Favourite Things

Here is a list of some of my favourite things.

1. Chocolate chip mint ice cream
2. Trying new technological devices and apps
3. Audiobooks, like Jane Austen novels
4. Podcasts, like Called to Communion or The Journey Home
5. Wrestling with my son
6. Assisting at Mass
7. Eating out with my wife
8. Harrison Hot Springs
9. Fettuccini Alfredo
10. Computer programming, especially UI projects or small backend projects
11. Reading tech news
12. Producing quick data visualizations
13. Comparison shopping, researching products, reading reviews
14. Conversion stories
15. Tools and books for self-improvement
16. Being a great dad
17. Personal finance
18. Lord of the Rings, Narnia, other imaginative fiction
19. Watching tech documentaries
20. Visiting the beach with my family
21. ChatGPT, GitHub Copilot
22. Computer programming tools

One Mouse

One mouse, two mice.

One house, two hice.

One louse, two lice.

One blouse, two blice.

One nouse, two nice.

One rouse, two rice.

One twouse, two twice.

One ouse, two ice.

"Grug Brained Developer" in a Yoda voice

 A couple of days ago, The Grug Brained Developer was posted to Hacker News. It is a collection of programming wisdom written in a caveman style, like:

Instead grug try to limit damage of big brain developer early in project by giving them thing like UML diagram (not hurt code, probably throw away anyway) or by demanding working demo tomorrow

When I shared the link at work, one of my co-workers said, in her head, she was reading it in a Yoda voice.

Well it turns out I actually do have a speech synthesizer app with a Yoda voice! It's a pricey app called Proloquo4Text and it has a voice called Little Creature which sounds like Yoda.

For your enjoyment, here is the app reading “The Eternal Enemy: Complexity” from The Grug Brained Developer, in a Yoda voice.

 

Wordblender

Maybe I'm the only one in the world who needs this tool, but I made a webpage called Wordblender. You paste in a bunch of text and it will chunk it up into chunks of 3 consecutive words. It then shuffles the chunks and outputs it.

Use this if you have a long piece of text and you don't want to understand the overall meaning, but you do want to scan it for small runs of local meaning that might be interesting to you.

Like I said, pretty unique use case. Leave a comment if you find this useful for some reason.

http://jonathanaquino.com/wordblender.php

Love static typing

I'm currently working in an all-TypeScript codebase, and have also recently been working in Go, and I must say I'm really loving static typing, especially compared to huge JavaScript and Python codebases. Why? Simply because it adds some checks to make sure that the connections between pieces of my code are still sound when I move code around. It doesn't check that everything is correct, but checking connections is an essential sanity check.

Don't follow Marie Kondo's advice to give your books away - you'll regret it

 A couple of  years ago, I read Marie Kondo's The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up and one of its recommendations was to part with a bunch of books you don't use. I dutifully followed it and gave 1 bookshelf of books to Value Village (keeping 1 bookshelf of books for myself).

How I regret that decision.

Years of accumulated books, books I wanted to read someday, books I want to read today – gone, just like that. I warn my fellow bookophiles to not follow Marie Kondo's advice. Do not part with your books. Or if you must part with some, part with the ones you hate. Keep the ones you haven't read yet but plan to read someday, or the ones you plan to re-read someday.

Some books I regret throwing out:

• My undergraduate physics textbook (Halliday and Resnick). In fact, all of my university textbooks. Engineering Physics was my major and I just threw out everything I'd learned. Fortunately bookfinder.com lists an old edition of Halliday and Resnick for $20 so I will at least recoup that.
• A great undergraduate biology textbook – I think it was by Mader.
• Dialogues of St. Catherine of Siena. Never got around to reading much of it, but I'd like to sometime.

What to say during 1:1s

My old manager challenged me to do 1:1s with all 22 engineers in my business unit (RollWorks), and out of that came the following three topics that I would enjoy sharing in any 1:1, whether with someone above me or someone below me.

1. Anything fun done recently or any hobbies. For them and for you. This helps to connect on a personal level, which is always good.
2. Main worries or priorities (or what is currently being worked on). For them and for you. It's good to know someone's top concerns or what they are working on.
3. Anything learned recently or new tools. For them and for you. It's fun to share something you learned recently.

I'm going to try this with 1:1s with my manager.

