• Just updated to Go 1.23.1. It’s so nice being able to upgrade my dev toolchain without having to worry about upgrading anything on our servers: binary executables are binary executables. By far, one of my favourite things about Go.

  • My current work laptop has a Touch Bar, and I think I will miss it a little when I get my next laptop that doesn’t have one. Having the ability to adjust the brightness and volume using a slider is much nicer than frantically pressing buttons. Oh, and also the ability to replace buttons without being stuck with the predefined glyphs. I replaced the Siri button with the Lock Screen button, which I use all the time, and it’s nice being able to see the proper Lock Screen glyph for it.

    That said, those are probably the only nice things about it, and I would probably think otherwise if I wasn’t using an external keyboard with function keys. I’m certainly not using the Touch Bar for anything else, even while using the laptop keyboard.

  • Keep forgetting that making a permalink to a highlighted bit of text on a web-page is a thing. Made such a link in Vivaldi by highlighting the text and selecting “Copy Link to Highlight” from the context menu. Worked like a charm.

  • Working on Jira ticket number CLC-1836. The numerical congruity has not gone unappreciated.

  • New path day. This was little more than a goats track last time I was around here, but was recently widened to something a little more “official.”

    A narrow dirt path winds through a lush green patch of tall trees on either side.
  • Tools And Libraries I Use For Building Web-Apps In Go

    I think I’ve settled on a goto set of tools and libraries for building web-apps in Go. It used to be that I would turn to Buffalo for these sorts of projects, which is sort of a “Ruby on Rails but for Go” type of web framework. But I get the sense that Buffalo is no longer being maintained. And although it was easy to get a project up and running, it was a little difficult to go beyond the CRUD-like layouts that it would generate (or it didn’t motivate me enough to do so). Continue reading →

  • I may never have a site as popular as those I read. I may never be in a situation where I can just rattle off a domain as if it was a business card. But it’s nice to have the option to do so. And, for me at least, it’s probably the best answer I can give when asked by someone “where is the best place to find you online," in lieu of giving out some social media handle. And I think, on the whole, that’s a good thing.

  • I don’t have a blog post today. The well’s been pretty dry all week if I’m honest. Usually at times like these, I hold off posting until the evening, hoping that something worth writing about will come by before the day’s end. We’ll see if that happens today. But if not… well, there’s this. 🤷

  • 📺 Office Space (1999)

    Title: Office Space Metadata: 1999 - Mike Judge Score: Good Review: Definitely worthy of it's cult following. Plus now I get all the movie references.
  • It’s a shame XML namespaces are not as widely used as they probably should be. I still see XML documents that escape nested XML documents as if they were strings, something XML namespaces were meant to be a solution for.

  • There’s code spelunking, which can be rather interesting. Where you explore the depths of code and decisions past made and wonder at why it is and how it all works.

    Then there’s Jira spelunking, where you’re just fighting with your rock pick.

  • Reading about all the annoying permission notifications in MacOS Sequoias, I wonder how Apple devs actually experience this. Would they be using tools that would require them to record their screen as part of their job? And if so, are they experiencing any of these monthly notifications?

    Might be that they’re using all in-house software for anything that would do this. I hear Apple’s pretty famous for doing so — going as so far as making an iOS app to order from Cafe Macs. And since Apple trusts software from Apple, it might be that they aren’t seeing these notifications nearly as often as their customers, who can’t run such privileged software themselves1.

    I guess this is a roundabout way of say that maybe employees from Apple, up and down the org chart, need to run more third-party software on their work machines. That way they can get the full “experience” of using software stuck with throwing up a notification every month to do it’s job.

    In any case, I think I’ll hold out on upgrading to MacOS Sequoias for the foreseeable future.


    1. It’s either that, or they are seeing these notifications and are told to just deal with it, which is probably worse. ↩︎

  • I made a different version of this image earlier today. Glad I found the discipline to do what needed to be done, giving me the opportunity to change it to this:

    Auto-generated description: A mock-up of a reminder for a tax return due on 24 September 2024, with options to Mark Complete or Snooze, with a mouse cursor hovering over the Mark Complete option, giving the sense that the user will click it.
  • Made an update to one of my projects today that’s been going on for 11 years, way back when I was still learning Go. Might be one of the oldest projects I’m still maintaining. Lots of Java-isms in there.

  • This week’s earworms, two tracks by Lee Rosevere: Should I Run, and Midnight Runner. 🎵

    Album cover for Should I Run, by Lee Rosevere. It depicts a person holding a guitar is standing on a reflective surface with a colourful, abstract background. Album cover for Midnight Runner, by Lee Rosevere.  It depicts a retro-style video game cartridge, similar to that used for Atari 7600 games, which features the title 'Synthergy' with artwork depicting a futuristic cityscape and a large planet in the background.
  • 🧑‍💻 New post on TIL Computer: HTMX And POST Redirects

  • Just one of those days when I’m reminded that no matter how you think your users will use your system, there’s always someone that’ll push it to the breaking point. It’s also one of those days where I learnt that you can be a member of up to 113 groups in Active Directory.

  • Ok, this is strange. My work MacBook screen occasionally freezes when I interact with windows. It can’t be the screen as the mouse cursor moves just fine. But when I type or scroll inside a window, it just stops refreshing for a few seconds. Interestingly, the second display doesn’t have this issue.

  • Clip sharing is now available in Pocketcasts for Android! I was looking forward to this feature since I heard it was coming (this was why I was poking around About screens). Here’s my inaugural clip: a segment of Sharp Tech that I absolutely agree with. 🎙️

  • Weekly Update - 22 Sept 2024

    No preface today. Let’s move on to the update. Cyber Burger Cyber Burger now has sound! I started added some basic sound effects to the laser and the items flying across the screen. They may change, depending on how I find them after a while, but it’s a start. I do like how Pico-8 makes these easy to make: select a waveform, then just draw out the pitch and volume graphically: Continue reading →

  • And that swoop-o-meter just keeps going up. We’re up to 4 noisy miners now. 👷‍♂️

  • 🔗 Hire HTML and CSS people

    Every problem at every company I’ve ever worked at eventually boils down to “please dear god can we just hire people who know how to write HTML and CSS.”

    I know bugger all about the world of front-end web development. But seeing how quickly it takes me to get changes made and deployed using just these technologies, verses dealing with the mountain of JavaScript for an SPA, leaves me convinced that those that embrace HTML and CSS have a significant advantage over those that don’t.

  • I couldn’t for the life of me find out how to use HTMX with import maps. Importing it into a JavaScript module seems to activate all the HTML attributes just fine, but I had no access to the htmx global, not even through the window object. Hope support for this is added soon.

  • Huh, that’s interesting. I just noticed that there’s an option to go to Automattic jobs page at the bottom of Pocketcast’s About screen. Nothing wrong with that. In fact, it may make for a good way to find developers. Who else would go to the About screen of mobile apps? 😄

    The bottom of the About screen in Pocketcasts for Android, with icons of websites and apps are displayed above sections labeled 'Legal and more' and 'Work with us' on a mobile interface.
  • 📺 Dune: Part 2 (2024)

    Title: Dune: Part 2 Metadata: 2024 - Denis Villeneuve Score: Decent Review: I'll start by saying that I enjoyed it. It was a very good movie. I'd be hesitant to say that it's a great one. Partly because I found it to be a little too epic: it could've done more with less. And partly because I felt that certain plot moments lacked prior establishment, like why certain family weapon systems were where they were. But it's certainly a very well done movie, and I would watch it again.