hackers.town: 2023-11-30 Thu 11:29

silly visual studio code choking on a measly little 110k line file so I have to restart the LSP server so I can edit the 100 line file that’s generating the 110k line file.

hackers.town: 2023-11-30 Thu 12:17

Copying and pasting 162,000 lines of Markdown from VS Code to Obsidian was certainly a choice.

hackers.town: 2023-11-30 Thu 12:28

Me, describing developer work estimation industry practice:

“We start with ‘points describe complexity, not time’ as a guiding philosophy, and then proceed to describe all estimates in terms of time.”

hackers.town: 2023-11-30 Thu 12:40

Meanwhile I’m planning out the next Linux partition misadventure. Maybe Guix + nonguix.

hackers.town: 2023-11-30 Thu 12:49

Course I was very careful to specify that this was not universal practice, only how we did it at – let’s see – every single place I worked in my entire career.

hackers.town: 2023-11-30 Thu 14:25

oh sweet jesus that really is the cybertruck logo

I almost want to see the rest of the notes, just to find out what he drew over the rest of the Trapper Keeper in detention.

hackers.town: 2023-11-30 Thu 14:33

Listening to @IamMrsGeek get seriously riled up in meeting about accessibility concerns for clients attending a work event and — and —

I’ll be in my bunk.

hackers.town: 2023-11-30 Thu 14:53

Switching from sloppy string handling to sloppy list handling has sped this script up sufficiently that it finishes in 7s instead of 13s.

Just imagine what would happen if I tried real optimization?

WHO SAID “completion time becomes 45s” I WILL CUT YOU

hackers.town: 2023-11-30 Thu 17:05

script finishes in 1s

so hey let’s see what happens if I run markdownlint on the results.

(a few minutes later)

55,790 issues. No big deal.

hackers.town: 2023-11-30 Thu 17:09

Described my favorite game genre as “build a nice house and kill anyone that gets on your lawn”

hackers.town: 2023-11-30 Thu 17:10

maybe go for a nice walk

hackers.town: 2023-11-30 Thu 17:47

Gain buffs by grilling meat. Your workbench is sacred. Pants are optional.

This genre is within the family of dad game no doubt about it.

hackers.town: 2023-11-30 Thu 19:41

Watching Year One. So far it’s about as good as I expected.

I may or may not be able to finish watching.

hackers.town: 2023-11-30 Thu 21:34

24 years since WTO Seattle? Holy crap.

I’d been working for about a month at my first tech job where I got paid in more than cigarette money.

Huge protests, cops getting cranky and tear gassing everyone including tourists. Me trying to get to and from work between them. Folks in the local Perl group talking about how they recognized other group members at the protests. The formative event for indymedia.org.

The whole thing set me up for many years of disappointment about what working in tech was gonna be like.

hackers.town: 2023-11-30 Thu 21:35

WTO Seattle was also when I learned to walk where helicopters aren’t. Wherever they are, that spot is gonna suck.

hackers.town: 2023-11-29 Wed 19:00

Happiest I’ve seen my timeline in a while.

hackers.town: 2023-11-29 Wed 21:42

@eaton I often ponder going back and rewriting my ancient posts. So far all I’ve had the energy to do is a little tidying and some snarky asides.

hackers.town: 2023-11-29 Wed 22:04

Honestly tonight I’m just relieved that this song continues to be true.

#NowPlaying

One Kind of People by Amigo the Devil

hackers.town: 2023-11-29 Wed 22:08

Good night for the list

#NowPlaying

Reasons to Be Cheerful, Pt. 3 (12 Version) by Ian Dury & The Blockheads

hackers.town: 2023-11-29 Wed 23:10

So anyways I’m turning a 154,000 line JSON file API reference with embedded Markdown into a Markdown document. Final length as yet unknown. Relevant to work, so no screenshots. But I’ve at least established the idea works.

