Final Touches to pbarwin.cpp

The day's only half done, but I feel a little more accomplished than before. I took the battery information code that I put together yesterday and enhanced it a bit to use only one of the two APIs that I was using before (specifically just the one for enumerating battery devices), and to bring back some of the other features from aeons ago that involve generating estimates of time-left (while discharging) and time-to-go (while charging).

I also reworked the logic for various indicators, since I had access to individual battery information, thus allowing a better control over what to display. Specifically though, I was annoyed at the discrepancy that was showing up even in the screenshot from yesterday's post. With the better refinement, I think I have probably dealt with that discrepancy adequately.

And that's about it for this program for a while. It seems to me that during this entire sabbatical thus far, I have steadily fixed/updated the various tools that I have built over the years for whatever things I had. Non-exhaustively, I have:

1. Changed layouts and updated the fonts for my blogs while making them mobile friendly;
2. Update fonts and colour scheme for my personal information domain
3. Fixed and updated navigation for the same;
4. Set up a proper sitemap.xml generator for the same;
5. Updated my build-to-publish processors for my website to also be faster;
6. Created a tool that lists the number of pages among my e-books;
7. Enhanced my reading list/read list estimators;
8. Fixed auto-detection of terminal background colour to use the correct .vimrc settings;
9. Fixed the typematic rate problem; and
10. Sped up+enhanced the command line battery information.

I am naturally quite pleased with the productivity here. I still haven't done up the diagrams for the 笛子 Materials articles yet, but that's a different story for a different day.

All in all, a good sabbatical from the personal productivity front.

As for the introspection for the way forward, that one is a mixed bag so far. I learnt that I really didn't want to have children, and I am starting to wonder seriously if I am truly happier being single than if I were attached. I am also debating heavily internally about whether to continue the path of the corporate wage slave, or to be freer through bowing out of the rat race completely.

I have, at times, wondered to myself if I should give up on music-making as well. Even if I were talking about something community-based like serving in the music ministry, my staunch ``I'm not going to take a bloody certificate for music that I do as a hobby'' stance is going to disable me against the multitude of graded musicians and music degree holders. And going back to my roots of the community Chinese Orchestra, I don't even know if we are getting back together at all, seeing the lukewarm/cold response so far. At times I'm wondering if it is just an attempt to quietly let it die away amidst this convenient excuse of a pandemic restriction as our quiet community special interest group gets eclipsed by the better funded troupes with their professionally-led committees.

It's the start of the last third of my sabbatical. I will need to have some better answers than what I currently have right now, and I just wonder how I will get them. May God grant me wisdom to learn of what is to be done. Amen.