Gallery: Day Trip to Yass
Decided to go to Yass today, a small town in NSW just north of where I’m staying in Canberra. I pass by Yass every time I drive to Canberra from Melbourne, and I wanted to see what it was like, at least once. And this morning I discovered that it had a railway museum, which sealed the deal. Unfortunately the weather was not kind: it was bitterly cold and rainy the whole time I was there.
First stop was the Railway Museum, which featured quite a few bits of rolling stock that operated on the Yass tramway. Yes, Yass had a tramway which, given the size of the town, I was not expecting.
This was followed by lunch at a local cafe, then a brief walk by the Yass river, which had an old tram bridge. I managed to walk around 500 metres from the bridge to the footy oval. It would’ve been nice to walk a bit longer, but it was cold, wet, and the ground was quite slippery. Plus I had to get home to spend some time with the birds. But I did make a brief diversion to Yass Junction railway station to see if there were any trains passing through (unfortunately, there were none).
Day 15: tie
Was wondering what I’d submit for today until I realised that the bird cage had all sorts of toys with tied knots. #mbjune

🔗 MOR10: Blogging is dead. Long live ephemerality.
This ended up being quite an insightful piece, particularly around how much better the authoring tools are in Instagram and other social media apps.
Via: Juha-Matti Santala
Appreciate that there's someone else out there getting driven crazy by Apple throwing up permission pop-ups everywhere in MacOS. And the Terminal, of all places.
Ricco’s taken an interest to my shoes today. Ivy, despite trying to come off as her own bird when it comes with dealing with Ricco, couldn’t help taking an interest too. 🦜

Devlog: UCL — More About The Set Operator
I made a decision around the set operator in UCL this morning.
When I added the set operator, I made it such that when setting variables, you had to include the leading dollar sign:
$a = 123
The reason for this was that the set operator was also to be used for setting pseudo-variables, which had a different prefix character.
@ans = "this"
I needed the user to include the @
prefix to distinguish the two, and since one variable type required a prefix, it made sense to require it for the other.
I’ve been trying this for a while, and I’ve deceided I didn’t like it. It felt strange to me. It shouldn’t, really, as it’s similar to how variable assignments work in Go’s templating language, which I consider an inspiration for UCL. On the other hand, TCL and Bash scripts, which are also inspirations, require the variable name to be written without the leading dollar sign in assignments. Heck, UCL itself still had constructs where referencing a name for a variable is done so without a leading dollar sign, such as block inputs. And I had no interest in changing that:
proc foo { |x|
echo $x
}
for [1 2 3] { |v| foo $v }
So I made the decision to remove the need for the dollar sign prefix in the set operator. Now, when setting a variable, only the variable name can be used:
msg = "Hello"
echo $msg
In fact, if one were to use the leading dollar sign, the program will fail with an error.
This does have some tradeoffs. The first is that I still need to use the @
prefix for setting pseudo variables, and this change will violate the likeness of how the two look in assignments:
@ans = 123
bla = 234
The second is that this breaks the likeness of how a sub-index looks when reading it, verses how it looks when it’s being modified:
a = [1 2 3]
a.(1) = 4
$a
--> [1 4 3]
$a.(1)
--> 4
(One could argue that the dollar sign prefix makes sense here as the evaluator is dereferencing the list in order to modify the specific index. That’s a good argument, but it feels a little bit too esoteric to justify the confusion it would add).
This sucks, but I think they’re tradeoffs worth making. UCL is more of a command language than a templating language, so when asked to imagine similar languages, I like to think one will respond with TCL or shell-scripts, rather than Go templates.
And honestly, I think I just prefer it this way. I feel that I’m more likely to set regular variables rather than pseudo-variables and indicies. So why not go with the approach that seems nicer if you’re likely to encounter more often.
Finally, I did try support both prefixed and non-prefixed variables in the set operator, but this just felt like I was shying away from making a decision. So it wasn’t long before I scrapped that.
Day 14: twilight
#mbjune

I think I may need to write more long form. It’s easy to dash out a small thought or two like this. It’s quite different trying to organise your thoughts into something larger. Different muscles are being exercised, and it feels like mine have atrophied a little.
Some Morning AI Thoughts
Some contrasting views on the role of AI in creation, highlighting the importance of human creativity and quality over speed and cost-cutting in technological advancements.
Day 13: pathway
#mbjune

Hello there. 🦜


I must admit, I was not expecting much when I plugged my iPad into a HDMI and USB hub splitter. Yet I was pleasantly surprised that it had no trouble extending (well, mirroring) the display and enabling keyboard and mouse. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than I was expecting.

Day 12: hidden
#mbjune

If ute is short for “utility” vehicle, then instead of SUV, we should be calling these vehicles “sports utes”.
🔗 Robert Birming: Blog Inspiration
Very nice collection of links to blogging resources — from ideas and inspirations through to colour and icon packs — from @birming. This stuff is cat nip for me, so I’m sure to enjoy browsing these links.
Speaking of avians, I’m back in Canberra, which can only mean one thing: there will be photos of cockatiels.

Every cafe or eatery at the airport uses an avian or aviation theme. Here’s a way to stand out: nautical theme. Having a fish and chip shop with boats and lighthouses will turn heads.
🔗 You’re not a front-end developer until you’ve… - Nic Chan
Scored 17 in this little quiz. Not bad for a backend developer, although many of the questions universally apply.
Via: Jim Nielsen’s Notes
Day 11: brick
Might be pushing the definition of “brick” for this one. #mbjune

🔗 Science: Cockatoos have learned to operate drinking fountains in Australia
Each placed one or both of its feet on the fountain’s twist handle, then lowered its weight to twist the handle clockwise and prevent it from springing back up.
Amazing.