I’m supposed to be on vacation until the new year.
The vacation bit isn’t going so well. Before I left, a chance to write code in my role as a senior engineer appeared. I’ve been having a ball just being in an actual editor instead of wikis and meetings and legacy code archeology expeditions.
Without needing Slack or Zoom open, I can just work - making the little project as high quality (read: pedantic) as I like.
Your instinct is correct! Hiring and interviewing activity this time of year tapers off by ~40% in early December and that level of activity extends to the second week of January. By the end of January it returns to normal.
I am wrapping up one last article for the year for LWN today, and then splitting the rest of the week between holiday preparations, building a table for my 3D printer, and completely rewiring my server rack (which has become a bit of a rat’s nest)
I’m doing a software design course and just now had an idea for a new tool, a local URL database, that I might try to fiddle out later this week. Otherwise just celebratin’ Hannukah and prepping for Xmas
Visiting parents in Norway. Didn’t bring computer, so am limited to phone and Kindle for the duration. Also really looking forward to a game-night with childhood friends. Still binge-watching the Tally Ho wooden boat rebuild on YouTube.
We did a quiet release last week and are preparing to launch to friends and family. This has been a very hard feature we’ve been working on for three months so I’m very happy to code on some simple tasks before the holidays!
On AccessKit, I’m going to see if I can get live regions working on macOS today. I believe that’s the only functionality currently working on Windows but not macOS, now that macOS support for text editing is merged. My other priority for this week is getting the Unix adapter (implementing AT-SPI) merged. That adapter is being developed by my main volunteer collaborator, but I’ll be quick to review the code when it’s ready.
Well I completely failed in printing my Kindle Scribe case and the connector I needed (must’ve spent 8+ hours of re-slicing and re-leveling). I’m swapping out nozzle sizes and filament. I’ll try the case again in Jan. Didn’t do any Zig.
Feeling a bit uneasy about using graphs in general. I’m too used to trees which aren’t cyclic… Not sure why it’s a mental block for me. Combine this with wanting to implement force-based graph layout and I feel overwhelmed. I have to remind myself not everything needs to be done in a day, or a week, or even a month.
This week is mostly just prepping for Christmas (wrapped gifts yesterday) and trying to keep calm.
This week it’s mostly getting ready for the holidays, but I did manage to finish off a big chunk of that work I was doing on my retro 8-bit BBS-like system for the ZX Spectrum.
I’m well on the way now to implementing an actually usuable message board system talking over Spectranet/TNFS to my server-side components. Here’s a screenshot of the current work in progress: Message wall screenshot.
It’s a lot of fun working on something just for the joy of hacking and creating again. And oh boy, is it a jolt going back from our modern luxuries to the 80s computing world I grew up in. Spectrum BASIC is infuriating at times - it’s so limited and “idiosyncratic” (lovably crap), and the hardware (3.5Mhz Z80, 48Kbyte RAM) wasn’t even that great at the time. But great fun!
So I’m going to fix up a few bugs and add a “reply to post” feature to my server-side API. Then after the holidays I can do a bigger update to the site including hopefully access through a web browser with JSSpeccy.
That part has all been containerised and chucked in k8s and seems to be working well enough but it’s time now to shift gears, chill out and spend some quality time with the family now. I’m looking forward to taking my work mind “off the hook” and hope you all have a restful holiday and a happy new year, too.
I’m supposed to be on vacation until the new year.
The vacation bit isn’t going so well. Before I left, a chance to write code in my role as a senior engineer appeared. I’ve been having a ball just being in an actual editor instead of wikis and meetings and legacy code archeology expeditions.
Without needing Slack or Zoom open, I can just work - making the little project as high quality (read: pedantic) as I like.
I’m loving it.
Living the dream.
Working on an open-source library for identifying PII (private information) in SQL databases.
Seems interesting. Have you made any progress with it?
I made some initial progress, but now I’m not sure that I can dedicate enough time for it.
Would you have use for such a tool?
With all the talk about privacy & especially GDPR, this idea seems very interesting. I am interested in the logic you would follow for such a program.
