Progress

I've extracted paren-matching from my ad-hoc utility for sidenote parsing from last week and published it into my list of semi-ad-hoc utils. I'm going to use it even moreEVEN MORE! from now on.
I've often thought I should have a list of "things I know", or "code snippets that are useful", and now I finally have that. It's the list of public utils from above. This is a random collection of stuff I know and use from time to time. It has no structure, no guiding principle except I'll find what I'm looking for, and you may use it for whatever. Just don't expect anything out of it, or stability, or whatever.

Some things are developing, work-wise, so I might have a lot to do soon.

Recorded a brilliant podcast episode with Jochen and Dominik, on Python dictionaries.

Also, I started working with a new customer, and that is always exciting.

PlantEd

NTS

Excellent progress this week: implemented a third behaviour and it integrates excellently with the first two. We need to tweak the curves a bit, and make selection a bit more modular, and a tad more random, but that's easy. Now we need to add a final behaviour and then we can move to the memory/preference layer.

Articles

• Map-making for historians: "Instead of putting a screenshot of Google Maps into your paper, here's a simple 50-step process of creating simple maps". I'd love to understand QGIS&co better, but this is probably not the right time for people to try it: while creating a powerpoint presentation for their paper.
  In fact, I think it would be worthwhile to have something resembling this process, but "prepared", ie. one-click or even web-based. And it would be really awesome to have historical map data as well, where rivers and cities and ancient roads where. Ah, one can dream...
• Natural Earth Data: "Natural Earth is a public domain map dataset available at 1:10m, 1:50m, and 1:110 million scales. Featuring tightly integrated vector and raster data, with Natural Earth you can make a variety of visually pleasing, well-crafted maps with cartography or GIS software."
• QGIS Online Course for Classical Studies: A much more comprehensive tutorial for QGIS and co.
• The Greedy Doctor Problem?: Trying to coordinate in a world without trust is a hard problem. Here are some "solutions" that'll only cost twice as much, are only three times as complicated and will work in 1/2 of the cases (probably). This is not to mock these specific solutions, it's just that a world with trust is much more efficient, so finding solutions to the more global problem of creating trust, like reiterated problems or social systems, is probably the better way to go.
• No notebook is perfect, but the reMarkable comes really close: It is nice to read things you agree with, and sometimes that's the only reason to read something.
• Your Fingerprint Can Be Hacked For $5. Here’s How.: Nothing new here, fingerprints are super-easy to obtain and to reproduce, even in such a way that fools fingerprint readers. I have no idea about the security consequences of this fact.
• # Static Duck Typing in Python with Protocols: What a wonderful way to do duck-typing, by specificing behaviour-as-type, instead of type-as-type.
• I test in prod: I think this relates very much to chaos engineering, where you crash your own systems to prove that you cannot crash your own systems.
• This Tool Protects Your Private Data While You Browse: "The tool uses the PageGraph tracing framework [...] to follow the behavior of privacy-harming scripts throughout the browser engine. SugarCoat scans this data to identify when and how the scripts talk to Web Platform APIs that expose privacy-sensitive data." I have no idea what to think about this.
• The World's Deadliest Thing — Anthony Warner, The Angry Chef: What Botox is and why it is awful/some.
• Explaining explaining: a quick guide on explanatory writing: It's a bit too formulaic, but ok.
• Decentralized Woo Hoo: "The essence of the fallacy is based on either an intentional attempt to construct a post-hoc rationalisation for a crackpot idea through a specious relation to the rigour of physics; or it is an unintentional category error that attempts to use reasoning applicable for one strata of discourse and apply it to a different level, where such models cannot make predictions. In technology we have an almost identical phenomenon surrounding the word decentralized."
• Funnel: "How independent developers tend to start at the wrong end of marketing, and a more structural way of thinking about marketing."
• HackerNews Readings: data mining HN comments on book recommendations and then aggregating them. Very interesting idea, very boring results: Clean Code, The Martian, Pragmatic Programmer, ...
• https://tech.trivago.com/2015/10/06/python_receipt_parser/: a bit of an oldie, and the results are... well... not that great.
• Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma when jumping from aircraft: randomized controlled trial: Satirical paper on how to cheat on RCTs.
• Omicron Variant Post #1: We're F***ed, It's Never Over: Alright, we're going to have an omicron wave, and it's going to be bad. Let's start stocking up on toilet paper already...

Libraries, programming, etc

• Shader school: I wish I had time for such a thing like this...
• Optimule: vehicle routing service
• OpenMeteo: Hourly 7-day forecast worldwide, for non-commercial use

Books

• Dark Matter by Blake Crouch (100%). Still not my favourite book, but it has a nice little twist about 3/4 of the way through the book.
• Information Rules: A strategic guide to the Network Economy by Carl Shapiro (0%): definitely for the to-read listThe only thing I dislike about it is the name of the author.

Games

• Prey, still great.
• MAXR (link) with Dominik: deep strategy game with a stupid old interface.

Recipes

• Caramel Brownies: Very tasty, very gooey, very nice. Not for every day, but for some days.

Other media

• Blender für Einsteiger: I wish I had time for such a thing like this...