Here are some of the most interesting things I learned at DjangoCon EU 2025 in Dublin, Ireland, partially written with the help of AI: link to talks My list of the best talks are at the bottom. Me at DjangoCon EU 2025! Database How to lock DB rows from Django : select_for_update locks a row prior to making changes, ensuring data consistency in concurrent environments. Move to BigInt Primary Keys…
The empty tree wells. Post planting selfie. --> I went home for Christmas, and came back to SF to find that the trees I had planted had their nursery stake, and a regular stake removed. The nursery stake was actually a good thing to remove since you don't want that once you plant it in the ground, and I just hadn't gotten around to removing that. But someone also removed the stake I put in to help…
I've noticed that Hacker News comments tend to mention a lot of the same "laws", effects, and other things that succinctly explain ideas. Here are some of the most prevalent: Goodhart's Law : When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure Parkinson's Law : Work expands to fill the time it is alloted Dunning Kruger Effect : People with lesser competency in some area overestimate…
Hi! My name is Zach Bellay, I'm 26, I'm looking for 2 male roommates to live with at 1369 Hyde St. The lease would be a 12 month lease that starts March 1, 2024. I work remote as a software engineer, and have been living here for 2.5 years. My roommates are leaving, one to New York, another to Florida, but I love this place and since it's a great deal I want to keep it. Furniture won't all be the…
I have an angel and a devil sitting atop each shoulder. The angel says, "Just code for fun! What you make can be just for your enjoyment and that's --" the devil interjects, "not enough to get ahead, loser. If you're not coding your next startup then how're you gunna get rich? Coding for fun? Pfft, sounds like the fast lane to being poor." Since I was a kid I've always gravitated toward computers.…
"A. Always. B. Be. R. Refactoring. Always Be Refactoring." -Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross My first job out of college was at an indoor vertical farming startup. I did computer vision and machine learning and it was the hottest, sexiest stuff I had dreamed of working on. But, as a junior dev, I had no idea wtf I was doing, and was piecing together "good" software development practices. 10…
Your browser does not support the video tag. Transcript Okay so I'm going to be going on a little rant here about street hot dogs in San Francisco. So first of all if you don't know what it is in San Francisco people on the street will you know they'll get like a grill and they'll post up set up a operation where they are selling these delicious bacon wrapped hot dogs with all these you know…
Source: https://hardwear.io/usa-2023/presentation/the-microarchitectures-that-I-saw-and-the-ones-that-I-hope-to-one-day-see.pdf
The landing page for podscription. What is podscription? Podscription is a portmanteau of podcast and transcription. It is a website that uses AI to transcribes podcasts and makes them searchable. Why build it? I am an avid podcast listener and sometimes remember certain conversations, but don't remember which podcast the conversation is from but would like to revisit it. So naturally, the idea to…
Today is February 6th 2023, it has been 187 days since I was laid off from my old job as a software engineer at OnePointOne. Fortunately, I will be starting a new job tomorrow at Rinse, a laundry delivery service, as a software engineer. Six months of unemployment sucked. People think it's like some sort of amazing gift to be on unemployment because you're getting paid not to work and it seems…
1. Hot showers and baths Recently, I have become much more appreciative of how much of a luxury it is to be able to take a hot shower or bath on demand, within the comfort and privacy of my own home and bathroom. I used to think nothing of it, if anything I would be annoyed by what felt like the constant need to be showering to stay clean. But a few things helped me realize what a luxury and…
Discontent Seemingly eternal Relief, only breifly Is it me? Or is this our lot? When do we get there? When do we arrive? In my mind soon But I know Not really When is a man happy? There is a set of conditions that make a man happy Things happen, chemicals flow Is that it? You're telling me I'm just chemicals? Maybe I doubt it I won! After much hard work sacrifice and pain The fruits of my labour…
Yesterday I was on my way from the tobacco shop after having bought a pipe to try it for the first time. As I was heading to the park where I was going to try out my newfangled intoxicant paraphernalia, I was stopped on the street by a very tall and large man who seemed to be in distress. He apologized profusely and asked me if I had any spare change I could give him, which is a pretty common…
I went to a Catholic K-8. In the seventh and eighth grade every student was responsible for leading the class in prayer about once every 3 months. This usually consisted of a handful of bible passages, various pieces of 2010’s era clip art with water marks, pictures of hands protruding from darkness holding the earth, or soil with a sprout in it, or other vaguely spiritual images you might expect…
The party is over (for me)! Reality is hitting tech companies that for nearly a decade were able to operate businesses with massive losses all in the pursuit of massive growth. Now that the Federal Reserve is raising interest rates in order to curb inflation, venture capitalists are much less gung-ho about handing out money to twenty-something tech CEOs. As interest rates continue to rise, so does…
A customer's garage full of 93 Playstation 5's purchased via this company's software. What is this? This was a coding challenge from a retail item scalping company, (think GPUs, PS5's, Xboxs, etc) used to assess my skills as a developer. This was the first of two challenges. The first challenge I was given was to create a script that could automatically purchase an item from Amazon. Ethics Before…
Note to Readers: Do NOT contact me for help defeating PerimeterX. I will NOT help you. I have recieved many solicitiations for help and I do not want to help you in your botting efforts. What is this? This was a coding challenge from a retail item scalping company, (think GPUs, PS5's, Xboxs, etc) used to assess my skills as a developer. This was the second of two challenges. This challenge was to…
A YouTube video that seems to keep popping back into my mind is a 1 minute 22 second video by The Onion. The segment is satirical series of interviews with friends of Carl, a man who "doesn't have healthcare, walks dogs for a living, and no one will ever date." One friend says that "Carl's life really sucks" but somehow he manages to wave hello to him every morning and "has a big smile on his…
