deckiedan

A few related thoughts from my spiritual tradition...

resist evil, but flee temptation.

Build willpower through disciplines, such as fasting, meditation, stillness.

Think about the larger value that a smaller temptation points to - junk candy food is an echo of the celebration food from a community event - the connection of enjoying delicious food together with others is something beautiful, so invest and look forward to that. How can we have more deep celebration times, and less binge snacking?

Life is complex!

Peace

I end up using

https://derlien.com/ "Disk Inventory X"

regularly to find stuff to clean up.

Massive plus one for Language Transfer. It's well presented, interesting, and kept me engaged. The whole concept is finding connections to language you already know, and gets you thinking in fuller more complex thoughts and sentences really quickly. The audio lessons are free on various podcast platforms / YouTube etc.

I've recently been enjoying Book Overflow https://www.youtube.com/@BookOverflowPod - they're reading and discussing really interesting (programming / software engineering) books, getting interviews with authors etc.

What is the workout you do?

The AI tool report shown to the dean with "85% match" Will be used as "proof".

If you want more proof, then you can take the essay, give it to chatGPT and say, "Please give me a report showing how this essay is written to en by AI."

People treat AI like it's an omniscient god.

Well, right. If I'm using an LLM to create code, I'm going to use all my skill and experience to review and shape the code to standards I'm ok with.

But for people with extremely limited experience, LLMs offer a "create an app by talking!!" Zero understanding required. So they won't know to not leak user PII in JSON responses or have publicly writable endpoints or keeping private keys for external services server side and outside of the code base, etc... Let alone anything more complex.

I just played with townie AI for an hour or so... Very cool! Very fun.

There's still some glitches, occasionally the entire app code would get replaced by the function the LLM was trying to update. I could fix it by telling it that's what had happened, and it would then fill everything in again... Waiting for the entire app to be rewritten each time was a bit annoying.

It got the initial concepts of the app very very quickly running, but then struggled with some CSS stuff, saying it would try a different approach, or apologising for missing things repeatedly...and eventually it told me it would try more radical approaches and wrote online styles... I wonder if the single file approach has limitations in that respect.

Very interesting, very fun to play with.

I'm kind of concerned for security things with LLM written apps - you can ask it to do things and it says yes, without really thinking if it's a good idea or not.

But cool!

And anything which helps with the internet to be full of small independent quirky creative ideas, the better.

I guess also for context, a lot of the code I write is closer to the "house" or even "potatoes".

A one-off script to extract data for a report - potato.

A brochure website for a company that'll be replaced in 6 years, a small house (or even just an interior of a house, or kitchen revamp...).

This is interesting. But still pretty early, right? (As in, no real docs, not ready for publication...)?

It looks like a start of a packages.lock.json kind of tool for dependency resolution eventually?

Or am I missing something?

Also rich patrons supporting artists was how many of the greatest artworks of many civilisations were commissioned for thousands of years...

Is writing software closer to growing potatoes or designing the Sagrada de Familia, or writing the Clarinet Concerto?

I'd argue that writing a web browser is a lot closer in scope to writing a symphony than building a house - at least in audience and durability. In a house's life time, maybe 100 people live in it, and perhaps 2000 people visit it, but a browser, or a symphony, will have an audience of millions.

The market is massively smaller. The impact massively larger.

Ask it to write a sitcom comedy screenplay about a software team asked to do exactly this same situation, but where it goes disastrously wrong. Give enough info to the prompt to make it parody your own company. Make sure it's not offensive.

Then use an AI image generator to generate cartoon pictures for the characters in the screenplay.

Then use an AI voice system to generate all the voices for it.

Then put it all together as a video, present it as a early storyboard concept pitching to them for funding to turn into a full TV series.

This looks beautiful.

I'm a long time vim/neovim user, and have a couple of curious colleagues who I'll be linking to this soon.

I really like the tone of the writing, the visual style, the pacing, the examples.

