Another cool thing about Microsoft edge for GitHub users
Another cool thing about Microsoft Edge (in addition to my post before) is you can select some code on GitHub then choose Ask Copilot, and it will explain whatever you selected on the right:
Engineering beautiful software | jon aquino labs | personal blog |
Another cool thing about Microsoft Edge (in addition to my post before) is you can select some code on GitHub then choose Ask Copilot, and it will explain whatever you selected on the right:
posted by Jonathan at 7/30/2024 03:54:00 p.m. | 0 comments
I'm really liking the Microsoft Edge browser on Mac:
posted by Jonathan at 3/30/2024 12:12:00 a.m. | 0 comments
At work I asked our Confluence (wiki) AI, "What does BADF stand for?" It answered
BAMDF stands for Bidder Advertiser Metadata Framework
But I couldn't find “Bidder Advertiser” anywhere in our wiki.
It turns out this was completely wrong. My coworkers told me it actually stands for "Binary Augmented MDF".
To work around the hallucination problem, maybe AIs should prefix everything they say with “I think that...” or “It seems to me that…” instead of sounding 100% certain all the time.
posted by Jonathan at 2/10/2024 02:38:00 p.m. | 0 comments
posted by Jonathan at 12/31/2023 08:53:00 p.m. | 0 comments
posted by Jonathan at 12/03/2023 10:02:00 p.m. | 0 comments
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.
posted by Jonathan at 8/14/2022 04:51:00 p.m. | 0 comments
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.
posted by Jonathan at 6/23/2022 05:49:00 p.m. | 0 comments
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.
posted by Jonathan at 5/13/2021 12:10:00 a.m. | 2 comments
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.
posted by Jonathan at 3/05/2021 09:48:00 a.m. | 0 comments
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:
posted by Jonathan at 1/24/2021 02:40:00 p.m. | 1 comments
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.
posted by Jonathan at 12/29/2020 11:42:00 p.m. | 0 comments
Go lacks some basic features that I am going to document here:
posted by Jonathan at 12/23/2020 11:06:00 a.m. | 2 comments
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:
posted by Jonathan at 11/18/2020 09:28:00 a.m. | 0 comments
posted by Jonathan at 6/05/2020 10:49:00 p.m. | 2 comments
posted by Jonathan at 3/07/2020 12:28:00 a.m. | 0 comments
posted by Jonathan at 2/10/2020 07:55:00 p.m. | 1 comments
posted by Jonathan at 1/19/2020 04:20:00 p.m. | 0 comments
posted by Jonathan at 1/19/2020 12:43:00 a.m. | 0 comments
posted by Jonathan at 11/29/2018 10:44:00 p.m. | 0 comments
posted by Jonathan at 11/09/2018 03:28:00 p.m. | 0 comments
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 |
posted by Jonathan at 9/22/2018 10:35:00 p.m. | 0 comments
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 |
posted by Jonathan at 2/24/2018 12:47:00 a.m. | 0 comments
posted by Jonathan at 2/08/2018 08:11:00 p.m. | 0 comments
Voters who are unsure of who to vote for should check out these two resources:
posted by Jonathan at 4/29/2017 08:54:00 a.m. | 0 comments
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.
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!
The sorted strings are:
posted by Jonathan at 4/01/2017 01:25:00 p.m. | 1 comments
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.
posted by Jonathan at 3/11/2017 10:03:00 p.m. | 0 comments
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.
posted by Jonathan at 1/30/2017 07:37:00 p.m. | 0 comments
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 |
posted by Jonathan at 1/30/2017 07:31:00 p.m. | 0 comments
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.
posted by Jonathan at 12/29/2016 12:53:00 a.m. | 0 comments