There's #practice and there's #thinking. No matter what you're doing: #programming, #woodworking, playing #chess, performing #music, doing #martialarts, #gunfighting, playing #tennis, #boxing ... these two things are part of what you're doing. Practice puts tools in your toolbox; but beware […]

#python #rustlang #uv There are so many posts about `uv`, I’m almost certainly preaching to the choir. As a developer, `uv` solves so many of my problems and makes my life so much easier, it has quickly become fundamental to my workflow. In one specific case, I have to deal with packages from […]

I’m sad to see the #undertheradar #podcast come to an end. I’m sad in the same way that I’m sad when I get to the end of a great book. I want more, perhaps unfairly; even though it’s **right** that it ended. @marcoarment and @_Davidsmith shared knowledge and experiences and opinions and we all […]

I have #favoriteactors, and for the most part, they’re obvious choices: #benedictcumberbatch, #vincentdonofrio, I loved the acting skills of #kevinspacey, but he’s off my list. I just don’t like him anymore. Others. But I realized there’s an actor I like that just didn’t rise to the surface […]

They are so many different reasons to write #code in so many different #programminglanguage(s). Here are a few: which is your favorite? Which are you good at? Which is your team good at? Which is supported at your company? Which is best supported in the community? Which is best suited to your […]

Everybody has #fear. Absolutely everybody. #courage is not the absence of fear; it’s having fear but doing the #right thing anyway. When you see courage, remember: that courageous person is exactly like you, they are feeling exactly what you are feeling … except they are choosing **also** to do […]

This was going to be a question for the Fediverse: I use the #HelixEditor. I use a light-colored #theme (dark foreground text on a lighter background; yes, I know that puts me in a narrow group). Currently, I use #onelight, but with some tiny modifications ( […]

#ai thoughts: * Is there an #aibubble (financial)? I believe yes. * Is AI useful? Yes * Are we close to #agi? I believe the predictive models we are using now do not lead directly or immediately to AGI. We might be close, but if we are, it’s via work I haven’t seen yet. * Does AI **understand** […]

My second post regarding programmers' complaints about #change. Here's a thing I see: a project using #git decides to rename a branch from #master to #Main. I actually read a post from someone, about the Rust #rustlang project, complaining that for people who build Rust itself, this will "break […]

I often see people complain about #change in their world. I have two specific programming-related categories I want to comment on. I'll make a separate post for each. The first category of complaints is that people complain when their favorite, or primary, or whatever, #programminglanguage […]

When I was a child, I thought the world had things that were true and things that were false, i.e., things were "black and white". Things happened to me, including reading "Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid" #godel #godelescherbach, and I realized "Oh! There’s a gray area! (and not […]

Man I wish it was easy to filter out #mastodon posts in languages I can’t read. Filtering the poster blocks stuff they double-post which might be in a language I **do** speak, so that’s no good. I am pretty sure Mastodon knows the language of this post. On the other hand, there is translate.

A little bit better every day. It’s all you can do … but also, it’s enough.

notes on switching to Helix from vim https://jvns.ca/blog/2025/10/10/notes-on-switching-to-helix-from-vim/

I guess I’ve been living in this fantasy world where if some task just couldn’t be done during my normal day then maybe I could complete it in the evening after I got home. That just doesn’t seem to be true.

I'm a list guy, I guess. Here's a slightly edited version of my "Always" list. Something I read every morning. * Always push. To do it all, I have to go hard. See the next item, as well. * Practice hard: practice your weaknesses, practice at a level that is hard enough to make you grow! * […]

It’s so easy **not** to be an asshole. Why do so many people choose so badly?

There are deliveries you are expecting where the sender is kind enough to email you when they actually ship. They include a tracking number. You can follow along. There are deliveries when it just arrives without any of that. The worst is when they don’t tell you anything, **and** the lead […]

No other #airpods, Pro or otherwise, has ever fit my ears before. They fall out! That’s just what happens! These new #airpodspro3 fit great (using the small tips), don’t fall out, sound great, do everything they promised, I love them. I’m not getting rid of my #shokz. I love those no less […]

I’ve been saying "no" to things so that I can (just) fit everything that’s left. Turns out, I should say "no" even more. The Japanese principle of "Hara Hachi Bu" #harahachibu says leave even more space! Eat till you’re only 80% full. Only fill 80% of your available productive time with planned […]

I had three heroes * Richard Feynman * Claude Shannon * Kurt Gödel But now that I’ve been reading "The Theory That Wouldn’t Die" (https://www.amazon.com/Theory-That-Would-Not-Die/dp/0300188226), I have a fourth: * Pierre-Simon Laplace

When you have stuff you always need: * You can just always bring it, even if it’s not in a convenient form * It can live in some kind of **inner** container easily moved to the (convenient) bag that’s right for today’s situation * You can have more than one For several things, I have more than […]

So many good things from losing all this weight; but one thing I **don’t** like: I’m cold all the time now!

