My simple note-taking system for Emacs (without Org)
Interesting article on one person's approach to taking and keeping notes in Emacs without faffing about with org-mode
Eddie Van Halen guitar support patent
Contains what might be the best illustration in a patent ever.
Cyclone Scheme
New implementation of Scheme with a compiler for building standalone applications.
The Correct Horse Battery Staple password generator
Fun but also useful password generator, in the style of the famous xkcd strip.
www.nearlyfreespeech.net
Very affordable website hosting. Might have a look at this the next time I want to spin up a low-content site or custom blog or something.
How One Guy Ruined #Hacktoberfest2020
How Hacktoberfest2020 turned into a spammy shitshow...
Conversation about digitising lab notebooks
The article this links to is interesting enough, but what's really interesting is some of the discussion about how people do, or think people should, approach keeping electronic lab notebooks.
I feel you can tell which are the comments from software developers who don't really appreciate the requirements; they are, understandably, the ones who focus on change histories and the like, without picking up on the fact that generally you don't ever want people going back and changing anything.
As someone who works with people who need to deal with this, it's an interesting read and follows a lot of my journey from ignorance on the subject to some appreciation of the issues.
Indexing outgoing blog links
Nice idea that I might have to try myself some time: index and analyse the outgoing links from blog posts to see what it is you link to the most.
The Ecological Impact of High-performance Computing in Astrophysics
Or, put another way, which languages are killing the planet because they use more power on a system? Possibly. Perhaps.
Spoiler: FORTRAN is better than Python.
EICAR test QR
Hilarious hack that can mess with all sorts of systems.
Static type checking in Lisp
Article about experimenting with static type checking in Common Lisp.
The process
Reminds me of a couple of such Usenet and mailing lists projects I was party to back in the late 90s and early 2000s. Great set of tracks on this one too.
Conscientious Software
Software needs to grow up and become responsible for itself and its own future by participating in its own installation and customization, maintaining its own health, and adapting itself to new circumstances, new users, and new uses. To create such software will require us to change some of our underlying assumptions about how we write programs. A promising approach seems to be to separate software that does the work (allopoietic) from software that keeps the system alive (autopoietic).
When you browse Instagram and find former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott's passport number
Amusing story on a number of levels; and with a serious message too.
noise.sh
Odd and rather fun digital sound spredsheet.
AVIF has landed
Interesting article about a newer image file format; well worth paying attention to from a web-development perspective.
Some macOS tips
Some I knew, some I didn't. Some handy tips and pointers to useful apps for macOS.
pycodestyle
Another linter of sorts for Python, with an emphasis on code style as defined in PEP 8. I tend to use pylint for linting but this seems to be in favour when using lsp-mode in Emacs.
"Director of AI at Tesla" apparently doesn't VC or backup
So the "Director of AI at Tesla" appears to be in the habit of not committing code for at least 2 months at a time, and doesn't do backups... O_o
Getting started with ASDF
Handy little blog post that provides an introduction to getting started with ASDF.
Using rapid prototyping to choose a bioinformatics workflow management system
Paper about how a group selected a workflow management system. I'm not sure it's that worthy of a writeup, at least not as seen via the lens of a software developer, but it's a useful perspective to read it to get some insight into how others approach this.
Configuring Emacs, lsp-mode and the python language server. - vxlabs
Blog post that explains how to get lsp for Python going with Emacs -- especially useful in this case as it relates to virtual environments, pipenv, and also projectile; all things that I make use of for major Python development.
Bug that stops me from saving or collecting/delivering orders : DeathStranding
This sounds similar to the issue I keep running in with my saved game. Need to dive into this a bit more to see if I can cause the effect without even building the road.
The Medley Interlisp Project
A project to revive and make available Medley Interlisp.
Problems with Emacs on macOS
A Twitter thread about issues with Emacs on macOS and how to work around or plain solve them.
Honestly, as someone who's 100% Emacs/macOS, I'd not really noticed any of these -- but I always run Emacs as a fullscreen application in its own desktop space.
Emacs 27.1 released
Emacs 27.1 is released into the wild.
How to Create Custom Keyboard Shortcuts for Any Mac App
Simple description of how to create custom keyboard shortcuts for a specific application on macOS.
SLIME reference card
Handy reference card OF SLIME commands.
QAnon Is More Important Than You Think - The Atlantic
A history of "QAnon".
Image aspect ratios in tweets
A handy quick guide to which aspect ratios work best in Tweets.