of inspiration or plain laziness.  It does take a bit of discipline to not immediately post what has been written, but it does lead to a much more consistent post rate.

In earlier posts I summarized the Pomodoro Method for time management.  Since than, I have to admit,  I wasn’ t able to persist in using it on a daily basis.  However, I did find it to be very useful to prevent me from diving into lengthy spans of procrastination and low-productivity.   Even one or two days of it, give back the feeling of actually getting stuff done. This is often enough to get everything back on track.

An important part of the Pomodoro Method is to have dedicated time assigned for a specific task, ensuring your full attention and focus. However, I believe this method mainly works for me because it decouples your breaks from your natural breaks in attention. On a normal working day you need to take breaks. Usually you will take them at times you mind starts to wander, energy is low or things start to get painful. You stopped working because you don’t feel like working anymore. Making it very hard to find motivation to start up again: it wasn’t going well when you started this break and now you don’t feel any better.

With the Pomodoro method, taking a break is fixed. Because you are forced to take it when you are in the middle of something, the feeling is entirely different.  At first I  felt ridiculous to take the break now, instead of just finishing your task.  However, after a while, I learned that this feeling ensures that you can easily start up again after a break. As you were making good progress before taking the break, you are eager to continue and finish that task at hand.

I’ve decided that I no longer like my  10 year old Ikea office chair.  So now I’m looking for something new and better. Unfortunately there is no clear winner,  for all chairs there can be found very positive and very negative reviews. Furthermore,  just sitting in a chair for a few minutes probably won’t tell me whether it is any good in the long term. And a pleasant chair, might not even mean it is actually good for you.  Anyway, I’m still doing research, which I’m publishing on a separate blog: High Back Office Chair .   Some chairs I’m currently investigating:

• Aeron Mirra
• RH Logic 400
• Humanscale Freedom
• Vitra Headline
• Ikea Verksam  (as the reasonable and cheap base choice)

Suggestions are more than welcome.