The gig leans hard on Python and TypeScript. So — this being me — I’m doing my work-related documentation task with Ruby and TTY • The Ruby terminal apps toolkit.

hackers.town: 2023-11-28 Tue 17:17

It was a little foggy during the drive.

hackers.town: 2023-11-28 Tue 17:26

That was 3:30 in the afternoon. Pretty unusual for my experience.

hackers.town: 2023-11-27 Mon 06:32

@rhosyn as far as I know, this is just my hangup. It’s somebody else’s term that wonderfully describes their situation. I didn’t want to lay claim to it for myself.

hackers.town: 2023-11-27 Mon 13:29

@rhosyn to be clear, you’re under no obligation. This is me doing my thing and sharing to see if it clicks with anyone else. If so, cool. If not, I sure as heck won’t judge.

hackers.town: 2023-11-27 Mon 14:46

Very excited about going to the hearing place tomorrow even though I almost certainly won’t be coming home with a new cybernetic ear.

But one can dream.

hackers.town: 2023-11-26 Sun 01:11

20 days in on my first #StrandedAlienDawn run and two of my five survivors are not yet on the verge of a meltdown. Come on, slackers!

hackers.town: 2023-11-26 Sun 13:40

audio caffeine

#NowPlaying

Taketron by Slavic Soul Party!

hackers.town: 2023-11-26 Sun 15:51

I didn’t eat anything that could be called a meal today, which I thought was a mistake until just a few minutes ago when I tried eating a meal.

Clearly my body is mad at me about something.

hackers.town: 2023-11-26 Sun 16:51

Working on a code task: two hours reconfiguring my desktop. Six hours staring blankly at the monitor.

Suddenly I know exactly what the code should look like and the question is how quick I can type it.

hackers.town: 2023-11-26 Sun 17:00

Which is of course the cue for folks to start loudly cleaning their space for the first time in possibly a few months. Ah well.

hackers.town: 2023-11-26 Sun 17:09

@IamMrsGeek more like

hackers.town: 2023-11-26 Sun 17:13

I made this for me but I’m pretty sure you can use it too.

hackers.town: 2023-11-26 Sun 17:15

I’m just killing time until they’re done cleaning because I honestly don’t remember the last time they deep-cleaned their space and I certainly don’t want them to associate this activity with any kind of trauma.

Maybe I should give them one of the dogs’ training treats?

hackers.town: 2023-11-26 Sun 17:18

@luciano flawless logic.

hackers.town: 2023-11-26 Sun 17:56

@mhoye everybody else doing the parkour and Benoit Blanc providing critical plot infrastructure by just being Benoit Blanc in the middle of it all.

hackers.town: 2023-11-26 Sun 18:17

Best beats and best wikipedia raps

#NowPlaying

Cinemetropolis Blue Scholars

hackers.town: 2023-11-26 Sun 18:35

@mjgardner @luciano you’d really think so, wouldn’t you?

hackers.town: 2023-11-26 Sun 18:43

@austin_bradley and our infrastructure!

hackers.town: 2023-11-26 Sun 19:11

This code has an interesting binding singular design choice.

Several of them, actually.

hackers.town: 2023-11-26 Sun 19:12

That toot was gibberish, but in my defense so’s my code.

Um.

hackers.town: 2023-11-26 Sun 20:07

@MostlyHarmless @jalefkowit@octodon.social Ah, nothing like a Bruckheimer film.

hackers.town: 2023-11-26 Sun 20:27

A note to hiring managers: if you know your codebase needs big cleaning up, but you’d like to still recognize it three weeks after your enthusiastically caffeinated dev starts, DO NOT say “we want you to take ownership of this code.”

Maybe something more like “we need a good steward for this code” or something similar that keeps them out of house flipping mode.

A #Fedihired suggestion

hackers.town: 2023-11-26 Sun 21:13

In a shocking display of reserve, I have recognized a stopping point and the information I need in order to move past it.