Yes, to an extent such a tool would be useful for me, esp if this spans across sql dbs (not just for one engine)
Well, there is such a thing already: https://github.com/tokern/piicatcher
My plan was to do something a little better (wider db support, smarter scans, etc.), but perhaps this will already serve you.
Continuing my job hunt, feels like I picked an especially bad time for a mental health break :D
On the side I’ve started learning about Nix more thoroughly and am looking forward to putting down some of it in writing.
Your instinct is correct! Hiring and interviewing activity this time of year tapers off by ~40% in early December and that level of activity extends to the second week of January. By the end of January it returns to normal.
Implementing TLS for the Zig standard library
After work, going skateboarding - a new hobby to get me away from the computer.
I am wrapping up one last article for the year for LWN today, and then splitting the rest of the week between holiday preparations, building a table for my 3D printer, and completely rewiring my server rack (which has become a bit of a rat’s nest)
One more newsletter and I am DONE FOR THE YEAR!
(Maybe two)
I’m doing a software design course and just now had an idea for a new tool, a local URL database, that I might try to fiddle out later this week. Otherwise just celebratin’ Hannukah and prepping for Xmas
Cool, what‘s the course? Would love to do one in the coming weeks/months!
https://mirdin.com/the-advanced-software-design-course/
Full disclosure I’m friends with the instructor.
Packing up and heading off to visit family for a week!
Visiting parents in Norway. Didn’t bring computer, so am limited to phone and Kindle for the duration. Also really looking forward to a game-night with childhood friends. Still binge-watching the Tally Ho wooden boat rebuild on YouTube.
We did a quiet release last week and are preparing to launch to friends and family. This has been a very hard feature we’ve been working on for three months so I’m very happy to code on some simple tasks before the holidays!
On AccessKit, I’m going to see if I can get live regions working on macOS today. I believe that’s the only functionality currently working on Windows but not macOS, now that macOS support for text editing is merged. My other priority for this week is getting the Unix adapter (implementing AT-SPI) merged. That adapter is being developed by my main volunteer collaborator, but I’ll be quick to review the code when it’s ready.
Trying to get through my writing backlog of blog posts. I have over 30 drafts I’ve started and another 30 or so unstarted ideas.
Maybe I’ll finish 3 if I am really, really productive?
Well I completely failed in printing my Kindle Scribe case and the connector I needed (must’ve spent 8+ hours of re-slicing and re-leveling). I’m swapping out nozzle sizes and filament. I’ll try the case again in Jan. Didn’t do any Zig.
Feeling a bit uneasy about using graphs in general. I’m too used to trees which aren’t cyclic… Not sure why it’s a mental block for me. Combine this with wanting to implement force-based graph layout and I feel overwhelmed. I have to remind myself not everything needs to be done in a day, or a week, or even a month.
This week is mostly just prepping for Christmas (wrapped gifts yesterday) and trying to keep calm.
This week it’s mostly getting ready for the holidays, but I did manage to finish off a big chunk of that work I was doing on my retro 8-bit BBS-like system for the ZX Spectrum.
I’m well on the way now to implementing an actually usuable message board system talking over Spectranet/TNFS to my server-side components. Here’s a screenshot of the current work in progress: Message wall screenshot.
It’s a lot of fun working on something just for the joy of hacking and creating again. And oh boy, is it a jolt going back from our modern luxuries to the 80s computing world I grew up in. Spectrum BASIC is infuriating at times - it’s so limited and “idiosyncratic” (lovably crap), and the hardware (3.5Mhz Z80, 48Kbyte RAM) wasn’t even that great at the time. But great fun!
So I’m going to fix up a few bugs and add a “reply to post” feature to my server-side API. Then after the holidays I can do a bigger update to the site including hopefully access through a web browser with JSSpeccy.
That part has all been containerised and chucked in k8s and seems to be working well enough but it’s time now to shift gears, chill out and spend some quality time with the family now. I’m looking forward to taking my work mind “off the hook” and hope you all have a restful holiday and a happy new year, too.
Staring into the abyssal void.