Last Week
Week 44 was sent from a rainy West Lake balcony where I promised to keep publishing even if the laptop stayed zipped up. I kept the Shokken alpha exactly where it was, let the CI pipeline recycle screenshots on its own, and mostly used my phone to confirm that tester messages were getting answered within a day. That check-in was really a travel postcard that said, “all systems nominal, founder temporarily offline.” Going into Week 45 I knew the itinerary would get even more chaotic, so I doubled down on the idea that transparency matters more than shipping velocity when time zones and family visits pile up. Nothing new landed in the repo last week, but every tester still had context about why, which is often the difference between churn and patience.
Heatwave Dispatch
This week’s video comes from a much warmer, much stickier stop on the trip. I’m in a different country entirely, the humidity hits you before customs, and the heat index makes pulling out the laptop feel like a sauna dare. That means Shokken’s code stayed untouched again, and I’m embracing the pause rather than forcing a token commit that would probably need to be reverted once I’m back in a proper workspace. The mission right now is to stay present with family, keep the monitoring tabs open on my phone, and keep talking to everyone following along so they know the project is alive even if the commit graph is flat.
The honest plan is to plug back in around Thanksgiving, which is roughly three weeks out. That gives me enough calendar space to settle, shake the jet lag, and return to California with the kind of energy needed to push the onboarding fixes, the host tooling polish, and the marketing prep for the next wave of testers. Until then, these weekly dispatches are basically weather reports: “Hi, still here, still warm, still committed.” It sounds lightweight, but the ritual matters. The community sees consistency, the backlog has breathing room, and I get a mental reset before diving back into Kotlin multiplatform land.
What does it mean in English?
Nothing big shipped this week. I’m traveling through a tropical stretch, sweating through every shirt I packed, and choosing to let Shokken rest rather than crank out tired code from hotel Wi-Fi. The app you can download today is the same build you saw two weeks ago, the infrastructure that keeps the waitlist humming is still running automatically, and I’m keeping an eye on alerts so nothing breaks without me noticing. Think of this as a “be right back” sign taped to the repo: I’m taking a deliberate pause, not abandoning the project. Thanksgiving week is the target for real development to resume, and between now and then I’ll keep posting short updates so nobody wonders what happened.
Nerdy Details (Holding Pattern Notes)
Even though there are zero new commits, the operational side of Shokken still asks for lightweight stewardship, and that’s where I spent the slivers of online time I had. The monitoring setup pings a status channel whenever crash-free sessions dip below 99%, so every morning I scroll through that feed to confirm the numbers haven’t budged. They haven’t, which is exactly the reassurance I need to stay on vacation mode without guilt. The Play Console still shows the same build from Week 43, and I’m intentionally keeping it that way; shipping a new release from a borrowed computer introduces signing key risks I’m unwilling to take while bouncing between countries.
I also reviewed the backlog labels to make sure nothing critical is waiting on me. A few tester notes about onboarding clarity are tagged “needs spec,” so I added comments clarifying that the work is queued for late November and that I’ll reach out for fresh repro videos once I’m settled. That kind of expectation-setting keeps the testers engaged without promising dates I can’t hit. On the automation front, the nightly screenshot jobs are still running because they’re cron-based, but I paused the downstream marketing sync so we don’t publish duplicate imagery to the press kit while there’s nothing new to show. It’s a simple toggle in the workflow file, and it keeps the asset library tidy for when I return with actual UI changes.
Security-wise, staying offline is the safest move. I’m traveling with a minimal kit: phone, tablet, YubiKey. SSH access to the production box is disabled from unfamiliar IPs, so even if I wanted to poke around I’d have to open the firewall and risk more than it’s worth. That constraint forces discipline—monitor, communicate, and wait for a proper desk. I’m also jotting down “heatwave ideas” in a lightweight note: things like rethinking the RSVP reminder cadence and exploring a lightweight host dashboard for walk-in management. They’re not specs yet, but the act of capturing them means I’ll have a punch list ready the moment the suitcase is unpacked.
Next Week
Next week will look similar: more travel, more humidity, and another short dispatch that says “lights are still on.” The focus is staying reachable for testers, keeping an eye on metrics, and lining up the actual work sprint that starts once I’m back home near Thanksgiving. If the travel schedule loosens early I’ll jump straight into the onboarding clarity fixes, but otherwise expect another postcard and a reminder that this pause is intentional, temporary, and good for the long game.