-
It’s amusing to see that Google is confident enough in their AI to tell me that I’ve received a SMS message that is spam, yet not quite confident enough not to tell me that I’ve received a SMS message that is spam.
-
I got a bit of a streak going so I was hoping to post something here today. Only trouble is that I had some nervousness and pessimism preventing me from thinking of topics to write about. It calmed down after some writing it my journal, freeing me up to make this post.
-
The Future of Computing
I got into computers when I was quite young, and to satisfy my interest, I read a lot of books about computing during my primary school years. I remember one such book that included a discussion about how computing could evolve in the future.
The book approached the topic using a narrative of a “future” scenario, that would probably correspond with today’s present. In that story, the protagonist was late for school because of a fault with the “home computer” regarding the setting of the thermostat or something similar. Upon arriving home from school, he interacted with the computer by speaking to it as if he was talking to another person, expressing his anger of the events that morning by speaking in full, natural-language sentences. The computer responded in kind.
Continue reading → -
Shut down one blog this week and moved all the posts into this one. There’s another blog that I haven’t updated for a while, but people are reading it and I’m wondering whether it’s worth bringing it back to life. I only wish I picked a better name for it.
-
I posit to you that the reason developers find it hard to do anything related with encryption is not because they’re in the weeds of how the algorithms work. Rather, it’s the confusing barrage of acronyms and standards that all reference each other.
-
I was looking for a simple timer this morning until I remembered that the Vivaldi browser actually comes with one. And sure enough, it works. The addition of these little utilities like a timer, alarm, and notepad is one of the things I like about Vivaldi.
-
It might be time to unsubscribe from developer related podcasts that talk about new technologies and platforms. It’s stressful seeing all these services being discussed, and thinking to yourself “I should check that out”, even when you know there’s nothing forcing you to do so.
-
My face is getting sore with all the palm prints on it. 🤦
-
Bocce in Fitzroy Gardens. Grand final for the 2021 season (yes, my friends and I came up with the idea of grand finals for our little casual comp 😏).
-
It’s a shame that there’s a non-insignificant number of people and companies that I admire and appreciate for their contribution to tech, while at the same time I personally would want nothing to do with.
-
While poking around the Micro.blog XML-RPC documentation, I had a flashback about SOAP. I had some limited experience with SOAP and it was always a huge pain. Looking back on it now, it’s striking how much was touted about SOAP middleware, as if that was what anyone using SOAP cared about.
I’m glad SOAP has been replaced by simpler technologies like REST. Simplicity eventually wins out in the end. I guess that’s why XML-RPC is still around.
-
PGBC Scoring Rules
I get a bit of a thrill when there’s a need to design a mini-language. I have one facing me now for a little project I’m responsible for, which is maintaining a scoring site for a bocce comp I’m involve in with friends.
How scoring works now is that the winner of a particular bocce match gets one point for the season. The winner for the season is the person with the most points. However, we recently discuss the idea of adding “final matches,” which will give the match winner 7 points, the runner up 2 points, and the person who came in third 1 point. At the same time I want to add the notion of “friendly matches” which won’t count to the season score.
Continue reading → -
🔗 Wordle and IP law: What happens when a hot game gets cloned
I guess the moral of the story is that you might have the legal right to do something like clone a game, but there’s no guarantee that you’ll get off looking honourable doing so.
-
Wordle 208 6/6
⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜
⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜
⬜🟨⬜🟨⬜
⬜⬜🟨⬜🟨
🟩⬜⬜🟩⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩Was close to missing it today. The winning guess was a bit of a fluke.
-
On the Moxie Marlinspike Post About web3
Today, I took a look at the Moxie Marlinspike post about web31. I found this post interesting for a variety of reasons, not least because unlike many other posts on the subject, it was a post that was level-headed and was coming from a position of want to learn more rather than persuade (or hustle). Well worth the read, especially for those that are turned off by the whole web3 crap like I am.
Continue reading → -
Burnt Out on Design
I’ve been doing a heap of design work at my job at the moment; writing documents, drawing up architecture diagrams, etc. I’d thought I would like this sort of work but I realise now that I can only tolerate it in small doses. Doing it for as long as I have been is burning me out slightly. I’d just like to go back to coding.
I’m wondering why this is. I think the biggest feeling I have is that it feels like I’m not delivering value. I understand the need to get some sort of design up so that tasks can be written up and allocated. I think a big problem is the feeling that everything needs to be in the design upfront, waterfall style, whereas the method I’d prefer is to have a basic design upfront — something that we can start work on — which can be iterated and augment over time.
Continue reading → -
I’ve been listening to, and buying, a fair bit of music from Anders Enger Jensen over the last few days. My current earworm is about half the tracks on Retro Grooves Volume 2. Some pretty good retro synth music there. 🎵
-
One of the domains for a blog that I’ve since abandoned is coming up for renewal in a few days. Might be a good as time as any to shut it down.
-
The latest episode of Core Intuition (496) resonated with me, especially the discussion about settling and sharing creative works near the end. I know this is something that I personally struggle with and would like to get better at this year.
-
I think I’ve settled on my word for 2022: finisher. Someone who finishes what he starts. This is something that I’m not super good at. I find it easy to start, but I rarely follow through all the way. It’s not in the list of words but I think it’s a good one to go for.
-
🔗 The Algorithmic Ad Monster Cometh for Podcasts
I’m starting to hear more of these types of ads in the shows I follow, and I despise them. I agree with the statement of the ads being part of the product. I tend to listen to host-read ads. I definitely skip the automated ones.
-
It’s interesting to see the technical knowledge and priorities of a software development team come through in the product they work on. Case in point: the syntax highlighting options for a code block in Confluence include ColdFusion, Delphi, Java FX, Groovy and Scala; but not Go.
-
Yet another reminder to myself to write things down when they come to me. I had the perfect word for a post, but when it came time to write it I couldn’t recall what that word was. I know that I know it; I was turning it over in my head a few days ago. Should’ve written it down.
-
There’s a lot I don’t like about all the “web3” stuff going on: bad actors and environmental impact being on the top of the list. But even if this is set aside, it just doesn’t sound like an appealing way to spend my time. As far as I can tell, it’s just a bunch of projects and people doing the exact same thing seen on the web before, but with an extra layer of trading, hustling, fundraising, etc. completely driven by personal interests. It all seems so distasteful, and even a little boring.
-
I’m adding some photos to last year’s journal in preparation for turning it into a book. I’m honestly trying to avoid rushing it and just saying “ah, that’s enough”. Any effort spent now will be paid back in kind once the book is printed and I’m looking through it years later.
I’m also glad that I’ve made Feed Journaler to import blog posts. Looking at the posts made earlier in the year, I can see that many are missing, most likely because they contain images that were not imported. I’ll need to import these manually.