Maybe having animated GIFs or similar to visualise jumping around might be nice too? (Eg showing the cursor position in the `w` section).

Great work!

I'm really excited for this.

Yes, pyright is fast enough, 99% of the time. But the install story, requiring npm etc, is a bit of a pain.

A rust based version with similar install ease as ruff would be great.

Additionally, if it is a lot faster, I think it should unlock more possibilities for eager search to improve the lsp.

Quite often the pyright lsp doesn't find auto imports - there's just too much many places to search.

I'm following this with great interest!

If I was their security team, I would be fine with them publishing articles about our security set up - as long as it wasn't 100% accurate.

Possibly mention a specific virtualization system, and then run a honeypot version of the above to try and catch directed attacks at it while actually relying on a totally different system...

My day job is Django - and the ipdb based `shell_plus` from the `django_extensions` package is invaluable.[1]

I have a shell open almost all the time, and use it constantly for testing functions, writing queries etc. It drives me crazy watching other Devs change a query, wait for the server to reload and refresh the browser repeatedly, when editing in the REPL is so much faster.

Being able to `dir` and tab complete experimentally is so fast. (I also have this in the ipdb debugger... Also Django extensions has a debugger inside templates which is really nice)

Being able to `%edit 1-20` and have the repl session instantly in my editor to copy paste is fantastic too.

I also use a lot of TDD for tasks that fit that style, mostly where I'm writing business logic or data processing functions... but for exploring data / APIs /queries / data shaping, interactive just feels instantly productive. Once I've got the API or whatever it is to correctly produce the happy path, it's then easy to copy that into the codebase knowing what shape to expect, I can then turn that into unit tests and throw all the weird external data and edge cases at it with reasonable confidence about what should be happening underneath.

It also has a mode to print out all SQL statements it runs underneath your code - which is great for checking that you've not missed a join or something and got n+1 sneaking in

[1] https://django-extensions.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

My parents are both very computer literate (my mum was a programmer, my dad also wrote code & managed database teams...) and they were really good friends with the head teacher at my primary school (UK, 90s).

They worked together with him to write a curriculum they used with the entire teaching staff in our school to learn the systems before the new Windows computers came in to replace the old acorns or BBC micros or whatever, including several "inset" (?) days.

The big problem with all the teaching things at the time was being called "Windows for Dummies" or "Microsoft Office for dummies" or whatever - was that the teachers were really smart people - not dummies at all. So the "you don't understand the computer, therefore you are a dummy" was extremely degrading and put up walls instantly.

How people respond when you teach people as "smart, interested and motivated, but currently still extremely unfamiliar and somewhat apprehensive" compared to "not especially clever, and it's a very complicated thing so don't expect to really understand it" is very different.

I suspect there are a lot of other factors to take into consideration here:

- population growth over that time - percent of people able to afford cars and fuel over that time - % of those numbers that are in London ( and other big cities) - so the number of people able to afford to live in London compared to jobs there... Many people were priced out, and so have to commute, and pollution taxes and parking prices are now there to discourage cars - how much train line maintenance has been dropped, and will be coming up as needing replacement "soon" but not done - how much subsidy the private companies are actually getting still.

...

Trains in the UK are really not great at all... Compared to the rest of Europe anyway.

Maybe part of the problem is that IBS(-like) symptoms, and many "fuzzy" / hard-to-diagnose ones (fatigue, etc) are also caused or exacerbated by anxiety and frustration and emotional distress.

So if I'm not hyperchondriac, but am frustrated and stressed by (x) random symptom or covid related (y), or being off sick w/ "normal" Covid & struggling to regain energy, then if I'm emotionally distressed by it, then may develop IBS and fatigue symptoms on top of that - which then feeds into the loop...

(Said as someone for the last several months currently struggling with a whole bunch of symptoms and not managing to get any helpful diagnosis or area I can work on to improve things...)

https://wagtail.org/blog/wagtail-in-space/

It's not all NASA sites - but used by NASA for some sites.