Annoying basic things that golang lacks

 Go lacks some basic features that I am going to document here:

• abs() for integers
• min() and max() for integers
• sets

Lego City piece count vs price

 It is interesting to look at a chart of Lego piece counts vs. price. The higher the set is, the better the value. Here is a spreadsheet of Lego City piece counts vs. price for November 18, 2020:

Why IntelliJ is better than VSCode

I've been trying to use VSCode as my main text editor for several months, for Python/Java/JavaScript. But there are important things that VSCode can't do that a dedicated IDE can do with ease. For example, I just got this Java exception when running my code in VSCode:

But will VSCode let me click the line to jump to the code? No it won't unfortunately. IntelliJ will. In fact, IntelliJ will even let me set a breakpoint in the code so I can stop and look around.

And I was really hoping that VSCode could serve my editor needs for any language.

Favourite authors and influences

The following authors and people have had a big influence on my life.

• Kent Beck
• Dave Thomas
• Marshall Rosenberg
• Stephen Covey
• Richard Bolles
• Edward Feser
• St. Joseph
• Fr. Jacques Philippe
• John Gottman
• Gordon Neufeld
• Jane Austen
• St. Francis de Sales
• Josef Pieper

Contexts vs Witch

I'm evaluating a couple of Mac task-switcher tools: Witch by ManyTricks and Contexts. I think I'm going to go with Contexts for the following reasons:

Advantages of Witch:

• Can switch to a specific tab in Chrome and some other apps

Advantages of Contexts:

• Faster than Witch. Sometimes Witch takes a few seconds to open for some reason.
• Reliably binds to Command+Tab. When Witch is bound to Command+Tab, sometimes the old switcher opens on Command+Tab, for example, when the Google login screen is being shown. Contexts doesn't have this problem.

My Holland Code

My Holland Code is CIA/CIR. This code is one way of summing up your interests.

My main ones are Conventional and Investigative. Conventional folks are people who like working with data and math and who are detail-oriented. Investigative people love to learn, analyze, and evaluate things. Yes I am detail-oriented and yes I like researching stuff (especially when shopping 🙂).

My secondary ones are Artistic and Realistic. Artistic people like to use their creativity and have artistic abilities. Realistic people like to work with machines and tools. I have a bit of both although they aren't my primary strengths. I am a visual person and I like to show data visually. I also like to use my tools to do minor household repairs.

Great software engineers I love working with

This is a list of some good software engineers I have really enjoyed working with closely. I love how they code and the depth of their knowledge.

• Andrey Sukhachev - Ning
• Thomas Dudziak - Ning
• Jon Hartlaub - Ning
• Henning Schmiedehausen - Ning
• David Sklar - Ning
• Martin Traverso - Ning
• Miguel Lara Encabo - AdRoll
• Emmanuel Garcia - AdRoll
• Piyush Srivastava - AdRoll
• Kushagra Verma - AdRoll
• Nathan Clegg - AdRoll/Ning
• (to be continued)

Meld: A good diff for OSX

Aside from the very expensive Araxis Merge, I think Meld is the best diff for OSX, at least for me, because:

• It has the option to start with two blank textareas that you can paste text into.
• It allows you to edit the textareas.
• It gets the diff right almost all of the time.
• It has optional line wrapping. Some other tools do not have this (such as Beyond Compare).
• It can compare directories.

Check out this example of Sublimerge getting the diff wrong:

It fails to recognize that what is happening is that there were four removals. Meld gets it right:

Beyond Compare I just don't get. I know a lot of people praise it, but it seems buggy to me. For example, when I want to paste in the above example, I paste the code on the left:

And then to paste the code on the right, I click in the middle of the right textarea and press ⌘V, and now things are messed up:

So then I press ⌘A, ⌘V, thinking that will fix it, but it's still messed up:

Only when I press ⌘A, ⌘V on the left side are things finally fixed:

I don't know – there is something funny about the way Beyond Compare handles alignment. Like if the right side is blank, why is it letting me paste on different lines present on the left side, instead of pasting on the first line like a normal empty textarea?

I have also noticed that DeltaWalker gets diffs wrong too - I don't have an example at present, but will provide one when I can.

Slack: green z vs gray z

Today I learned the difference between the green z icon and the gray z icon in Slack:

From Slack support: "Green means they are currently online. The "z" indicates they have Do Not Disturb turned on which prevents notifications popping up on their screen."

Comparison of Surrey BC municipal political parties

This is a comparison of the Surrey BC municipal political parties, drawn from articles in the Surrey Now-Leader newspaper.

