In reply to: episode 8
š Oh hai!
I was interviewed on a podcast!
In reply to: episode 8
š Oh hai!
I was interviewed on a podcast!
In reply to: A simple mess
This is also something people keep getting wrong about Markdown as originally presented. Markdown isnāt a format. Itās a convenience tool that helps you write some of the boringest and commonest parts of HTML easier, and you can easily drop into more wonky HTML at any time.
Yes yes yes yes yes yes!
Markdown isnāt supposed to be a markup language unto itself. It is an intermediary format that usually targets HTML as itās final form.
I remember the days when Kicks Condor used to update regularly. I miss those days.
For a while every post seemed to unearth some new, yet weirder corner of the little internet (maybe not yet the smol web).
There are folks doing similar web archeologyā¦I do some of it myselfā¦but no one does it like Kicks was doing it; there was often a feeling of unknown, but ulterior motive behind the curation — bits building towards a cohesive something.
Perhaps Kicks got lost in the web — out there still?
š±š¦
In reply to: Oatmeal - That one time when Buffy the Vampire Slayer maybe saved my life?
After giving my brain bleed time to heal the neurosurgeon called me back in to hospital; the plan was to reassess, attempt to fix it using the minimally invasive technique that they tried once before, and if that didnāt work, do something a bit more squidgy directly in my brain.
Iāll be honest, the last option sounded totally and completely horrific to me and I was very much not wanting to have to go with the big olā brain surgery. While the doctors seemed confident with that option, they were upfront about the extra risks and that it was sort of the option of last resort.
Last week I went back in and, great news, they think theyāve totally repaired my brain bleed using the minimally invasive method! Iām slated for a diagnostic scan in the fall to double check, but, so far, everything is looking great. I spent a few more nights in ICU and was discharged directly to home where Iāve been chillinā.
All in all Iām feeling super duper lucky, and, while this entire experience has been ⦠letās say a drag ⦠I know that it could have been far worse, and I hope to have it completely behind me soon. So far the main symptoms Iāve faced are ringing ears, fatigue, a bit of difficulty focusing and multi-tasking, occasional low grade headaches, and, since the repair, Iāve developed a lisp. The lisp is a result of the repair itself, and the neurosurgeon thinks that it will probably pass within a few months.
There are too many people to thank directly here, but to all those whoāve supported me and my family throughout this bananas unexpected experience — for realizes — thank you so much. The words of support, well wishes, meals, help with kids and everything have been so deeply felt, and I honestly canāt imagine how I would have navigated this without yaāll.
Hopefully this is my last health update for a long time, and I can go back to posting about forth now!
A secret pleasure of mine in high school was getting home before my parents and watching 30 - 60 minutes of TV. I technically wasnāt allowed to do it, but I suspect they knew I snuck this time whenever I could.
My favorite show to watch in this secreted me-time was Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Of all the episodes 3 have stuck with me the longest — the musical oneā¦because of courseā¦and the pair of episodes: āI Was Made to Love You,ā and the immediately following episode, āThe Body.ā
These two episodes follow the showās core characters as they navigate the death of Joyce Summers, Buffy and Dawnās mom, who is found to have died from a brain aneurysm.
Perhaps because of these episodes Iāve always been weirdly terrified of brain aneurysms and strokes despite having 0 risk factors, and no family history of eitherā¦well, do I have news for you!?
If you ever have a really bad headache totally out of the blue, boy howdy, go doctor!
On Wednesday May 18th I was just starting to lead a meeting over zoom when I was hit with a bananas headache out of absolutely nowhere. Real 0 - 160 kinda shit. I was able to make it through the meeting, at the time I thought the headache was maybe brought on by my staring at a computer for too long or something, but when after a few hours it hadnāt subsided at all I couldnāt stop thinking about Joyce Summers.
tl;dr — I went to the ER where they did a CT scan and found that I had a brain bleed. From there I was taken straight to the ICU and what followed were a whole bunch of scans and really miserable nights in the ICU and ultimately a weee little bit of brain surgery.