The wagtail CMS would be a good example of more complex systems built on top of Django. https://wagtail.org/

One of the many more complex sites we've used it to build is https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/ which tracks over 10k companies, 100k+ articles in 15 or so languages. We've also built internal dashboards, live updating forums, donations platforms and so on. Another interesting one might be https://www.achurchnearyou.com/ which is used by the church of England to provide "mini sites" for all their congregations around England, so several thousand church administrators use that every week.

My (young) kids got interested last year, so I learned the algorithms to be able to put it back for them.... And got kinda hooked myself! For me though, I don't have the sequence memory to be able to work it out from scratch. I have the logic, but have to write down each step and it gets very very slow. Learning the "algorithms" from online courses was like learning ballroom dance, for me, and learning increasingly quick and specific solutions for different stages is still satisfying. It's a physical / slight mental challenge, rather than a puzzle to work out.

Match is now supported (as of last week) I believe

We've 2 kids, 8 and 5 - both total book worms (and into Minecraft and biking and dude perfect and all sorts... But they love books).

Find stuff you'll enjoy reading to them. And read to them a lot. You've got the right idea.

MO Williams books are great for that age. The elephant and piggie books are fun, Annette's Baguette is brilliant. The Brambly Hedge books are lovely. Dr Seuss is mostly quite fun. Peter's railway (if they like trains or engineering at all), the Thomas the Tank engine books, the topsy and Tim books are ok...

But get lots of books from the library, charity / thrift stores. Get lots of books to try out, and have available for them to read. And if they aren't interested, you can always thrift them again. Hanging out at the local library can be good. No time pressure, just let them browse and look at whatever random things they want.

For slightly older kids, we've really enjoyed reading Hillary McKay, Terry Pratchett's kids books / short stories, Vivian French's books are great. and some of the classics are great too - EE Milne, the Paddington books...

I think we must be thinking of different things - the quote from Timothy is originally Greek, not Hebrew: "ῥίζα γὰρ πάντων τῶν κακῶν ἐστιν ἡ φιλαργυρία..."

"Root for all the evil is the love-of-money..." Word for word (ish).

The greater context being seeking contentment with your current lot in life, and focusing on becoming good, not rich

For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil...

1 Timothy 6:10 NRSV

So, just for random theological context, money itself isn't good or bad - it's just a convenient token of value... But it's the love of money, ie, the desire to possess and control value that you can use to get things from others, and somehow find security and worth in your possessions that is the big problem. And not "the" root of "all" evil, but "a" root of "all kinds" of evil...

It depends what you're trying to do.

If you want just to "play" and do some tiny projects as low level as reasonable - go for learning C first. You'll learn a lot - and then when you learn rust, the reasons why things are done that way will make a lot of sense. Also, so many low level utils are written in C - having a basic knowledge of it is really useful. But don't try to build a big complex thing in it unless you have a really good reason to (or you fall in love with C. Some people do!)

If you want to actually build something big and complex and for real world use - probably go for Rust.

If you want to build a big production system using an already established tech that's based on C++, learn that. (Eg. one of the C++ based game engines, or a C++ GUI framework, or whatever).

It gets really messy though when you're working with a band (usual case when a drum kit is involved), and multiple mics.

A drum kit may well have 3 or more mics able to "hear" each drum. The direct mic on the drum, possibly a phase reverse mic on the opposite side of the drum, and any overhead mics. Also, any nearby vocal and other instrument mics (if the drums aren't inside a massive isolation box), etc...

And then the speaker distance and direction come into play. Any stage monitors ("foldbacks" in UK English) are usually pointed back at the drum kit - but aren't silent in their reverse (eg towards the audience) and so their sound will be out of phase with at least something. Then the distances - the sound from the drum will be (given a stage size of a few metres) several ms delayed actually getting to the audience. How far are the speakers (and subs) from the audience too? And since subs are almost omnidirectional, what about spill from them back into mics on stage?