Even more shocking: I have chosen to respect that particular brick wall until I get said information.

hackers.town: 2023-11-26 Sun 21:52

I always thought of Spoon Theory as covering chronic illnesses with physical impact, so I’ve avoided using it for myself. I say “cognitive resources” instead to describe my similar but not identical #ADHD issues.

But maybe I can have a little fun with it. What about “Spork Theory?”

I’ve got an entire damn drawer of resources, but they’re individually wrapped, not reusable, not well-suited to any one task, and break if you try too hard.

hackers.town: 2023-11-26 Sun 21:54

Also got some condiment packets, but at this point they’re probably hazardous to open, let alone use.

hackers.town: 2023-11-26 Sun 21:59

@rekiwi digging through the drawer to see the evolution of the McDonald’s logo.

hackers.town: 2023-11-26 Sun 22:12

Just remembered favorable comments — and a blog post — from @perigrin about Render as a service host.

Just saying it out loud in case it catches somebody else’s curiosity.

hackers.town: 2023-11-25 Sat 08:57

First impression is that Fossil is boring like SQLite.

Which makes sense, given there’s a SQLite database driving all this.

But yeah boring. Like it covers 100% of my personal needs, would likely cover 80% of my production work needs — bearing in mind my aversion to Google-scale anything — and you could host it on a damp sponge. Or a shared host, if you lack sponges. Or Chisel, if self-hosting’s not your thing.

Want CI/CD? Write a script and make it a hook.

hackers.town: 2023-11-25 Sat 11:28

I am exceedingly fond of Web Scale, where Web Scale is defined as “manage your entire infrastructure from a Raspberry Pi, with the only issue being that you haven’t been able to physically locate your Pi for six months but all the services work and you can log in no problem.”

hackers.town: 2023-11-25 Sat 11:29

Not so much Web 3 or even Web 2 as Web 0.9.

hackers.town: 2023-11-25 Sat 11:30

“the cloud” is what we call the dust bunnies behind the couch

hackers.town: 2023-11-25 Sat 11:35

But marginally less tongue in cheek: I signed on when your local ISP was Kevin. Kevin handled several hundred household connections from a server rack in his living room, mounted unnervingly close to an elaborately connected collection of fish tanks.

By that vision, most of what we’ve had for the last few decades? Monthly rent to dozens of services to keep serving a 12MB About Us page? That’s not The Web. That’s a barnacle.

I mean it pays rent, so I’m not gonna complain too loud.

hackers.town: 2023-11-25 Sat 12:17

#Steam collections are a special subdomain of information management.

hackers.town: 2023-11-25 Sat 17:49

Had — I don’t know what the proper term for it is — food reluctance? Where the brain just suddenly goes “no don’t eat that.” The food didn’t smell funny or taste off. Just — it was slightly greasy and the light was hitting it weird. Neurospicy toddler lizard brain would not budge.

Alarmed @IamMrsGeek so much she force-fed me stolen Pepto Bismol and made me drink ginger ale.

Okay not stolen stolen, we just went shopping after and she made me have one before we’d paid for it.

I do feel better now. But still not interested in that burger.

hackers.town: 2023-11-25 Sat 20:48

Ordered a VPS and cancelled it in the same day. I know how much I’m going to use it after a few weeks, so I was getting buyer’s remorse after an hour.

Maybe later, when my main site comes due. Don’t need to be adding expenses.

hackers.town: 2023-11-25 Sat 21:51

Jack is such a cliche.

#CatsOfMastodon

hackers.town: 2023-11-25 Sat 21:53

Barry wanted a turn.

Via @IamMrsGeek

hackers.town: 2023-11-24 Fri 09:28

Writing code for a retail org and hey guess what the day after Thanksgiving is not a day off here.