Right now — Unfortunately they werenāt able to repair my bleed during surgery because it was too small to reach. Iāve been discharged from the ICU, though, and am home with orders to go about my business but to take it easy. The plan is to reassess in 2 weeksā time and go from there.
So, yeahā¦not really what Iād anticipated for the start of my 33rd year, but, here I am. It could have certainly been faaaaar worse. As of right now Iāve walked away from this thing with some soreness, a low-key persistent headache, and tinnitus. All in all, 0/10, do not recommend. But also, do not muss, if youāve got a wicked bad headache outta the blue go hospital!
Iām toying with the idea of becoming a full time Mac OS System 7 developer.
Edited to add that Iāve had so much fun playing with this implementation of Forth on Mac OS System 7 that I quickly built a little microsite to help archive the info Iāve found about it.
While I wouldnāt say Iām wicked adept at any one language, Iāve dipped my toes into many different languages. Here, I try to roughly recreate my programming language journey.
The web. A marvel, a terror. I started here, more out of ease of access than necessity, but was able to get far enough to make a career out of web dev. I should also add SQL to this list.
Elm is something Iād like to dip my toes into.
I donāt honestly know how I first came to Common Lisp, I think through a blog post, or maybe a cute book. While I donāt use it much these days, I still carry a torch for it in my heart.
I sort of wish Iād never played with SmallTalk. It broke me. SmallTalk opened my eyes to a really integrated development environment.
Clojure remains my white whale. On paper it is the perfect language for me:
But Iāve never felt cozy in it.
Parentheses baaaby! If I was forced to stick to a single language and never touch another, Iād probably pick a schemeā¦the question is then which scheme!?
Racket isnāt strictly a āpureā scheme, but who cares and it can beā¦and has a bananas gigantic library.
Chibi is adorably tiny and the most fully featured R7RS scheme Iāve found.
Chicken has some great docsā¦and is called āchicken,ā I mean, come on!? That is lovely.
I have in recent years become pretty jaded about the state of software and what most software is used forā¦but I love games, so, Lua is pretty rad for making games. Lua is also a really great teaching/learning language.
Yeah, but what if Lua was a lisp-like language?
Iāve found that many programming languages are made or broken by their community. Fennel has one of the friendliest, most supportive communities Iāve ever witnessed in a programming language.
Janet would be another contender for a forever language — it is weird, sort of a Clojure clone, sort of a Lisp, but totally its own thing at the same time. It is tiny, portable, and fits into similar spaces that C doesā¦but also not really. Janet is a beast utterly of its ownā¦also the name of my grandma.
Alright, this was probably me going off the deep endā¦
I adore languages that I can hold entirely in my head. A big thing that helps me hold a language in my head is limited semantics. You donāt get much more limited than Forth!
The ethos at the heart of Forth is clearly articulated by its inventor,
The concept that programming is something that you need special education to do is not right. It is something that is promoted by the priesthood.
ā Chuck Moore
Readers of this blog will have seen me talk about Retro beforeā¦while it makes no sense as a forever languageā¦here I amā¦Iām strickenā¦Iām totally lovesick for it. It is tiny, it is portable, it is well documented, it assumes literate programming as the norm!
Like Forth, this is another system that strives to be pretty much completely understandable. A system that can be held in 1 personās headā¦it also offers everything you need to make little graphical programs and games.
Again, this was me going off the deep end a little bit.
Blergh — remember when I said that SmallTalk broke me? Yeah, that broken-ness really comes to rear its head when I try to use these gigantic enterprise languages that have terrible tooling (Go, C, and C++ are almost passable, but Kotlin and Swift are laughable).
I also once upon a time tried Rust but it literally melted a component on my laptop so I gave up.
I meanā¦did I really make my own programming language? No.Ā But, Guava does carry with it a lot of what Iāve liked about other languages along the way.
So, where next? What next? Iām a habitual breadth over depth kinda person. I wanna say it is time to go deep on one languageā¦butā¦who knows!?
An unexpected visitor came to the tree in our neighborās yard today.
In reply to: ~karlen, "no one will ever read this but..."
~dozens recently introduced me to this series where blog posts that are at least a year old and feature the phrase āno one will ever read this butā are read allowedā¦andā¦it is remarkable.