	LRT (Light Rail Transit)	Municipal police force instead of RCMP
Surrey First	Go ahead with LRT	Hold a referendum
Safe Surrey Coalition	SkyTrain instead of LRT	Change to municipal police force
Surrey Integrity Now	Go ahead with LRT for Guildford-to-Newton. More consultation for Phase 2.	Weigh options first. Leaning toward keeping RCMP.
Proudly Surrey	Go ahead with LRT + cross-border US bus network
Progressive Sustainable Surrey	Interurban over LRT or SkyTrain
People First Surrey	SkyTrain instead of LRT

Comparison of smart water bottles

	Hidrate Spark	Thermos Smart Lid	Ozmo	H2OPal
Price		60 CAD	90 CAD	133 CAD
CamelCamelCamel reasonable price		60 CAD	90 CAD	133 CAD
Fakespot grade/adjusted rating	F/	B/3	F	A/3.5
Pros	- alert: app, glow	- rechargeable - alert: app - easy setup	- rechargeable - alert: LED, vibration - easy setup	- alert: app
Cons	- paint peels off - quality issues - sync issues - coin battery - complex setup - corny notifications	- quality issues - sync issues - skips sips	- quality issues - sync issues - don't need coffee detection	- quality issues - coin battery
Other reviews	PCMag	PCMag

Handy prioritization categories

I was googling for some tips on prioritizing home-improvement projects, when I came across a great list of prioritized categories for such projects. It occurred to me that the same list of categories could help to prioritize any to-do list, not just home maintenance:

1. Safety
2. Urgent damage
3. Prevent long-term health hazards
4. Maintenance / Prevent long-term damage
5. Money-saving upgrades
6. Low cost, high impact improvements
7. Big nuisance factor
8. Cosmetic improvements

Simply categorize your to-do list into the above categories, then work through them in approximately that order. 

See the original post for more details on each of those priorities.

BC Provincial Election resources

Voters who are unsure of who to vote for should check out these two resources:

• https://votecompass.cbc.ca/ A long questionnaire that helps you to figure out which party your beliefs align with.
• http://www.icanparty.ca/en/bc-may-9th-2017/ A table comparing the platforms of the three major parties.

Parachute Randomized Prioritizing Grid

This tool helps you to rank a list of your preferences by comparing them a pair at a time. The idea is based on Richard Bolles' Prioritizing Grid (as implemented by Beverly Ryle). But one think I don't like about it is that the pairs aren't randomized, which makes the exercise a bit more boring than it has to be. Also once you start getting as high as 30 items, the grid becomes hard to use (the online version scrolls off-screen on my laptop).

So this version presents random pairs to you. It still uses the same sorting scheme (by number of wins). I basically took my Elo Preference Ranker UI and modified/simplified it.

Simply paste in a list of items to rank, one per line (e.g., your favorite skills). Then press "Start ranking!". You will then be presented with a pair of items at a time, and you are asked to choose which is better or more important. As you go, the sorted list will appear at the bottom.

Input Strings

Enter the strings to rank, one per line. Then press "Start ranking!". You will be presented with pairs of strings - click the button corresponding to which item is more important or better.

BMW Cadillac Chevrolet Fiat Ford Honda Infiniti Jeep Land Rover Lexus Mazda Mercedes-Benz Mercury Mini Mitsubishi Saab Suzuki Tesla Toyota Volvo

Sorting

Click the button corresponding to which item is more important or better. You can also press "J" for the left item and "L" for the right.

Something.	Something else.

0 remaining

You have finished comparing all items!

Sorted Output Strings

The sorted strings are:

Slides from "Prayer and Scripture" talk

I gave a half-hour talk on Prayer and Scripture for Couples For Christ, Our Lady of Good Counsel Parish, Surrey BC on March 11, 2017.

The slides are here (38 MB), but won't make sense without the accompanying talk.

Hacker News favourite categories

It can be instructive and fun to figure out what your interests are by looking at what kind of Hacker News articles you link.

I am going to tabulate my interests here - try the same if you like.

• 2 - Work: How to make it better
• 3 - Work: How to make it worse
• 1 - Improvements to software engineering 
• 13 - Promising new coding practices or tools
• 4 - Product successes
• 13 - Product failures
• 3 - Promising new technology
• 3 - Retro tech
• 4 - Low tech
• 4 - Personal self-improvement

Pressure-mounted baby gate comparison

After spending way too many hours on researching this topic, I have come to the conclusion that when looking for a pressure-mounted baby gate, you have the following options:

Price	Example	Comfortably wide door	Latch is easy to open	Gate auto-closes behind you
$40	Regalo Easy Step Walk Thru
$60	Evenflo Easy Walk-Through	Yes
$80	Brica/Munchkin Wood & Steel Designer	Yes	Yes
$100	Munchkin Auto Close Designer	Yes	Yes	Yes

An objective definition of beautiful software

Beautiful software is code that you can add features to while only needing to modify a few lines to allow the change to come in.

So the most beautiful software is code that requires 0 line changes before adding a feature.

But if it requires a handful of line changes, it's still beautiful to me.

