Weekly Review W49

published: December 5, 2025 estimate: 5 min read view-cnt: 8 views

Time wasted. Mood Bad.
But hey, I’m still alive, so let’s just call it a week.

Things Completed This Week:

migrated Apple Notes from iPhone to Linux laptop
published an Astro generated website on Azure DevOps, made logo and business card

Details expanded below:
(plus, some interesting random stuff I’ve collected this week)

Sync Data Between iPhone and Linux

I couldn’t find a way to export all my Apple Notes at once
I did it manually, and then found a way to sync files between iPhone and Linux
Here’s a list of a few keywords and references that helped me overcome this task:
- rclone
- GitHub Issue: Invalid Session Token while connecting to iCloud
- ifuse --documents, “app-specific sandboxed folders”, AFC
- btw, LocalSend doesn’t work on my machine
TODO: find an alternative note-taking app to replace Apple Notes
- Requirements:
- widget support
- sync files through iCloud or something else
- open source
- plain text file

I intentionally chose Azure DevOps repository to store my source code, then deployed the website via Azure static web app

Azure DevOps requires an organization to create a repository

the page to create an organization is different from the page to use Azure cloud services
- you use Azure DevOps to set up organizations and repos
- you use Azure Portal to host services and manage subscriptions
Azure DevOps is buggy when you have multiple accounts in the same browser session
- the symptoms were an endless loading circle

Currently, Azure Portal UI doesn’t support Astro as an option in the “Build Presets” selector

instead, I chose HTML and deployed the dist folder generated by Astro directly
note that Azure DevOps pipelines now don’t offer free tier usage (you’ll need to submit a form for it)
also, some steps or errors might lead you to create a PAT or a variable group, but none of these matter
my final solution was to install @azure/static-web-apps-cli, then deploy dist directly
you’ll figure out what a “deployment token” is and how it works in the process (spoiler: it’s not PAT)

A few more things:

I don’t think there were that many barriers the last time I deployed a Blazor Wasm project as a static web app
- chose Blazor back then, and the rest of the stuff was good to go (I probably switched to a GitHub repository to overcome a few things)
- NO PAT, additional CLI tools, or variable groups were involved—just deployed the website like a breeze
My GitHub contribution grid becomes less charming if I work exclusively in Azure DevOps repositories
I registered an outlook email for all these tasks, at some point Microsoft would prompt a click and hold UI control to verify if you are a human being
- quite refreshing 🤣

It’s a branding website that I generated in one shot using Gemini 3 Pro

The only thing I changed was the logo, where I drew a 9x9 pixel art using some DIY tools

It’s quite difficult for me to improve the visual design at the moment, which can be summed up in two words: “skill issue” 😂

I don’t see a solution in the near future, since I’m mostly focusing on functionality, code quality, and UI/UX tinkering in my web development career

Hopefully I’ll develop a better aesthetic sense once I deliver enough websites

Reddit: A 2-hour video trashing C++ made me better at C++ : r/cpp
- the source: YouTube: The worst programming language of all time
Figured out that the ocarina music played before the library (NTUA) closes is actually a famous Christmas song: God rest ye merry gentlemen
second attempt trying to figure out the definition of homonym, heteronym, homograph… etc
- e.g. fleet is a homonym, wind is a heteronym, they are both homographs
Found “Code Golf” from exploring quine on Rosetta Code
- csharp minimal quine: class Program { static void Main() { var s = "class Program {{ static void Main() {{ var s = {0}{1}{0}; System.Console.WriteLine(s, (char)34, s); }} }}"; System.Console.WriteLine(s, (char)34, s); } }
- Golfscript quine: {".~"}.~

Got blessed by the algorithm: awesome music “Moonlighting | Retro Poland Original” by Maromaro
Found an awesome YT channel talks about bash scripting: You Suck at Programming
- did you know that you can put input redirection everywhere?
- <file.txt grep dave == grep < file.txt dave
- ref: You’re Using cat Wrong - The UUOC Award Explained (ft. Actually Useful cat)
Found another awesome YT channel talks about hardcore programming stuff: Tsoding
- did you know that git servers are basically SSH compatible?
- ref: Microsoft doesn’t want you to know this

learned the word “cabal”, and there’s no cabal in Wikipedia
- ref: Changelog: The inner workings of Wikipedia
SSDs lose data if NOT booting the device for a long time
- ref: Changelog News: What actually makes you senior

That’s all for this week

I would like to share more podcast content in the future, since they’re informative and easy to forget at the same time

I also found reading a programming language book helps me sleep better at night (compared to doom scrolling my phone)

Maybe I will cover something I learned from the book also when I finish it

Anyway, stay tuned for more content. For now, I’ll post on a weekly basis. Catch y’all in the next one 😎