RE: https://mastodon.social/@gastonrampersad/116871958640610738
Today I learned whitep4nth3r's a Mancunian (honorary or otherwise); and I can definitely understand her closing argument here. There once was a time I was considering devrel, but I don't think it would've ended well:
"I do not want to be perceived. For being perceived is breaking me, and I need to put myself back together."
Might start using this as a more general excuse. (I'm up by 0530 every day, but the point still applies.)
On this day of Murica's semiquincentennial, get you some geography education.
🗺️ 4 July 2026
5/5 countries in 5/13 guesses
🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢
https://whereabouts.earth/daily/
#Whereabouts
I just realised something: in order to finish the last section of my post on Pong Wars, I need to write about keeping and displaying the score. Which means converting from number to string, on a Commodore 64 where you can't just ask the CPU to "divide by 10".
I need a third digression, into the algorithm for binary long division. That's gonna take a while...
Y'all asked for it, here it is. 23 minutes of me talking about Hypertext Coffeepot Control Protocol, at the WeAreDevelopers World Congress 2023. [There's a little AV hiccup at the start, no stress]
Brewing Tea Over The Internet: https://makertube.net/w/qDQcycqnd2izzhMnH88xfv
The majority have spoken: looks like I'll be uploading to Makertube (as soon as I get an account verified)...
So I found video of my talk on HTCPCP-TEA and the history of HTTP requests, given at WeAreDevelopers Berlin 2023; looks like the organisers never put it up on YouTube or anywhere, just on their own archive pages. What should I do with this video file?
[Aside: I don't even know what's happening with my accent in this presentation, do I turn Canadian when I talk on stage?]
HomeAssistant is great. I have my Zigbee thermostat hooked in, and you can _see_ when I opened the back door for an hour this morning to let the heat out.
So in computer science, we have this concept of a "stack": a chunk of memory where you can hold onto things temporarily, on a last-in-first-out model. Think of it like a stack of boxes: you put boxes on the top of the stack, you take them back off the top, and the last one you put on is the first off again.
The brain's working memory can be thought of in the same way. Say you're clipping your fingernails, and you get a phone call from the doctor; while you're talking, the doorbell rings because a package has shown up. In order, you'd:
- Put down the clippers to pick up the phone [Push to the stack];
- Ask the doc to hold for a second while you get the door [Push];
- Get handed the package;
- [Pop off the stack] Finish up with the doctor;
- [Pop] Back to clipping your nails.
It's my theory that in (my personal manifestation of?) #ADHD this stack is either unreliable or missing entirely: I got distracted while clipping my nails at some point this week, and now my right pinky has a much longer nail than the others.
(This ramble also brought to you by the heatwave: it's nearly midnight, for cryin' out loud.)
Well, we now know which happened first: Raining Tacos hit 100m views, after fourteen years.
RE: https://social.wildeboer.net/@jwildeboer/116818036243274509
Back when I was on Reddit, most people knew me as the maintainer of Decronym: a bot that would wander into comment threads on a bunch of technical/spaceflight subreddits, and explain the acronyms used (based on a community-specific database). What you may not know is that I left Reddit, but Decronym's still around and doing its job; it's also expanded to the Selfhosted comm on Lemmy.
It's possible that Decronym is the single most impactful thing I've ever written, and it's a two-hour hack of a PHP script. Don't let anyone tell you a quick hack isn't useful.
Interesting new failure mode on Mastodon Web: a long piece of attached media has resized to full browser width, and has partially landed under the sidebar.
I _expect_ it's because I'm running a build of Vivaldi 6.9 from years ago, but fun all the same.
Heatwave story from yesterday: a store had put an old full-height chiller out on the pavement, evidently broken beyond repair. As I'm driving past, I see a shirtless man open the chiller door and step inside, just in case it was by some miracle still cold inside.
I double check in the rear-view, and he's stepped back out: nope, definitely busted.
Near the local high school, on Greaves St, runs a line of classic English semi-detached houses. As I walk up from the junction with the main road, I pass the conjoined houses at numbers 1 and 3, then 5 and 7, then 9 and 11.
Where I'd expect to find numbers 13 and 15, there's just an empty field. Not a huge plot (these are English houses after all) but there's definitely no house here. As I pass, my gaze runs over the grass to the tree line at the back of where the garden would've been.
Looking back, I see a small paved area at the front of number 13's plot, perhaps enough space to park a mid-sized car. And I see a full set of council-issued trash bins, with new stickers stating "13 Greaves St": cardboard, aluminium, general waste. This empty plot... pays council tax?
I keep walking up the street, until I hear a heavy door close somewhere behind me. Glancing behind, I see no-one outside their house; I stop for a second.
The lid on the cardboard bin at number 13 opens, and closes again. I hear ...something land inside as it closes: beer can? The sound of the door comes again. The sun continues to shine on the empty grass field.
Whoever, or whatever, it is that lives in the impossible house at number 13: they can expect a letter from the council about sorting their trash.
[Inspired by a real empty field where a number 13 should be, on a street in my town, that has labelled bins outside]
Almost done with the mammoth blog post about the writing of Pong Wars in Commodore 64 assembly, after another surprising burst of writing yesterday. Reading back through, I note a potential issue:
The tone is conversational, which is good and fine, but it's specifically like the reader and I are going on this journey to write a program together: the word "we" appears 160 times [so far] and "our" another 55. To quote from near the bottom:
"That almost gets us what we need: we can detect that the field has been hit, we can bounce off, but the block that's been hit doesn't change colour."
Is this ..._too_ conversational?
Something stupid and bilingual just popped into my head, let's see if it works...
The year is 2032, and the fascist Reform government of the UK is taking a leaf out of Idi Amin's book for the 60th anniversary of the expulsion of all south Asians from Uganda: they're doing the same here, giving us 90 days to leave.
British ICE (they couldn't come up with a better name) has started knocking on doors across Bradford, and demanding proof of Englishness; they're on my block, then they come to my door.
How can I help you, I say, employing my deepest English sarcasm.
"You know what we're up to, papers won't help you."
I don't need papers, I was born 'ere; I'm as English as you'll get, I can quote Python with the best of 'em.
"...Go on then."
نہیں!
"Alright, fine, you're off the hook. We'll put you down as a Knight of Ni."
[Edited to add: I should perhaps explain that it's Urdu for "no".]
OP: We're hiring in NYC, what do you guys think would be a decent salary range for this spec of job?
Reply: No idea, but NYC's a lovely place. Last time I went, Central Park looked great.
Me, the reader: Now be honest, do you think that helped the discussion?
RE: https://mastodon.social/@rustfoundation/116766374035508159
A rare win for my ADHD: I've been meaning to learn Rust and do Fun And Exciting Things with it, but I never get a block of more than five minutes to look at it before something else pops into mind.
If they're partnering with Altman's grift, I can drop the whole thing.
RE: https://mastodon.social/@wawn/116748613278433358
Based on these rates of travel, two important thresholds are likely to be crossed this summer:
Voyager 1 will reach one light day's distance;
The original Raining Tacos video will reach 100 million views: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npjF032TDDQ
