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Current Project Update
Hmm, another long gap between posts. A little unexpected, but there’s an explanation for this: between setting up Forgejo and making the occasional update to Blogging Tools, I haven’t been doing any project work. Well, at least nothing involving code. What I have been doing is trying my hand at interactive fiction, using Evergreen by Big River Games. Well, okay, it’s not completely without code: there is a bit of JavaScript involved for powering the “interactive” logic part. Continue reading →
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A lot will be happening this coming week. In fact, it feels like the whole year has been building up to it. Mum and Dad will be hosting some guests coming in from overseas, at the same time some distance cousins from Italy are over here. And I’ll be hosting some birds “flying in” from Canberra (they’re being driven in actually). Routines will be distrupted, but I think it’s going to be pretty good.
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Mesdames et messieurs: voici la tentative d’aujourd’hui de passer à un petit-déjeuner plus minimaliste: deux grands cafés au lait.
Ladies and gentlemen: presenting today’s attempt to move to a more minimalist breakfast: two large cappuccinos.
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Just listening to Ben Thompson’s and Andrew Sharp’s hot takes on baseball on the latest episode of Sharp Tech. My suggestion to Ben would be to try watching a game of test cricket some day. Sounds to me like they share many of the same attributes that Ben likes about baseball. 😄
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Reddit’s decision to allow only Google to index their site will probably mean I’ll be seeing them far less often than I do — which is almost never anyway, and generally from the results of a search. So I’m recording this screenshot, which I call “Reddit in the results”, for posterity.
Edit: Turns out Ecosia sources some of their index from Google, so these Reddit links will likely remain in my searches. I guess that makes this post unnecessary. I’m going to keep it up though, for posterity of my unnecessary effort to post for posterity. 😄
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Why did I eat the breakfast I did today? I told myself I wasn’t going to, as it tended to make me nauseous sometimes. Well, an hour later and here we are: mild nausea. 🤦♂️
Need to work on that self control thing people talk about. The aroma of baked goods at the cafe was the thing that got me today, though. Maybe I should start wearing a nose clip.
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Go Feature Request: A 'Rest' Operator for Literals
Here’s a feature request for Go: shamelessly copying JavaScript and adding support for the “rest” operator in literals. Go does have a rest operator, but it only works in function calls. I was writing a unit test today and I was thinking to myself that it would be nice to use this operator in both slice and struct literals as well. This could be useful for making copies of values without modifying the originals. Continue reading →
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I hear Robb and John are looking for a new term for the bringer of snacks for Ruminate. Allow me to throw my suggestion into the ring. It might be difficult to get at first, but trust me, it’ll make sense after saying it a few times.
Okay.
You ready?
Better strap in: it’s going to get a little mind-blowy around here.
Okay, here it is:
It’s snack-plier.
Get it? Snack…plier. The snacks supplier. What does a snack-plier do? They supply snacks. They are the snack supply person. Their whole purpose in their endeavour is to ensure the supply of snacks to those that are requiring snacks.
There it is: snack-plier. Yeah, I told you it’d be good. 😉
(Okay, I think I’ve embarrassed myself enough today. 😂)
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Was talking to a fellow colleague today and he mentioned that he’s recently started a blog on Bear Blog. He was reluctant to share the URL to it though, which I can understand. I’m not in the habit of sharing mine with people I know.
Anyway, if J. C. happens to stumble upon this blog, hey! 👋
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A Follow-Up To Mockless Unit Testing
I’m sure everyone’s dying to hear how the mockless unit tests are going. It’s been almost two months since we started this service, and we’re smack bang in the middle of brownfield iterative development: adding new features to existing ones, fixing bugs, etc. So it seems like now is a good time to reflect on whether this approach is working or not. And so far, it’s been going quite well. The amount of code we have to modify when refactoring or changing existing behaviour is dramatically smaller than before. Continue reading →
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Every so often, Goland gets into a weird state where it completely forgets about symbols from a certain package. It’s not every package, and the build might run perfectly fine. Yet when you try to do any code completion from this package, it says it cannot find symbols. It’s very strange.
Clearing the cache and restarting seems to be the only way to resolve this. I’m about to do this for the second time today.
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It’s going to be a lovely day today. Perfect day to just sit in an office and do work. 🧑💻
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Networking is hard. This remark applies to every form of networking you can think of.
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This day in work spam: anyone care for some “world knowledge information”? 😏
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Preparing the second room for a couple of house guests that’ll be coming next week. 🦜
They get a little funny around mirrors so I’d had to cover the wardrobe with newspaper. Hope it holds.
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🔗 Major Windows BSOD issue hits banks, airlines, and TV broadcasters
Oof! I feel bad for all those Window sys-admins who’s weekend has just been ruined.
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Maybe the key to a happy career in software engineering is: keep the number of systems you have admin access to as low as you can. 😛
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Had a go at recreating the last song Anders Enger Jensen wrote for 8 Bit Keys, since it’s one that I like quite a bit. Here’s a YouTube link to the original. This one was done in Logic Pro, and has a little more of the typical synth leads than the more brassy sound Anders Enger Jensen used.
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📺 Everybody’s Free (to Make Websites)
One word: this!
Edit: Kev Quirk shared a link to the post by Sarah Joy, who wrote the narration for this video.
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Learnt lots of fascinating things about how servers are catalogued in data centres today.
I learnt that when racks are advertised as “24U”, for example, that “U” refers to “unit”. Saying a device is a 2U means it takes up two units of vertical space. Something taking up “half a rack” means that it’s half the width of a unit, and there’s space to mount two of them across.
I also learnt that when numbering rack units, you start from the bottom, give that unit the number 1, and literally/metaphorically go up from there.
Finally, I learnt that the above is pretty much the only thing that’s standard about cataloguing server locations. There’s no standard for numbering devices going across the rack, and apart from floor numbers, room numbers, and maybe aisle and rack numbers — assigned by the data centre itself — you’re on your own to come up with your own standard for the rest.
So there’s plenty of opportunities for those keen to set internal standards for the organisations they work in. 😄
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Got asked to come up with a way of representing some data today. Before diving into a design, I thought of finding out whether a standard existed. I couldn’t find one, and when I asked those in the know, they confirmed that no such standard exists. That’s good news! No chance of an accidental 927.