Ugly software needs shotgun surgery when a feature needs to be added - changes in a bazillion places.

5-minute journal

I'm trying out a cool thing called the 5-Minute Journal. It is a journal that you buy for $25 CAD (there is also a $5 app, but I think I prefer pen and paper). Basically it is a guided journal that asks you the same set of questions each day (with some variations: inspirational quote, weekly challenge). I have always had trouble keeping a journal, but I think this will really help. 

Turning right on red is tricky

When driving, there are a lot of things you need to consider when turning right on a red light:

• Is there a vehicle going straight?
• Is there a vehicle turning left?
• Is there a cyclist in your blind spot, or crossing either of the crosswalks?
• Is there a pedestrian crossing either of the crosswalks from either side?
• Is the light about to turn green? If yes, is there a pedestrian about to cross, or a cyclist in your blind spot?

It seems like a huge amount of factors to consider.

 

Please, please use a 3-way diff to resolve your git merge conflicts

I would like to stress the importance of using a 3-way diff to resolve merge conflicts. With a 3-way diff, you get:

                     Remote lines            Common ancestor lines            Local lines

It is very important to see the common ancestor, so that you can see exactly what changes were made to the remote file, and what changes were made to the local file. This gives you insight to see how you should combine the remote change with the local change.

I have made this 5-minute video to show you how to use a free 3-way diff called P4Merge (available for Windows and Mac) to resolve your conflicts:

http://screencast.com/t/jagvXzRI

To set up P4Merge with Git, just google for: p4merge git windows or p4merge git mac.

Use Google Sites to create a free website for a business

I used Google Sites to create free websites for a couple of businesses for my friends and family. First, my friend's electrical contractor business: Trivino Electrical Services. Second, my dad's tutorial center: Young Ones.

They have a bunch of average-looking templates that you can use to quickly create the website.

It's free, but if you want a custom domain, you need to pay $10-$20/year to Namecheap or another domain name registrar.

Catholic Lifetime Reading Plan (Sorted by Subject)

Here is Fr. John McCloskey's Catholic Lifetime Reading Plan, sorted by subject:

