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On Higher Order Functions In Go
It’s a bit surprising that higher-order functions like map and filter have not caught on in Go. They seemed to have caught on quickly when they were added to Java. One of the long standing issues back then was the clunky and verbose approach to writing closures. Java 8 fixed this with the introduction of the lambda (the -> operator). Suddenly, what once took multiple lines of boilerplate could be done in a single expression. Continue reading →
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Making A Long Form Posts Category In Micro.blog
I use the Categories feature of Micro.blog to organise the types of posts I make on this site. One of the categories I have on this blog is called Long Form Posts, which I use to file all the posts I have that have titles. This is done automatically, such that I don’t have to think about adding a post to this category once I’ve written it1. It’s a little hard to find the relevant features in Micro. Continue reading →
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I, Developer
There was a bit of a discussion on Mastodon and various blogs about how best to call someone who writes code for fun or profit. I’ll spare you the prologue of how this discussion that has been going on since the start of the profession itself: I’m sure you’ve heard it all before. But hearing one of these terms today got me thinking about this, and I thought I’d say what my preferences are. Continue reading →
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A Rambling Thought About The App-Only Social Networks
Re-reading this post got me wondering how much traction Hive and Post are getting from the Twitter exodus. I am aware that Hive had to deal with a vulnerability and had to shut down while they fixed it. I don’t know much about Post apart it being another VC backed social network. But unless you’re a gamer attracted to Hive, and… 🤷1 heading to Post, is there anyone else using them? Continue reading →
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My 2023 Word
I think I’ve settled on my 2023 word of the year: generous. Specifically (although not exclusively) generous in the projects I work on. I’m always working on some form of software in my spare time, but most of the time I keep this software just for myself. I want to do less of this, and start sharing it with others. You could say that I want to get better at shipping, but shipping to me is making the software usable for what it’s designed for, and for many of the projects I build, it’s only designed for me and my needs. Continue reading →
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Updates To My Online Presence
Making some changes to my online presence. The first is moving my knowledge base site from a set of HTML pages generated from a bespoke tool to one managed by Hugo. I wrote about that already so there’s nothing new to report here, apart from changing the domain name: I guess I finally fell out of love for “tecknow.space”. The new domain is simply technote.wiki. I originally wanted “technotes.wiki” — note the S — but I ran into a few problems trying to set this up in Netlify. Continue reading →
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Hand-made, Home-cooked
“Here, buy this sandwich. It’s hand-made. “Well, it’s machine made. But hands made the machines. “Well, hands made the machines that made the machines. “But it’s a home-cooked receipt. “Well, it’s a home-cooked inspired recipe. We did have to get some input from nutritionists and focus groups. And a few of our stakeholder had to approve the list of ingredients we used. But we think it’s close enough. “Anyway, enjoy.” Continue reading →
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Hustle Writing
There was one other thing that was a bit distasteful about those posts on how you can further your career by being a technical writer, and it had to do with how they formatted their writing. Many of them were not afraid to include a lot of emphasis. And when I say a lot, I mean a lot. As it whole phrases or even entire sentences. They did it quite often. Continue reading →
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Froth and Bubble
Woke up in the early morning with this poem in my head: In this world of froth and bubble, Two things stand like stone; Kindness in other peoples’ trouble, Courage in your own. I first read this in a young adults novel some good 25 years ago, and over the years it’s come back to me several times. I guess you can say it resonates. Continue reading →
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Hammers, Nails, and Hugo
Going through my hammer and nail phase with Hugo. Trying it out on my personal knowledge base to see if it could replace the tool I wrote to generate the site from a set of Markdown files. Hey, if you were to squint, that tool kinda looks like a pale imitation of Hugo. How about that. Such as it is with things like this. I first tried out Hugo a few years ago and did the bare minimum to get a few sites off the ground. Continue reading →
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On Posting Here Daily
I sometimes struggle with the idea of trying to post here at least once a day. While perusing my archive I find days where my posts are cringeworthy or just not good, and part of me wonders whether it’s better to wait for a post to meet a certain level of quality before publishing it. I have also seen this argument from other bloggers as well. They post the rules they have that include things like “it should start a conversation” or it should be “distinctive”. Continue reading →
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2022 Year In Review
I’ll be honest: these year in review posts feel like going to the dentist. I generally hate doing them, but I know that it can be good exercise to reflect on the past year. I think one thing in my favour is that I’ve actually kept my blogging — and to a lesser extent, my journalling — up to date so I’ve actually got something that I can refer back to. Continue reading →
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2022 Song Of The Year