Ah well.

hackers.town: 2023-11-24 Fri 12:48

OpenAI staff researchers warning of “a powerful artificial intelligence discovery that they said could threaten humanity”

chatgpt said eat the rich?

hackers.town: 2023-11-24 Fri 13:13

Just feeling particularly snarky about AI stuff because I started an intro video about GitHub Copilot that opened by describing it as automated pair programming (ok if you say so) and then said if you’ve pair programmed before you know you program twice as fast

or something like that

I was too busy screaming into my pillow about Fred Brooks to catch the rest of the video.

hackers.town: 2023-11-24 Fri 13:15

so many silver bullets I’m amazed we haven’t collapsed the precious metals market

hackers.town: 2023-11-24 Fri 13:49

work chat: “Everyone is hanging out in Leavenworth without me”

Me: “To clarify: your friends are hanging out in Leavenworth the woodsy tourist town and not Leavenworth the prison, right?”

Sometimes you know your neurospicy initial take is incorrect, but it’s too entertaining to keep it to yourself.

(yes they are hanging out in the woodsy tourist town)

hackers.town: 2023-11-24 Fri 19:42

“They got us a new TV but every channel is crap.”

Jack and Barry puzzling out their new automated litter box.

hackers.town: 2023-11-24 Fri 21:11

Thought I’d look in Steam Discussions to see if anyone had asked for a pause option in #Icarus solo play and yes and of course it’s a controversial request.

(sigh)

hackers.town: 2023-11-24 Fri 22:47

Was curious about learning a thing and the part of my brain that’s never as helpful as it hopes to be piped up with “but will it impress employers?”

wtf

So yeah I’ll be playing with Fossil SCM at some point this weekend.

hackers.town: 2023-11-23 Thu 07:16

A tradition is a tradition.

#NowPlaying

Alice’s Restaurant Massacree by Arlo Guthrie

hackers.town: 2023-11-23 Thu 08:55

Listening to my music instead of playlists generated for me by whatever streaming service.

Feels nice.

hackers.town: 2023-11-23 Thu 10:08

Alice’s Restaurant Massacree has a lot of my core values in there: anti-war, found family, cooperative effort, ACAB, excessive parenthetical asides, consent (“excepting Alice”), more I’m pretty sure. Not all of my core values but a significant chunk.

hackers.town: 2023-11-23 Thu 13:15

@junebug I like it.

Story vs Simulation is one of the oldest wars in TTRPGs. I generally favor Story.

hackers.town: 2023-11-23 Thu 13:31

@Naich @tk I appreciate the alt text.

hackers.town: 2023-11-23 Thu 13:55

@minego I am very tempted by Nix or Guix.

hackers.town: 2023-11-23 Thu 16:39

@tk @minego less of an OS curiosity for now. Mostly I’m just interested in the layering and workflow management aspects.

hackers.town: 2023-11-23 Thu 21:42

@socketwench @craigmaloney@octodon.social Have done, and may do again in the future.

hackers.town: 2023-11-22 Wed 08:07

Tried #Icarus and got trampled to unconsciousness by a horse thing while I was figuring out the build menu.

Um — we’ll put a pin in that one for later.

hackers.town: 2023-11-22 Wed 09:40

#KDE: it’s a lot like Windows except there’s no ads and you can move your taskbar.

Yes, yes. There’s a lot more to it than that. I’ve been using KDE since Beta 2, you don’t need to ‘splain it to me.

But it’s largely why I’m using it today.

hackers.town: 2023-11-22 Wed 09:52

@operand you’re not wrong.

hackers.town: 2023-11-22 Wed 10:26

@VE2UWY Plasma 5 cleaned up a lot of KDE 4’s chaos, but I get it.

hackers.town: 2023-11-22 Wed 10:30

@mjgardner Yep, that’s been my experience for the last couple decades as well. Not inherently better than Windows (well, pre-11 anyways), and you can still see the CDE roots if you squint.

hackers.town: 2023-11-22 Wed 12:59

@VE2UWY I thought the Windows 8 tile approach showed promise. It was something new, at least. But they pushed out a beta — an experiment, even — called it the official release, and when folks didn’t like what they saw? scrubbed out anything to do with it including Windows Mobile.

