I have been off this week spending some family time as it is half-term for my children. So this is going to be a shorter issue than normal this week.
We seemed to have started a tradition of going to the theatre in this half-term break. Most schools in the UK don't break up until next week which means prices are generally a little cheaper than they would normally be (although not by much).
This week we went to see Back to the Future: The Musical. We had fairly good seats, we were a little further back than I would have liked to sit (Stalls Row U) so the dress circle obscured the very top of the stage, but there wasn't really much to see there anyway.
The best seats in the house were probably only 7 rows in front of ours, but would have cost twice the price which is a bit more than I was willing to pay.
If you have been following along with this newsletter or watched some of my YouTube videos you will know that BTTF is one of my all-time favourite films, so this was pretty special. I have to say it didn't disappoint, it is definitely worth seeing if you get the chance.
Speaking of going back in time, for the UK our clocks go back by 1 hour today (I believe the US have to wait another week). One of the benefits of being in the UK is that for the next 6 months our local time matches UTC. This is great as I don't have to do that bit of mental math every time I am looking at system logs, database times or anything else that uses UTC.
❤️ Picks of the Week #
🛠️ Tool — Hacker Typer — For those times when you need to look busy!! It is funny how management still think most of our time is spent writing lots of code. Most of the effort in programming is in thinking what to code and not the code itself.
📝 Article — Did Automattic commit open source theft? — As Gergely has said in this article it is the equivalent of Apple taking ownership of an app like Spotify and stopping them from making any money from it.
📝 Article — Using Coolify for deploying 11ty — I still need to get around to trying Coolify. It is on my now very long to-do list. Maybe I should try deploying a blog with it like Lewis has done.
📝 Article — AI engineers claim new algorithm reduces AI power consumption by 95% — I have been using AI more and more, even for work related tasks. At the end of the day you can use it to save yourself a significant amount of time it is worth it. One of the main issues people have with AI is its energy consumption. If that can be reduced then it would definitely be a good thing.
💬 Discussion — Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've ever written? — I think useless programs are great fun. I sometimes forget what it is like to just program something for the fun of it. I used to make all sorts of games and silly things as a kid when I was learning to program.
📝 Article — MVCC, the part of PostgreSQL we hate the most (2023) — I have been using PostgreSQL a lot recently, and I really like it. I especially like how well it copes with JSON blobs. This post is worth a read in case you are thinking of settling on PostgreSQL for a big production system.
📝 Article — Debugging my wife's alarm clock — I love fixing things, so I found this post quite interesting. Sadly as everything gets more complicated and cheaper, it is getting harder to fix things. In my head, this is one of the reasons why I want to get 3D printer, so I can fix things, but I can't justify the expense.
📝 Article — Waiting for Apple's Intelligence — Since switching over to the Apple HomePod's instead of Amazon Echo's I have noticed that Siri does seem like Alexa's dimwitted cousin. I used to ask Alexa the odd question to save me getting my phone out, but Siri just prompts me to do just that. Hopefully with Apple Intelligence Siri will get that required IQ boost. See also: Siri Sucks, Even By Apple's Numbers.
📝 Article — An amateur historian has discovered a long-lost short story by Bram Stoker — I have one of those fancy Penguin Classics of Dracula as I really enjoyed it when I read it. I must admit I have never read any of Stoker's other works. It is funny to think that there could be other works by famous authors sitting in old newspaper issues.
🎬 Video — First images from Euclid are in — I love space, it is one of the reasons I studied Physics. There are some fantastic images taken with Euclid.
📝 Article — Hammers — I am sure Dave is making an analogy to programming here. I can relate to this while working at some companies. Generally your job as a programming is to automate yourself out of a job. The better you are at your job the sooner you have to look for the next one.
🛠️ Tool — Rider is now free for non-commercial use — I have been fairly happy with VS Code for my professional development needs, but I have been tempted to try Rider. However, at £142 for the first year I am not sure what benefit it has over VS Code. Given this is now free for non-commercial use I will give it a try on my personal projects and see if the professional licence is worth it.
💬 Quote of the Week #
Yet it turns out to be perilously easy to over-invest in this instrumental relationship to time to focus exclusively on where you're headed, at the expense of focusing on where you are — with the result that you find yourself living mentally in the future, locating the 'real' value of your life at some time that you haven’t yet reached, and never will.
From Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman.
Top comments (0)