Personal blog with some tech, some ranting and random extra bits.
1. Yep, another "I rebuilt the blog" post. Apparently, the most likely time for me to update my own corner of the web is when I need to update how I post things into my corner of the web. This post is intended less as a "life status" post, and more specific to the core details around the blog itself, and the new process that I've been building to manage it. It may get a little tangentially…
It's been nearly two years since my last post, and I'm due for a status update. Seems like it's standard practice for me to remember that this exists every couple of years, so I'm glad for anyone willing to read and be patient with me. 1. What's changed? 2024 was a tumultuous year. Shortly after my last post (still technically 2023) I was part of my second RIF-style layoff, and hit the job market…
I've been meaning to come back to this space and give it the standard periodic cleaning (as has been done in the past a couple of times ). 1. What's changed? Since the last post in 2021 (which I'm super proud of, it was the best-performing post I've had), I've helped raise a kid to 2 years old (he was 1 month old when that last post landed), changed jobs (went through a layoff, and found new…
1. TODO: fix image links TL;DR: Rust on ARM64 Lambda: check out my example repo I've been a hobbyist Rust developer for a while now, playing with random tools and mostly having false starts on projects that I'd like to build, but then the energy to do so wanes before I can complete them. Because of that, I always look for new applications for Rust to fit somewhere in my day-to-day, so that I can…
1. TODO fix broken image links I made my first loaf of bread last Saturday. I've been watching a lot of "The Great British Bakeoff" (or "Baking Show" if you're in the US, because of trademark reasons ). Watching people on your television make intricate, creative, and most importantly delicious-looking baked goods, the desire to try it yourself becomes irresistable. Both my wife and I have tried…
I will fully admit that I grew up comfortable working on a computer without a GUI. From my early days, I had an old computer that I mainly used to play games (some things never change, but current ones don't come on 5 1/4" floppies); in order to get those games to run, I learned from my Mom how to access the correct drive, and the commands to run in order to start up the game. Today, even though…
1. TODO fix image links Solving these problems has been more difficult than I originally imagined - these aren't your FizzBuzz-level problems; they're asking for a little bit more (especially the second halves). I got a little bit of a head start on day three, as I'm three hours behind the release of the problems, and that means I get to have some time before bed to think about them. This proved…
Welcome back! Today, we're continuing the Advent of Code challenges. I found these challenges through the awesome people I've found at the dev.to community, which has been embracing these challenges, providing discussion boards, and more. 1. Day 2, Problem the First The long-and-short of the second day's problem is thus: You are given a list of box IDs, which are series of letters. In order to…
Spurred on by: a lack of posting in this space, the chance to show off the new backend/theme to my blog (I did work on this while nobody was looking, and started building an RSS feeed!), and after finding this Tweet by Ali Spittel , I decided that doing this "Advent of Code" was something to do. First, it gives me a nice thing to practice on. Second, it gives me a reason to make some frequent…
TL;DR: Building on basic email, and with the advent of Mastodon, XMPP, Matrix and more, using and building federated networks could bring immesurable improvements to the Internet. 1. On Walled Gardens One of the more controversial decisions I've made for myself in the past few years was to take myself off of the Facebook platform. While this makes it far harder for friends and family to scout me…
I'm flying a lot more as part of my current job. As I write this, I'm on a flight from Seattle to Salt Lake City (first of a connection). I enjoy the fact that I can connect to the internet while going over 500 MPH at nearly 30,000 feet in the air - it's a wonder of science that I can do these things. However, sometimes the cost of getting the in-flight internet is a little over-the-top. Most of…
Late-ish last year (around November, if memory serves), I read about a new OS project which allowed its users a stark departure from traditional Linux methods. Called Nixos , the unique claim that it brought to the table was that the system configuration was managed declaratively, through functional configuration files. This includes things like package management, services executed, and user…
tags: metablog, systems, whoops I've identified that a considerable time has gone by since the last update. I'm going to put some adequate time into resolving that this month and into the future. I've been sitting on a couple of topics that I want to dig into (regarding how I handle email and some work I've been doing with Clojure ). In the interim, I'll leave you with a little anecdote/tale of…
In order to keep practicing and make sure I keep sharp on what I'm learning, I like to dig through problem sets and write solutions for them. At first, the best resource for these was Project Euler , but as time went on, new projects came about that presented problems in slightly different ways: Codewars gamifies the process a bit, by rating the difficulty of each item; those determine the amount…
I've been working on trying to teach myself Rust for the past 4 months or so. It's been slow-going, because I'm having to teach myself things that would have been common knowledge for anyone with previous experience doing systems-level programming in C or C++. Instead, this will be more or less of a brain dump of a rubyist that is picking up some systems-level knowledge. 1. String I/O Coming from…
I don't know if it's the digital form of spring cleaning, or if there's a standing need to clean things up and keep them looking nicely, but I found it time this weekend to update the visual and functional aspects of my blog. With that being said, welcome to ballpointcarrot.net, version…4, I think? I haven't done a terribly good job of keeping an active archive, and haven't consulted the…
So, I traded in my work laptop today to replace it with a new one. I'm glad I made the switch, as there were things that I didn't need on the old one, and I didn't want to have to mess with a major upgrade path and the inevitable breaks that were to come with it. Additionally, my workflow and suite of tools works better with the new hardware (I've switched to an Ubuntu laptop from an OSX one), and…
1. New Site Layout! Hey everyone! After taking time to look through and see what it would take to maintain the old ballpointcarrot.net site (residing on a mostly-dormant 1-dyno Heroku install), I've decided to forgo it and run everything on Octopress. Let me know if you have positives/negatives to say about the changes. I feel it's a positive step, and it's one less account to keep open for me.…
1. Background I often fall back to my (now well-worn) copy of The Pragmatic Programmer to take a look at things I can do to hone my abilities as a programmer. Recently, the two rules that have most recently hit me as things I haven't put much focus on are Invest Regularly in Your Knowledge Portfolio , and There Are No Final Decisions . In a fit of Christmas downime enegry, I decided to incorporate…
So, I guess on 30 April 2013, Posterous Spaces was shuttered. You should see what's there now . Then, a full three months later, someone tells me that ballpointcarrot.net isn't functioning. I figure, "I can check it when I find some time. It's been busy." Cue almost a month after that, and I find that Posterous is gone (as is the content on the old blog). Now, I'm working to rebuild and reset…