Getting Organized - 4 - Gripes and progress

Another week has passed, and here I am, still using Taskwiki. I promise that this is the last time I bring it up for a while, but I wanted to discuss some of the good and bad that I've encountered before moving on to some actual code.

This week, I haven't made too many additions to the wiki itself. My main addition was a project list, and the start of a dfgame wiki. The way the dfgame wiki is laid out, I have a task filter front-and-center. Rather than adding things to the list directly, it simply gathers all of my tasks for the project into one place. Inside the pages for each module, I can simply jot down relevant tasks, and they'll appear on the front page as a combined list.

I've also started using vimwiki (no taskwiki yet) at work! It has given me more time to get accustomed to the bindings and nuances of the plugin, so I'm pretty happy about that.

The Good

• As it turns out, a number of annoying Taskwiki keybindings have normal Vimwiki equivalents that are much nicer! Of note is Control-Space, which creates/toggles a checkbox. Since Taskwiki runs off of checkboxes, you can use it to create new tasks or mark existing tasks as completed.
• 
  

The Bad

• Turning my first good point around: Why does Taskwiki bother making and teaching custom keybindings for Vimwiki features? They're much less convenient and harder to use in general.
• Taskwiki doesn't seem to have any convenient ways of inputting projects and tags for your tasks. You can do it as part of a filter, but otherwise you need to edit the task after creating it.
• I decided to give task dependencies in Taskwiki a shot, but there's one big problem that I realized: Because of my date filters, dependencies with different due dates can simply not show up sometimes. As a result, dependencies are pretty much useless outside of project pages.

Time to code!

Now that I've played around with Taskwiki long enough to make it a part of my workflow and see the uses (and flaws) of the tool, it's time to fill in the holes. I've come up with a few tasks:

1. I don't want to open my wiki every morning. Instead, I'd like to have that happen automatically. Thankfully, this is super-easy to do.
2. I need a timer. It's easy for me to take a five minute break, then wake up after several hours of doing something else. I could look for a timer program, but timers are pretty simple and I'd like something that fits with everything else.
3. I need a simple way to create tasks while I'm at work. This is probably going to be a tricky one to pull off, but I have some ideas.

Now, because this post is secretly a horrifying bait-and-switch, I'm not actually going to write any code yet. Instead, I'll be teaching you the secret art of baking a delectable 12" thin-crust pizza from scratch on a weekday.


You'll need the following ingredients:

• 1 1/4 cups of flour
• 1/2 cup of lukewarm water
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp instant yeast
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1/4 cup tomato sauce
• Enough mozzarella, possibly more
• A few pinches of thyme and oregano
• 1 small clove of garlic (optional, but recommended)
• 1 tbsp dry minced garlic (optional, but recommended)
• Toppings of your choice (optional, but recommended)

A few notes

Before we begin, I want to give a quick shoutout to King Arthur Flour. They have a ton of great ingredients and recipes, and the dough for this pizza is adapted from one of their Ciabatta recipes.

Note - Picking mozzarella

Here are a few mozzarella-buying tips.
I personally recommend avoiding blocks of "pizza mozzarella" like the plague (specifically the shiny, slightly rubbery kinds). The taste, texture, appearance and melt, are typically awful, and your end result will suffer. I would also try to avoid fresh mozzarella that's suspended in liquid, unless you plan to slice it. This sort of mozzarella is too soft to grate nicely, so I recommend looking for (relatively) fresh mozzarella that has been wrapped up instead. If you can't find anything like that, you may want to consider pre-grated mozzarella. The quality there will vary, but some brands are surprisingly good.

Disclaimer: I'm not an expert on cheeses, this advice is based entirely on personal experience.

The night before...

1. The night before you plan on baking, mix together 1/2 cup of flour, 1/3 cup of lukewarm water, and some yeast. The precise amount of yeast isn't too important, just keep it between a pinch and 1/4 tsp.
2. Cover the bowl and put it somewhere warm overnight.

Note - In a hurry?

If you don't want to prepare this recipe the night before (or you forget), you can do this step in the morning and do the next step in the evening.

The next morning...

1. In a medium/large mixing bowl, combine the the mixture that you prepared with 1/6 cup of lukewarm water, 1/2 tsp salt, and about 1/4 tsp instant yeast. Add the olive oil and dry minced garlic, and stir the mixture together until it's combined.
2. Add 3/4 cup of flour and continue until the mixture starts to turn into a solid mass. At this point, you'll want to keep adding small amounts of flour and mix/knead with your hands until you have a ball of slightly sticky dough.
3. Rub a little bit of olive oil into a clean bowl or rising bucket and add the dough, then cover it and stick it into the fridge. (If you're doing this step in the afternoon, skip the fridge and go directly to the next step)

That evening...

1. After about 8 hours in the fridge, take out the dough container and let it continue to rise for an hour. If you just prepared the dough, let it rise for 3 hours instead. While you wait, prepare your toppings.
2. After this final rise, sprinkle flour onto a clean work surface and roll out your dough into a rough circle. Don't overdo it, try to keep the circle around 10". sprinkle flour onto your pan/baking sheet, and carefully transfer the dough to it. Using your hands, spread the dough out to the desired size, pressing your fingers to leave a slight lip at the edge.
3. Set the oven to 500F (or however high your oven goes), and immediately place your dough inside. Let it bake for a few minutes until it just barely begins to brown, then remove the dough and place it on the stove. This step will cook the dough ever-so-slightly, making for a crispier crust. If the center of the dough has begun to puff up, carefully press it back down (be careful here, you don't want to get burned).
4. Quickly add the sauce, garlic, cheese, herbs, and toppings in that order, and put the finished pizza back in the oven to bake. There's no universal bake time for pizza, because ovens vary in temperature. Instead, I recommend watching for the cheese to melt and brown to know when the pizza is finished.
5. Pull out your pizza, place it on a rack to cool, and enjoy! The number of steps may seem off-putting, but I assure you that this recipe can be done without too much effort. Good luck!