Sam Easterby-Smith

We are having an archives day (and getting rid of much dead weight)… trying not to get too distracted by treasures.

Yesterday’s micro-project:

Shed soundsystem, using an amp and speakers that have been mouldering in the garage, with a spare pi for streaming, and no DAC just a plug in the headphone port, POE powered.

It works and it rocks, it didn’t involve spending any money, and it doesn’t really need to be any better than that.

There was a moment when I thought the amp or speakers might be knackered - as the right channel was not happening. But it was just the cabling, hooray.

What metric would you use to rate software engineers?

Wrong answers only.

Had a dream in which for some strange reason my family owned a large department store and we had moved in to the empty top floor. The roof was leaky and there were some very odd sculptures.
Downstairs was still a shop, full of treasure.
There were really exciting lifts including a triangular one.

Got myself an ADB-USB Wombat from BMOW to I can type like it’s 1987.

This was the keyboard I grew up with, but I had forgotten all the peculiarities. The arrow key layout is so weird. I love the caps lock position in the bottom left corner. There’s no right-control/option. And the home key bumps… are on the middle finger! Really nice feel to it though.

@matt2@mastodon.social you’ll never guess what management trotted out in an email today… 💀

@jsl@hachyderm.io ouch.

Today at work I was trying to argue that instead of having two different forks of the API code - one for mobile and one for web, we could actually just have one.

Then I remember that I’m talking to enterprise architects, and that I am in fact myself a certified enterprise architect, and what we really need is 6 more confusingly intersecting globs of unmaintainable shit.

I’ve probably got to interview some people for dev jobs soon.

I’m minded to include an open-ended “what do you think of AI” or “how do you think AI is changing things” question… to assess people on their critical thinking.

Is that really mean?

@billgoats@bitbang.social (Zack Polanski voice) “people shouldn’t have to work insanely hard to enjoy nice things” 💚

Oh Apple. I don’t want agentic AI vibe coding in Xcode. I want playgrounds to work. And not to suddenly decide that they can’t cope with using a Date as state in a view.

@srol@mellified.men coolbidad here. It sounds like exactly the kind of thing I’d make for my 10yo.

@jamesthomson@mastodon.social aren’t we just! It’s always so lovely when the third most valuable company in the world wants to extract a bit more wealth.

Got around to upgrading this mastodon instance 🙌

Remember the ancient wisdom:

When replacement part says “standard size” old part will be other size.

… I thought I could be clever and swap out the gas lift on my chair for a shorter one to match my short legs, but of course I ordered the standard diameter - and it needs a weird narrow one.

@drlucyrogers@mastodon.social oh lovely, I’m sending my parents.

@opencage@en.osm.town @atlefren@snabelen.no if we are allowed “Norwegian” then we must also be allowed “🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 English Channel” #fridaygeotivia

Is it just me or do other readers of fiction get the jarring when you think a scene is set at night and then realise a few pages in that it’s broad daylight and have to retroactively adjust your whole imagining?

@kianryan@oldbytes.space I’ve definitely not been taken out for enough keen dinners by our various suppliers of turnkey enterprise solutions.

@matthew@mastodon.me.uk I strongly suspect you would have passed the critical thinking and expressing opinions test 😘

@jen@cultofshiv.wtf I think that’s the caveat, making clear that thinking within the organisation is mixed, and I’m looking for an honest opinion rather than what they think I want to hear.

@josh@appdot.net fuck yes. 👏 here’s sending all the solidarity, love, hope, strength.

@geektoybox@3dp.chat gah I should sort that out too 😭 there’s a bunch of photos and videos on insta here: https://www.instagram.com/clocklet?igsh=NzlzMDYwYjNqbXRl&utm_source=qr

@opencage@en.osm.town 🇮🇳 Indian Ocean???? #fridaygeotivia

@luna@pony.social weirdly enough I remembered all the 80s fuss about E102 (tartrazine) purportedly causing hyperactivity/adhd, while staring vacantly at a bottle of squash yesterday.

@gary_bbgames@mstdn.games full of nonsense. I’m waiting to see if I get elected as a councillor next week, as that’s going to affect what kind of thing I want to do (and is a part time job in itself).

@geektoybox@3dp.chat sweet. I have a list as long as the hills of things I’d like to do with it, both hardware and software, but it got put on ice due to work and children.

@ashley@digipres.club oh yes. Good shout.

@gary_bbgames@mstdn.games @geektoybox@3dp.chat @josefprusa@mas.to the source code including the KiCad stuff for it all is here: https://github.com/samscam/clocklet

I haven’t done much work on it recently, but you’re very welcome to fork/contribute/borrow. MIT license, go wild.

Fellow tech workers: what proportion of your normal working day is *meetings*?

@nevyn@mas.to @ctietze@mastodon.social oh gawd yes. I worked on the Times (newspaper) for the iPad launch-day release. Flaky af from a technical point of view, but such a fun design. Properly felt like the print newspaper but magically interactive. Great team, so much creativity. Happy times.

The week felt very stressful.

Today (Saturday) was quite nice: we did some gardening, explored the storage treasures, went to the park to play on the skate ramps, got ice cream, and then ruined it all by getting Maccys.

I am such a pushover and should have just said no.

@emaytch@mastodon.social same. All the hoopy froods need one.

Totally broke most of the layers on my large and complex #qgis project that I was trying to clean up a bit *before* putting it in a git repository.

Because I'm a fool.

It's ok, I can mostly remember how it worked - and I'm sure it will be better in the long run.

@matt2@mastodon.social yup. It rocked my own productivity metrics down to zero while I wrote some extremely disappointed emails.