There’s a strong urge to believe what you wish instead of what you can prove. Computer rumors are a great example. Many rumors have no basis other than being a feature someone wants. They call it "wish casting". We want the world to be black and white. Some given statement is either true or […]

I don’t mind getting rained on. It’s better than running across the parking lot (especially carrying bags), for sure. Except for wearing glasses. And for that I wear a hat.

I talk too much.

Note to self: don't use naive datetimes in Python, just don't. It's so low effort to use UTC internally and you won't have to wonder "WAIT what happens to any of my time deltas when DST kicks in?" at 1am #python

Mastodon led me to this video: https://youtu.be/1A6uPztchXk?si=ZaLgzjnIzNlbS5ux Tremendous differences of opinion in the comments. Vibe coders say it works. Software engineers say it doesn’t. One response complained (and I can’t re-locate the comment so I’m paraphrasing) that AI was his coding […]

My dear friend, This is either burnout or clinical depression, and if you’re feeling like this, (while unfortunately temporarily common in our industry and current world), it is not normal long term - and it will very likely come with serious long term health consequences. You need to seek help!

Practice works! But: you have to practice the parts you’re **bad** at; and you have practice right at the limits of your ability! Just a little more weight than you think you can handle! Harder problems than you’ve solved before! Quicker times. Longer distances. And yet, balanced against doing […]

We so need this today. Moment of Hamilton #hammy

To quote House: "Everybody lies."

I have feelings. First: I disagree with many of the things Charlie Kirk has said and done. Second: Charlie Kirk absolutely deserves to be alive. This is a tragedy for (especially) his family, and for all of his friends, or those who respect him. Third: there are people in the world who will or […]

Um, so have any leftist gun people but me thought about the erm, additional unpleasant logistics of trying to legally ban only trans gun ownership? Because half of states require no or even encourage bg checks for buying a gun through private sales. So they would either be requiring trans status […]

I have a super power. I don’t know how useful it is. On the road, in my car, looking at a car ahead of me: I can tell almost always when that car plans to change lanes. Minutes in advance. It helps a bit. I try to drive in such a way that even if I didn’t know everything would still be perfectly […]

I’m #bipolar. Bad. I wasn’t diagnosed until late in life. For me, bipolar spectrum disorder was a trade off. When you’re manic, your brain is a connection machine. Off the medicine, I don’t get to pick, sometimes I’m the smartest person on Earth. Sometimes I’m in a place so dark it can’t be […]

I might have tooted about this during the original Kickstarter, but this is another one of my favorite things: the #blecaberqu https://caberqu.com/content/8-ble-caberqu. I love this thing. It lives in my laptop bag.

2/2 Second because I’m always working on skills. Whatever the skill, it’s all about practice. When I practice, I start with a written plan that focuses on my weaknesses and how I will address them. How I will know I’m getting better. After practice, I write down what I actually did; what I […]

1/2 I had a great weekend for two reasons. First: my good friend @jammcq and family had their annual CrabFest at daughter Megan’s house. The food was great; the people were great; the conversation was great (except where I went off the rails which I have an unfortunate tendency to do). I have […]

My waist, which as a fat man I measure around the biggest part of my belly, not my actual waist, is down to 41". I cut another 2" off of my #koreessentials belly this morning.

Lot of #python haters out there and every time I read their complaints they are the most shallow, cosmetic, and easily overcome issues that these people obviously got in the first minute of reading about Python without even trying it. There are many good languages around, tuned for many […]

A lot of your beliefs come from how you were raised. If you are raised in a devout family, you are very likely to follow that same religion. No comment here about faith or religion. I was raised in a family that had a lot of cops in it. This gave me a lot of specific beliefs about guns. I’m 60 […]

I can think of lots of different ways to disagree. One way to disagree is beliefs and opinions. I can easily disagree with someone over beliefs and opinions and still get along with that person fine. Another kind of thing you can disagree about is values. If you don’t value human life, if you […]

I have said before, I like to praise the things I like and find useful. I love #obsidian. I use it every day. My use of it is very simple. Even though I’ve been using it for years, I don’t link all that much or use a ton of plugins. A tool I sometimes use on the underlying #markdown files is […]