• Might be the only way I’ll learn another language is I put the spoken training audio to music, preferably something that can pass as a entry to Eurovision.

  • Linux administration is quite fun. I don’t usually get an opportunity to do it as part of my day-to-day, so it’s always a joy having a task that involves SSH and interacting with a shell. 🐧

    Auto-generated description: A penguin is sitting in a gaming chair and typing on a colorful keyboard in front of three computer monitors displaying code. The caption on the image reads: L33t H4x0rf
  • 📺 Fallout: Season 1 (2024)

    Quick review of Fallout: Series 1 (2024), by Graham Wagner. Score: Not For Me. This might be a bounce. I'm aware of the game (although I never played it myself) so I had hopes for an interesting story. And yeah, the plot is good. But the visuals are just a little too graphic for me. I couldn't make it through the second episode. Which is a shame, because I'm quite impressed by the production quality: writing, acting, cinematography; they're all very good. Maybe I should try the game.
  • 👨‍💻 New post on Linux over at Coding Bits: Packaging Services With Systemd

  • More Tools For Blogging Tool

    Spent the last week working on Blogging Tool. I want to get as much done as a I can before motivation begins to wain, and it begins languishing like every other project I’ve worked on. Not sure I can stop that, but I think I can get the big ticket items in there so it’ll be useful to me while I start work on something else. I do have plans for some new tools for Blogging Tool: making it easier to make Lightbox Gallery was just the start. Continue reading →

  • Oof! These mornings have been really cold this last week. Had to bring out my wool and possum fur gloves for the walk to the cafe in 0.5°C weather.

  • 🔗 Adding Github-Style Markdown Alerts to Eleventy

    GitHub has alerts (aka callouts) Markdown support where the syntax looks like [Obsidian’s.]

    So apparently, if we were using Github instead of Gitlab, I could’ve had it all. 😏

  • One other thing I found this morning during my exploration of Markdown and Asciidoc is that many tools have a problem with JSON code blocks containing JavaScript-like comments. They’re reported as syntax errors, and sometimes they break the syntax highlighting. They’re still included in the rendered HTML, but it feels to me like the tools do so begrudgingly. Gitlab even marks them up with a red background colour.

    Why so strict? The code blocks are for human consumption, and it’s really useful to annotate them occasionally. I always find myself adding remarks like “this is the new line”; or removing large, irrelevant chunk of JSON and replacing it with an ellipsis indicating that I’ve done so.

    I know that some Markdown parsers support line annotations, but each one has a different syntax, and they don’t work for every annotation I want to make. But you know what does? Comments! I know how to write them, they’re easy to add, and they’re the same everywhere. Just let me use them in blocks of JSON code, please.

    Oh, and also let me add trailing commas too.

  • Asciidoc, Markdown, And Having It All

    Took a brief look at Asciidoc this morning. This is for that Markdown document I’ve been writing in Obsidian. I’ve been sharing it with others using PDF exports, but it’s importance has grown to a point where I need to start properly maintaining a change log. And also… sharing via PDF exports? What is this? Microsoft Word in the 2000s? So I’m hoping to move it to a Gitlab repo. Gitlab does support Markdown with integrated Mermaid diagrams, but not Obsidian’s extension for callouts. Continue reading →

  • Must say I enjoyed The Rest Is History’s recent podcast on Dragons. They go into how these mythical beasts developed over the years, how they’re seen differently in different cultures, and how they entered the mainstream. Just watch out for the odd spoiler for House of the Dragon series 1. 🎙️

  • Eight months in and I’m still enjoying writing technical documents in Obsidian. I’ve never really appreciated how well it works for this form of writing. I wish we were using this for our knowledge base, instead of Confluence.

  • Key ring.

    Image of a keychain with the phrase 'Everyone I know has gone to Europe and all I got is all this work to do' with stars below Europe, and laptop and briefcase emoji below 'Work to do'
  • It’s always after you commit to a deadline that you find the tasks that you forgot to do.

  • I think if I ever created a Tetris game for the TI-83 graphing calculator, I would call it “Tetris Instruments.”

  • My Position On Blocking AI Web Crawlers

    I’m seeing a lot of posts online about sites and hosting platforms blocking web crawlers used for AI training. I can completely understand their position, and fully support them: it’s their site and they can do what they want. Allow me to lay my cards on the table. My current position is to allow these crawlers to access my content. I’m choosing to opt in, or rather, not to opt out. Continue reading →

  • Finally did something today that I should’ve done a long time ago: buy a UPS. Hopefully power outages will no longer bring down my Mac Mini server while I’m away (power is usually quite reliable when I’m home, but as soon as I leave for any extended period of time… 🪫).

    A box containing a Digitech 650VA Line Interactive Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) is placed on a wooden kitchen table.
  • Sometimes I wonder how and why my work email address got onto various B2B marketing email lists. “Want to buy some network gear, or setup a meeting with our account manager?” What? No! Even if I wanted to, that’s not a decision I’m authorised to make.

  • In today’s demonstration of the gulf between taste and ability, may I present my attempt at fixing the fence extension:

    Auto-generated description: A partially damaged wooden fence with a makeshift repair tied together using green string and an olive tree branch protruding through the slats.

    Part of the challenge was getting to it. I had to hack out a path through the overgrown beds:

    Auto-generated description: A fenced backyard features dense, overgrown plants with long, slender leaves amid a paved ground.

    Trust me when I say that this is an improvement. 😅

  • Checked out of the Cockatiel Cafe and heading home to Melbourne. Always a little melancholy leaving Canberra, but I’m sure to be back soon enough. As for the “residents” I was looking after, I’ll be seeing them again real soon. More posts then I’m sure.

    Two cockatiels, one white and the other yellow, perched on a cage in a room.
  • One of these days, I’m going to make change to a Dockerfile or a Github workflow, and it’s going to work the first time.

  • 🔗 How the “Nutbush” became Australia’s unofficial national dance

    It’s amusing to grow up thinking everyone did this up until a few years ago, when someone from overseas told me they never learnt this dance. Anyway, this is totally a thing. Last wedding I attended, we absolutely did the Nutbush. 😄

  • Been asked to do a routine task today. This is the fifth time I’ve started it, the fifth time I said to myself “hmm, I should probably automate this,” and the fifth time I just did it manually. Now wondering if that was time well spent.

    Two columns, the left one with the heading 'This Universe' and five evenly sized boxes with the label 'Nah, it'll take too long. I'll do it next time', the right one with the heading 'Alternate Universe' with one large box with 250% the height of the left boxes with the label 'Build the thing' , and six small boxes taking up 50% the height of the left boxes
  • Blogging Gallery Tool

    Oof! It’s been a while, hasn’t it. Not sure why I expected my side-project work to continue while I’m here in Canberra. Feels like a waste of a trip to go somewhere — well, not “unique”, I’ve been here before; but different — and expect to spend all your time indoors writing code. Maybe a choice I would’ve made when I was younger, but now? Hmm, better to spend my time outdoors, “touching grass”. Continue reading →

  • MacOS has cat, but not tac. Fortunately, Vim came to the rescue with this command:

    :global/^/move 0
    

    Source: Superuser

  • Thinking About Plugins In Go

    Thought I’d give Go’s plugin package a try for something. Seems to works fine for the absolutely simple things. But start importing any dependencies and it becomes a non-starter. You start seeing these sorts of error messages when you try to load the plugin: plugin was built with a different version of package golang.org/x/sys/unix Looks like the host and plugins need to have exactly the same dependencies. To be fair, the package documentation says as much, and also states that the best use of plugins is for dynamically loaded modules build from the same source. Continue reading →