For the past twelve years or so, I’ve been invited to play the organ at the children’s Christmas Eve mass at a local(ish) primary school. During the collection, while people are getting wallets or purses out, I usually play some soft, nondescript music on a muted organ with only a few soft pipes opened. It doesn’t matter what I play during this time so I usually take this opportunity to play a song that I felt was a favourite of mine throughout the year. Continue reading →
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RSS And Tumblr's Quote-Style Posts
Tumblr needs to improve how they generate RSS items. Quote-style posts — in which the post consists of a quote from someone else, followed by a reply by the blog author — show up in my RSS reader with titles consisting of the “quote part” of the post. If the quote is more than just a handful of words, the title dominates the actual body of the item. An example: Continue reading →
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Half Measures
I’m coming to realise that one of my shortcomings is not completely following through on a task. I’ve got a habit of only doing enough to get it done quickly, knowing that the work has cracks in it and just hoping that things won’t fall through them. There are a few reasons for this and there the one’s that you expect: laziness, boredom, pressure to get something finished, wanting to move onto something else, etc. Continue reading →
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Day Trip: Macedon And Trentham
I had the pleasure of taking the day off today and going for a few walks around Macedon and Trentham. Being someone that’s really into keeping with a routine, I try to do these walks at least once a year. It’s been somewhat delayed this year, due to work commitments, but with the public holiday tomorrow, I thought I was a perfect time to get outside and do them before summer rolls around. Continue reading →
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Opinionated Tips for New Micro Bloggers Coming From Twitter
or, How I Use Micro.blog To all new-comers from Twitter, welcome to Micro.blog! No doubt you’ve received the welcome message from Jean with links on how Micro.blog is different from Twitter, but you’re probably still wondering how to get the most out of Micro.blog. And while I’m not claiming to have all the answers, I’ve put together a few tips for how I get value from writing here. First, the thing that took me a while to appreciate is that Micro. Continue reading →
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Technical Knowledge Management Update
Finished the first pass of moving all my technical knowledge into static Markdown files. I’ve got all the files now in a Git repository hosted on Github. They’re also published as a website called TecKnow Space (pronounced “techno space”)1. The way I’ve done this is by writing a tool I which will checkout the source Git repository, iterate over all the source Markdown files, render them as HTML, and push them to another Git repository which is being served using GitHub pages. Continue reading →
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Option Currency Symbol Reference
A reference guide for producing various currency symbols using the Option key. Continue reading →
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An Alternative To The Reply All Idea For Micro.blog
Just thinking about Micro.blog conversations and the discussion about having a way to reply all. I wonder if a better alternative is to be able to “follow” conversations, with new replies from anyone showing up in the timeline. This can be completely opt-in per conversation — including for posts that are made by you — so that those that want the old way to continue working as is don’t loose anything. Continue reading →
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The (Annoying) Way To Get the Current MacOS Appearance Scheme From the Command Line
Ok, here’s something bizarre. I’m trying to get the current MacOS appearance scheme — either light or dark mode — from the terminal. The way to do this is by running this command (source): defaults read -g AppleInterfaceStyle If MacOS is in dark mode, this will print Dark. But if MacOS is in light mode, the command will print… an error: 2022-10-04 09:15:18.058 defaults[35844:466643] The domain/default pair of (kCFPreferencesAnyApplication, AppleInterfaceStyle) does not exist Running defaults read -g confirms what the error message says: the AppleInterfaceStyle key is not set when MacOS is in light mode. Continue reading →
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Photos of Lake Tuggeranong
This morning I went to Tuggeranong, south of Canberra. After a cafe breakfast I took a walk around the lake. It was a lovely spring morning for it: cloudy, mild but slightly on the cool side. It was also quite a decent walk: probably took an hour and 20 minutes, and I didn’t even cover the entire lake. All in all, a nice way to begin the day. Continue reading →
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The Australian Republic Question
With the passing of Queen Elisabeth II, the talk of whether Australia should become a republic will probably start making the rounds once more. I don’t consider myself a royalist, and when the last referendum on the issue came around, I voted in favour of becoming a republic. The idea of having the British Royal Family as the head of state of a country halfway around the world seem anachronistic to me, and I was disappointed when the referendum failed. Continue reading →
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Detecting When GetItem On DynamoDB Returns Nothing
I was trying to remember how best to detect when a GetItem call to DynamoDB returns no values. That is, when there’s no item with that key in the table. This is in a project that is using v2 of the Go AWS SDK. After poking through some old code that did this, it looks like the way to do so is to check that the returned Item field is nil: Continue reading →
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Some Photos of The Yarra Trail
Went for a very short walk of the Yarra Trail around Heidelberg on Saturday. The evening light was really lovely so I though I’d take some photos. Continue reading →