Catholicism Explained/Theology – Adams – The Spirit of Catholicism
Catholicism Explained/Theology – Bouyer – Spirit and Forms of Protestantism
Catholicism Explained/Theology – Catechism of the Catholic Church
Catholicism Explained/Theology – Hahn – Rome Sweet Home
Catholicism Explained/Theology – Kreeft – Christianity for Modern Pagans
Catholicism Explained/Theology – Newman – Essay on Development of Christian Doctrine
Catholicism Explained/Theology – Ott – Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma
Catholicism Explained/Theology – Pieper – The Four Cardinal Virtues
History and Culture – Belloc – How The Reformation Happened
History and Culture – Belloc – Survivals and New Arrivals
History and Culture – Belloc – The Great Heresies
History and Culture – Carroll – History of Christendom (All Volumes)
History and Culture – Crocker – Triumph
History and Culture – Dawson – Christianity and European Culture
History and Culture – Guardini – End of the Modern World
History and Culture – Hannam – God's Philosophers
History and Culture – Knox – Enthusiasm
History and Culture – Leclercq – Love of Learning and the Desire for God
History and Culture – Walsh – Our Lady of Fatima
Holy Men and Women – Chesterton – St. Francis of Assisi
Holy Men and Women – Day – Long Loneliness
Holy Men and Women – John XXIII – Journal of a Soul
Holy Men and Women – Merton – Seven Storey Mountain
Holy Men and Women – Muggeridge – Something Beautiful for God
Holy Men and Women – Newman – Apologia Pro Vita Sua
Holy Men and Women – Simon Peter – Chevrot
Holy Men and Women – St. Thomas Aquinas – Chesterton
Holy Men and Women – Suarez – Mary of Nazareth
Holy Men and Women – Trochu – Cure of Ars
Holy Men and Women – Wegemer – Thomas More
Holy Men and Women – Weigel – Witness to Hope
Literary Classics – Benson – Lord of the World
Literary Classics – Bernanos – The Diary of a Country Priest
Literary Classics – Cervantes – Don Quixote
Literary Classics – Dante – Divine Comedy
Literary Classics – Eliot – Christianity and Culture
Literary Classics – Endo – Silence
Literary Classics – Hopkins – Hopkins: Poetry and Prose
Literary Classics – Kristen Lavransdatter 1
Literary Classics – Kristen Lavransdatter 2
Literary Classics – Kristen Lavransdatter 3
Literary Classics – Newman – Idea of a University
Literary Classics – O'Connor – Flannery O'Connor: Complete Stories
Literary Classics – Percy – Lost in Cosmos
Literary Classics – Percy – Love in the Ruins
Literary Classics – Sienkiewicz – Quo Vadis
Literary Classics – Tolkien – Lord of Rings
Literary Classics – Waugh – Brideshead Revisited
Misc – Benedict XVI – Day by Day with the Pope
Misc – Benedict XVI – Opera Omnia
Misc – Bennet – The Emotions God Gave You
Misc – Bennet – The Temperament God Gave You
Misc – Enzler – My Other Self
Misc – John Paul II – Opera Omnia
Misc – Masson – Companion Guide to Rome
Misc – Neuhaus – Catholic Matters
Misc – Rice – 50 Questions on the Natural Law
Misc – Sertillanges – Intellectual Life
Misc – Stein – Woman
Misc – The Privilege of Being a Woman – Hildebrand
Spiritual Classics – Augustine – City of God
Spiritual Classics – Augustine – Confessions of St. Augustine
Spiritual Classics – Chesterton – Everlasting Man
Spiritual Classics – Chesterton – Orthodoxy
Spiritual Classics – John of the Cross – Dark Night of the Soul
Spiritual Classics – King's Good Servant but God's First – Monti
Spiritual Classics – Lewis – Mere Christianity
Spiritual Classics – Lewis – Problem with Pain
Spiritual Classics – Lewis – Screwtape Letters
Spiritual Classics – Mother Teresa – Meditations from a Simple Path
Spiritual Classics – Oursler – The Greatest Story Ever Told
Spiritual Classics – St. Catherine – Little Talks with God (modernized version of "The Dialogues")
Spiritual Classics – St. Teresa of Avila – Interior Castle
Spiritual Classics – St. Therese of Lisieux – Story of a Soul
Spiritual Classics – St. Thomas Aquinas – My Way of Life
Spiritual Classics – Teresa of Avila-Way of Perfection
Spiritual Classics – The Lord – Guardini
Spiritual Classics – Transformation – Hildebrand
Spiritual Reading – Aumann – Spiritual Theology
Spiritual Reading – Baur – Frequent Confession
Spiritual Reading – Baur – In Silence with God
Spiritual Reading – Boylan – Difficulties in Mental Prayer
Spiritual Reading – Boylan – Tremendous Lover
Spiritual Reading – Burke – Covenanted Happiness
Spiritual Reading – Caussaude – Abandonment to Divine Providence
Spiritual Reading – Chautard – Soul of Apostolate
Spiritual Reading – Cizek – He Leadeth Me
Spiritual Reading – d'Elbee – I Believe in Love
Spiritual Reading – de la Palma – The Sacred Passion
Spiritual Reading – de Sales – Introduction to Devout Life
Spiritual Reading – de Sales – Treatise on the Love of God
Spiritual Reading – Escriva – Christ is Passing By
Spiritual Reading – Escriva – Way of the Cross
Spiritual Reading – Escriva – Way, Furrow, Forge
Spiritual Reading – Faber – All for Jesus
Spiritual Reading – Garrigou-Lagrange – Three Ages of Interior Life, I
Spiritual Reading – Garrigou-Lagrange – Three Ages of Interior Life, II
Spiritual Reading – Granada – Sinner's Guide
Spiritual Reading – Holzner – Paul of Tarsus
Spiritual Reading – Kelly – Rediscovering Catholicism
Spiritual Reading – Kempis – The Imitation of Christ
Spiritual Reading – Liguori – 12 Steps to Holiness and Salvation
Spiritual Reading – Liguori – The Practice of the Love of God
Spiritual Reading – Liguori – Uniformity with God's Will
Spiritual Reading – Lovasik – The Hidden Power of Kindness
Spiritual Reading – Manzoni – Betrothed
Spiritual Reading – Martinez – True Devotion to the Holy Spirit
Spiritual Reading – Montfort – True Devotion
Spiritual Reading – More – Sadness of Christ
Spiritual Reading – Opera Omnia – (Jacques?) Phillipe
Spiritual Reading – Perquin – Abba Father
Spiritual Reading – Plus – Winning Souls for Christ
Spiritual Reading – Rohrbach – Conversation with Christ
Spiritual Reading – Scupoli – Spiritual Combat
Spiritual Reading – Sheed – Theology for Beginners
Spiritual Reading – Sheed – To Know Christ Jesus
Spiritual Reading – Sheen – Life of Christ
Spiritual Reading – Sheen – Three to Get Married
Spiritual Reading – Tanqueray – Spiritual Life
Spiritual Reading – The Divine Pity – Vann
Spiritual Reading – The Rule of Our Warfare – Newman