Also, if you're working with digital mixing, you have a few fixed ms implicit extra delay everywhere... So getting the mic and drum head to "actually" move in sync is... Unlikely. But then again, with digital you usually have delays available on every channel and can guddle around with that until it's sounds good enough...

Messsssy. In-ear-monitors can help a lot keeping the stage sound cleaner - but all IEMs I've used introduce some more delay, due to processing, analogue-digital-analogue conversion, etc. Which is only a few ms, but for a vocalist, can give the unnerving experience of feeling like their voice is coming from a couple metres away. (Technically the same as coming from a stage monitor, but when the sound is right inside your ears, it can freak some people out).

Live sound is fun! It's all compromise, all fighting the tensions of time against perfectionism against theory against budget against the show must go on, and keeping the musicians and audience happy.

That all said, in my experience, often phase things can be fixed by either flipping phase, or moving a speaker or mic around until it magically works...

"The Bible" isn't really one book, and trying to read it as one is ... messy and hard.

It's a convenient collection of a whole bunch of short books.

I'd think reading individual books would be a better approach.

Story books: (written as narrative, can pretty much be read as is, just with lots of historical context need for some "wtf?" And "why is that a good thing?" Moments) Ruth, Esther, Jonah, possibly Mark and Acts.

poetic stories: ( narrative content, but expressed in Hebrew poems, so form and patterns etc more than just reading for the story) parts of Genesis, Job, parts of John, and Revelation.

History (biased, but still intended to be read as history, contains lots of individual short stories): Parts of Genesis, Exodus, Joshua, Judges, The Samuels, Kings and chronicles collection, some of the prophets, Luke, Acts...

"Wisdom literature" / poetry: Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, song of Solomon...

And a whole bunch of prophecy, laws, other stories, collected letters to people, and a whole bucket of misc.

Genesis & exodus, as a "ancient Israel primary establishing narrative" maybe a good start if you want to read a whole bunch of the Bible. But then skip and read some stories from later on in Jewish history, try reading some of the more famous Psalms, perhaps with some of the commentaries about them, to see what people believe the meanings behind them are, etc. Checking out some "Bible history timelines" may be helpful too, to get a grasp of when and why different bits were written, and to whom.

Reading about Jesus' life, the four gospels basically cover the same stuff, but written to different audiences, with slightly different emphasis (writing to Jews who knew their religious history, compared to writing to non-Jews living in Roman context who were still investigating this new thing, etc). John is kinda poetic, Mark is all about the action, Luke is trying to be methodical, and Matthew brings in a lot of expected past knowledge of things)... Reading them and comparing them can be interesting to see the different perspectives, but any one of them is enough to get the basic idea.

After Jesus, Acts gives the continued story, what the early church did. And then most after that is letters addressing specific people and circumstances. Reading them as "blanket rules for all ages" without knowing who and why they were written, knowing about the context, what was already the culture at the time, etc, makes them really easy to misread parts as endorsing things our culture does differently, compared to critiquing the situation at the time... I guess that's true of all ancient literature.

It's great for teaching kids / teaching yourself / experimenting with game engine / concept stuff.

It has image loading / blitting on screen, etc, input, etc, and you can do a lot with it, but it will be all pretty manual. Which can be a lot of fun. But it's not a "framework" like django is a web-framework. It doesn't give you any higher abstractions at all (sprites, animations, objects, maps / levels, etc...)

I like it, for teaching my son to code, having fun hacking easy oldschool 2d games in it.

Another more "modern" alternative might be https://love2d.org/ - I've played with it a few years ago briefly, and may well look at it again some day. It certainly seems to have a more active community than pygame - but is `lua` not `python`.

Neither have the greatest distribution / mobile story in the world, there are... options... worth checking that stuff before choosing a system to build in if that's important to you.