hackers.town: 2023-11-22 Wed 13:00

@VE2UWY Microsoft loves playing poker with their userbase, and a lot of the time they’re bluffing.

hackers.town: 2023-11-22 Wed 14:39

@slyecho Oh I get so frustrated when I try to treat Windows File Explorer like Dolphin!

hackers.town: 2023-11-22 Wed 15:00

Accidentally merged two workspaces when setting up SiYuan sync on my phone so hey good news got all my notes everywhere now.

Sometimes twice!

hackers.town: 2023-11-22 Wed 15:11

@genehack @bitprophet the logic is not unlike a black hole, in that it is absolute, no light can be shed, and you’ll likely suffer severe X-Ray burns if you get too close.

hackers.town: 2023-11-22 Wed 15:12

@IamMrsGeek see already in a Thanksgiving mood!

hackers.town: 2023-11-22 Wed 15:56

@bitprophet @genehack nah I worked for a child company of this org in recent history, so any questions we had went into the parent company where the interstellar anomaly was located.

hackers.town: 2023-11-22 Wed 19:35

I’m impressed I got the monkey bread from the pan to the plate with no major mishap.

hackers.town: 2023-11-22 Wed 20:22

@bitprophet it’s bread for monkeys, not bread of monkeys

hackers.town: 2023-11-21 Tue 09:34

Peter, Bjorn, John, and Victoria are all in their mid-to-late 40s now.

#NowPlaying

Young Folks by Peter Bjorn and John

hackers.town: 2023-11-21 Tue 10:38

Hasbro WoTC’s heel turn might actually make the mainstream TTRPG world interesting again. OGL made everything taste like D&D, which I did not particularly enjoy.

via @polygon - Paizo stripping D&D references from Pathfinder

https://www.polygon.com/tabletop-games/23965926/pathfinder-2e-remaster-ogl-controversy-player-core-gm-core-orc-release-date-price

hackers.town: 2023-11-21 Tue 11:29

To me a “sky the color of television turned to a dead channel” is so specific that i can hear the broken promises for A Better Tomorrow whispered by ghosts in a television that’s about to die, on a channel that played its last good night anthem years ago.

hackers.town: 2023-11-21 Tue 11:36

Television was such an interesting choice, since it specifically had been presented as the messenger for our Better Tomorrow during the author’s life and had thoroughly shown itself as The Same Old But Worse by the time the words were written down.

hackers.town: 2023-11-21 Tue 11:38

Sorry it’s just part of the fediverse zeitgeist and I needed a moment to navel gaze on that description.

hackers.town: 2023-11-21 Tue 11:48

Barry being a drama floof.

via @IamMrsGeek

#CatsOfMastodon

hackers.town: 2023-11-21 Tue 14:55

Living in the future is almost exactly as weird as Heavy Metal magazine would’ve had me believe.

hackers.town: 2023-11-21 Tue 15:00

She’s in a meeting and keeps saying “Next steppies!” is sort of a cute, enthusiastic voice.

I think.

Given the other participants, it is within the realm of possibility that @IamMrsGeek was saying “Neck stabbies!” in a cute, enthusiastic voice.

hackers.town: 2023-11-21 Tue 15:10

So a few days ago I assumed the only sensible explanation for the OpenAI news was moving quick on big money scandals but at this point I am forced to assume it’s some airborne Silicon Valley Derangement Syndrome. Presumably next is the Inevitable Zombie Apocalypse.

hackers.town: 2023-11-21 Tue 17:11

Nearly half of my Steam wishlist is on sale. This feels like a test of some kind.

Did the marshmallow guys put you up to this?!

hackers.town: 2023-11-21 Tue 19:30

New episode of Zero Punctuation on The Escapist. Comments have been turned off.

GOSH I WONDER WHY