HN user
https://avi-perl.github.io/dense-printer/
I tend to print a lot of stuff to read while disconnected. This is a tool to help squeeze as much content onto a printed page as possible instead of printing 4 or more pages per sheet.
A good use of Claude slop I'd argue. Currently trying to figure out how to set up the site so that an LLM tasked with printing content through it can figure out how to use it in the best way.
Heads up, I get a 404 on the 30 sec demo link.
I have a box full of film gear and development equipment because, one day, I want to hang a picture of my kids on the wall that I _made_. My photo, on film I developed, printed manually by my hand, hung in a frame I built. I'll get to it some day!
The idea of building a camera like this tickles me the same way. It's fun!
Only a small anecdote, but I'm 2 projects into telling Claude to "make it look like Google podcasts" and getting satisfactory results. Still smells like llm in parts, but overall it is not screaming low effort.
I was hanging out on a slack community of developers where I would commonly respond to questions and chat on the channel for Python. Someone there had a friend with AWS costs flying through the roof and he needed some help from somebody who could understand python. My action on that channel caused him to reach out to me.
Once I solved their issue, they asked me if I could add features to the site. I turned them down and told them they would be better off rewriting it from scratch, which they then hired me to do.
Still working with them 6 years later.
I had a previous career in commercial photography. I spent a lot of time on a Facebook community group for photographers doing the same thing; chatting, being helpful, being willing to share what I knew. I got a significant amount of work through the members of that group and met my wife through those connections as well!
Be nice on the internet, I guess.
Using my real name severely limits what I can post online. This is helpful with my desire to limit my use of social media.
The best part of GOOG411 was that they would connect you to the phone number, free of charge, across borders.
List a business with a Google voice number and you can call in, check messages, and _dial out_ from Google voice. Free international calls!
I was in school in Canada where we had a payphone in a hallway. People heard me randomly saying "Funny Business Name, City State ... Connect me" into the phone so much, it became a running joke.
When I eventually got my own phone, I transferred the number and I still have it.
Thanks for the response!
Another note: in the email, it's totally not clear what I'm "approving" which is not really a huge issue. But it might be nice to include the username in the email.
This is super neat! Here are some of the things I noticed:
My site link of
Avi Perl's personal site!
Shows as
Avi Perl's personal site!
On the edit page, there's no link to my homepage where the links are shown. In fact, it wasn't obvious that that's where I needed to visit in order to see my links. It was a guess that brought me to my page.
The confirmation links are going to spam in Gmail.
Perhaps the confirmation page can have a link to redirect me to my edit page, or my homepage?
With a very long bio, on mobile, the last button is floating over your text on the bottom which doesn't look great.
On mobile, the text on the bottom of the page is also a bit off-kilter in its centering.
Idea: If each entry had its own short name, you could also operate as a URL shorter. If I could add "p" as the "short name" for my personal site, lynx.boo/aviperl/p could function as an alternative to tinyurl. Combined with an option to hide the URL from my homepage, I never need those services again. :)
What happens when you need to reclaim a URL for the site that someone has already set up as a user? As the owner of your about page, I guess I'll find out :D https://lynx.boo/about
On the topic of structured logs, can anyone point me towards where I might learn more about what people have learned over time?
I'm new to the world of querying through my logs, but I can already see a benefit to logging with JSON...
This is what I've defined as a solution for a need of mine for the moment: https://gist.github.com/avi-perl/b173fdc30219155eb9ee4bb3a21...
An easy way to do this that I've used is to cache web requests. This way, I can run the part of the code that gets the data again with say a modification to grab data from additional urls, and I'm not unnecessarily rerunning my existing URLs. With this method, I don't need to modify existing code either, best of both worlds.
For this I've used the requests-cache lib.
Convert your GitHub Gists into a full featured blog and RSS feed.
Example: https://gist.aviperl.me/avi-perl https://gist.aviperl.me/avi-perl/rss
By default it works as a simple redesign of an existing set of gists. But gist hosted configuration files and compiling gist data to a static site can turn it into something much more rich, seo friendly, etc.
I've been doing more or less this with a small pocket size notebook since October. I admit that I initially fell for the romance of the idea and made an impulse purchase, but started to use them a couple of weeks after I bought them.
I tried different formats and pre-planning and have basically made peace with my reality, that I don't know what I'll be doing in it on any given day. So I operate like a log, whatever is next comes next. Sequentially. But I'll also jump to a page, or two-page spread, for notes on a particular project.
Here's what I use:
Moleskine Cahier Journal, Soft Cover, Pocket (3.5" x 5.5") Dotted, Black, 64 Pages (Set of 3) https://a.co/d/9jXRxNt
I also use a 4 color flexion erasable pen, but I can't recommend that since you're liable to lose all your notes if you leave it in a hot car. Not so bad though, it comes back if you stick it in the freezer. No joke.
If you provide me with your username and the id of a secret gist for configuration, I'll add your username to the list of users to precompile pages and use the full features.
I've been working on blog powered entirely by GitHub Gists. https://gist.aviperl.me/
With zero extra effort, you get a simple blog. With configuration via settings files stored in a secret gist or on a gist itself, a rich blogging experience.
A currently hidden feature that is useful is RSS feeds for any GitHub users gists: https://gist.aviperl.me/avi-perl/rss
I'm hoping that the GitHub graphQL API might let me get list of gists with their file content, in which case, no outside build step would be needed to provide the full experience for a GitHub user.
What I mean here by "full experience" is adding a title, image, tags, etc.
Making something _actually useful_. Creating a to-do app teaches me how to use tools, creating a web scraper that sent me an email when clothing my wife missed the chance to buy was back in stock filled me with confidence.
I'm working on a project to create a blog powered entirely by GitHub gists, POC is working but there is lots more to do.
It's an outlet for sharing some small code ideas I have here and there.
On chrome on a phone, selecting Linear does not work, and after selecting it, no changes are possible.
Looks great!
I've particularly enjoyed saving loads of time by having it convert API responses to typescript classes.
And once I was done, asking it to write up some functions for the way they interact worked out very well.
In general, I've made a habit of asking it coding questions (usually how to do something in a complicated framework) before bothering teammates. Probably about 80% success rate.
I have an app that takes 15 minutes to deploy. We use GitHub actions to run the process which includes a build of a next.js site, building containers, creating assets in AWS, installing Python dependencies, and publishing the whole thing.