Andreas Loppnow

Saturday Morning Routine

February 24th, 2024

I like routines, they create a nice structure in a somewhat chaotic world. They are great for my mental health although I never manage to stick with a digital routine planer, not sure why that is.

So here is my Saturday morning:

☕️ Make a coffee (with milk foam, mmmmhhh).

📱 Grab the iPad and sit in the office rocking chair.

🧾 Go through bills that needs to be paid and personal emails that need o be taken care of.

🗓️ Go through private and side business Notion workspaces to get caught up and plan the week ahead.

📚 Read something.

Do I make it exactly like this every time? Of course not, live happens but it is something to strive and look forward to. It gives me comfort and sanity.
You get better

March 17th, 2022

I started meditating, more on that subject later but I want to share the essence of one exercise. Reflect about the truth in that sentence.
Development setup

March 9th, 2022

I want to share my dev set up.

VS Code is my code editor of choice. ( Microsoft can make pretty good software if they want to. ) It has an incredible eco system of plugins for most likely everything you need. I’ll get to the plug-ins in a second.

VS Code

VS code out of the box comes with built in terminal, git integration and an easy settings system that you can adjust with a json file individually for each project.

Projects are organized by folders easy peasy, or you combine them in to workspaces to make it a bit harder to keep track, your choice.

PLUG-IN UNIVERSE

There is a plug-in for everything, well almost everything (Can’t connect it to my Coffee machine, yet ).

I usually work with WordPress so plugins for PHP, WP auto complete are installed. Also some popular WP plugins (Woo, ACF) have their auto complete plugins.

Of course every other programming language is supported with syntax highlighting and auto complete, either out of the box or via plugin.
I used the liquid plugin for Shopify development and it was as easy as expected.

There is a gazillion plugins for code formatting, linting etc. A Plugin to preview Markdown for readme files. Plugins to help with documentation etc. There are a lot of plugins you get the idea.

Then there are some more fancy things in VS Code like Live Share that lets other people work on your code. It is exceptionally easy and reliable.

AFTER I HIT SAVE

That where the fun starts. I’m ~~lazy~~ efficient, so we need to automate things.

Gulp is a task runner, when I save (or move the window focus to another program, which triggers an autosave) a scss is converted to css and injected via live local server so I see the change without constant reloading. Saving of PHP files triggers a page reload.

VS Code is also not done after save. It can execute commands after your save in in my case it throws the php file to PHP Code Beautifier and formats it according to WP coding standards or yells at me if I made a mistake.

It took some time to get to this set up and the VS Code power user helped a lot. He has the same birthday as I do and ran a special once so I bought it :-).
Dusting this off again

March 9th, 2022

Seems a bit late to pick up a new pandemic hobby, since everyone is acting like it is over and moved their attention to other geopolitical events. But that my corner of the internet so I make the schedule. I think I want to pick up blogging again and more broad this time. I think I want to add more topics that Run through my daily life.

I still build WordPress websites ( and recently Shopify stores) at a Marketing Agency in lovely Westbrook, Maine. And I usually find neat tidbits of WP knowledge I want to share and preserve for myself.

This Website Theme needs a bit of an update since my last post is 4 years old and there is broken banner image.
Soccer in Maine

May 22nd, 2018

Is a bit confusing to me.

I grew up in Germany with a developed soccer club system. From kids to adult you play for a ( or many depending on your loyalty ) club where you have your practice and soccer games against other clubs more or less regional depending on skill level. Schools are rarely involved at all.

Now that I’m settled here in Maine. I picked up being a soccer referee. I took a course and started refereeing Middle and Highschool games. Those are fall season with roughly 2 months of games every day (at least for referees) .

Then I took another course to referee club soccer games, which are organized by local soccer clubs more similar to the german system with a spring and fall season. I accidentally also came to be the referee assignor for my local club instead of just a referee.

It is all still a it confusing to me why there are so many different organizations in competition of soccer talent. But that’s the way it is. And I’ll try to make my way up the referee ladder 😉
2017 Sailing Season Kickoff

May 25th, 2017

We had our first sailing race of the season last night:
My Last name in Googles Books

January 27th, 2017

Did you know that you can search Google Books for any word and can plot a chart how this word is used over time?

Here is my last name. Some old stuff in there.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/interactive_chart?content=Loppnow&case_insensitive=on&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=20&smoothing=7&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2CLoppnow%3B%2Cc0
Apple Watch

January 26th, 2017

Thanks to my companies Christmas present I’m running around with a computer on my wrist.
A computer with more processing power (and a better display) than my first desktop computer that occupied half a desk and was plugged into 220V (yes it was in Europe).

Short term effect : I think I move more. The activity app and its reminders help not to “forget” about moving and your workout. Neat feature. It also inspires competition with your co workers 🙂

The notifications are nice and dealing with emails and messages is super easy. As usual with Apple, all well thought trough as long as you stay within the Apple universe. It unlocks my Macbook, I can control my music on my iPhone and use my Apple TV.

Overall nice piece of technology, when you have other Apple devices.

T
Speckled Heifer

January 21st, 2017

This is my NFL Divisional Championship weekend project.

I brewed it before. Nice light beer.
Will be bottled on Super Bowl Weekend. A little too late to celebrate the Patriots Super Bowl win.
Gravity Forms List Field Type: Make sure to have a minum number of rows

January 16th, 2017
I recently ran in the problem that a client wanted an application form which is easy peasy built with Gravity forms.

They also wanted to ensure that at least 3 previous jobs are filled out. The previoius employers field was a list field (Name, Address, Time worke there etc.)

If you ever need to enforce a minumum amount of list items use the Gravity Form field validation :
```
add_filter( 'gform_field_validation_1_27', 'force_three_rows_in_lists', 10, 4 );

function force_three_rows_in_lists($result, $value, $form, $field){

if ( $result['is_valid'] && count($value) < 3) {
$result['is_valid'] = false;
$result['message'] = 'Please enter at least 3 previous employers (Use the + Button at the end to add more lines)';
}

return $result;
} 
```
The count($value)< 3 is the important part, the $value is an array of rows that are submitted.

More Info about that filter in the Gravity Froms Documentation.

VS Code

PLUG-IN UNIVERSE

AFTER I HIT SAVE