Written: 2022/05/17 Mental health is something that is hard to talk about to your family, friends, significant other. It's even more difficult to even admit to yourself that you have mental health issues. No one wants to believe that they are struggling through life. We are taught that we should be able to power through the difficulties that life throws at us. How else are you supposed to survive?…
The SF Chronicle ran an article headlined "After making racist statement, S.F. school board member apologizes". After reading the statement that Hsu made, I am not entirely sure that this headline, and the criticism she is facing is really all that fair, or productive for that matter. Here is the quote that Anne Hsu got in trouble for: Link to article: After making racist statement, S.F. school…
In the game the Sims, you get to control the life of a Simulated person. You can tell them where to go, what to do, and how to do it. When you live your life, I like to think that there are 2 “you’s” so to speak. The first “you” is the Sim. The Sim has needs like eating, using the bathroom, showering, needing to socialize. The other “you” is you playing the video game. The person making the…
I do my best to be as informed a citizen as possible, so that I can help (in a small way), make society better, and therefore make the world a better place and to reduce human suffering. One outlet to achieve this is through civic engagement and discussion about political topics. I find that an honest discussion with someone that is non-judgemental is actually incredibly productive and eye-opening…
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade -y && curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com | sudo sh && sudo usermod -aG docker $ USER
Note : This is not backed by any sources so my recall of history may be entirely based on myth. Read at your own peril. These days, the term hacker usually refers to someone with a ski mask looking at falling matrix numbers on a screen in a dark basement closet. But prior to this version of the word, hacker meant something else. It meant someone who would "hack things together". The term referred…
The concept of privelege has relatively recently become a major topic in the national discussion when considering things like race, class, and economic status. There are many forms of privelege that one may have to "check". For example, if you are white, or male, or cis-gender, or come from a wealthy family, etc. There are more questionable forms of privelege like being right handed, or being…
Roxane Gay talks about Kanye West's song New Slaves in which he says "You see it's leaders and it's followers / But I'd rather be a dick than a swallower." Of course this is an example of misogynistic rap that assumes women should be obeying and submitting to men. Cigarettes by Fort Minor is a good example of what feminist rap might actually sound like. Starting at 1:06 in the song, Mike Shinoda…
Americans are lonely these days. Many of us spend at least 8 hours a day on screens for work. Then after work, we spend even more time on our phone, personal computer, TV, or gaming device to recover and entertain ourselves. At least in my world, it's not uncommon for most people I know to spend their entire day in front of a screen with the exception of taking care of other biological needs…
zach.ws (migrated to fun.zachbellay.com ) is a copy-cat project of neal.fun . It is also a playground for me to try out new front end technologies and do a little creative expression via JavaScript. Project 1: American Meat Consumption Total Time Spent : 2 days Technologies : HTML, CSS Your browser does not support the video tag. At the time I was masochistically watching a lot of factory farming…
You've heard of Maslow's Heirarchy of Needs. But what are Data Needs ? This Heirarchy helps outline the foundation any organization needs to lay out if they want to actually "Leverage Big Data™" or "Disrupt the Industry with AI®". So here she is, in all her glory. It took me about 5 minutes to come up with, but honestly I think it's pretty good. The Heirarchy So in reverse order, starting at the…
I recently published a personal project called "The Scale of Wealth". It is a interactive 3D webpage meant to visualize the physical scale of various quantities of money. I spent about 2 months working on it as a side project, and finally got to a point where I felt satisfied to call it done (though not perfect). I went ahead and shared the link on HackerNews, /r/sideprojects, Discord, Twitter,…
Every year my family publishes a newsletter titled the "Bellay Beagle". Since 1998 the Snoopy inspired newsletter makes its way into the mailboxes of families across the country and world, supporting over 0.0000185% of first class USPS stamp sales in December. Every year my mom asks me to write the article about 2 weeks after I know damn well that I should've written the article already. Then I…
I asked for a new PC power supply for Christmas and my family (I mean Santa!) was kind enough to get one for me. I was able to repair my computer with this new part, and looked at the files on there. I found the files to an old project where I was trying to create a 3D lofi hip-hop cafe that I wanted to eventually port over into the web browser. Here is what the unrendered scene looked like in…
Note: This piece is highly speculative, and should be taken with a large grain of salt. The theory posed by this article very well may be inaccurate or completely incorrect. However, I believe that after examining multiple pieces of evidence and considering them in a larger context, the theory I propose is very reasonable. All opinions are my own. The First Email On March 18, 2021, Santa Clara…
Spelling Bee is a daily game made by the New York Times. The objective of the game is to spell as many words as you can with 7 letters. The middle letter must be included. You can play on desktop or on your phone! It's a great little game. I enjoy this game but sometimes can't wait for the solutions to come out. So I made this solver app to solve the puzzle. Download on the Apple App Store now! No…
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Note: For context, I attended a private Catholic elementary/middle school, and public high school in Bellevue, WA (a suburb of Seattle, WA). There probably isn't a single person out there who likes sex-Ed. Nonetheless, it's an incredibly important topic for obvious reasons. So, we may not have to like it, but like any chore we should do it and do it well. Well, even though I passed 2 sex-Ed…
Yield: 4 servings Time: 10 minutes A French 69 is a remix of the French 75 (gin, lemon, proseco) and adds elderflower liquer. It's a very light and refreshing drink. If you've never had elderflower, don't let the name hold you back from trying this wonderful liquer. Ingredients: Elderflower Liquer ~ 2 shots On a budget: Bols Elderflower Liqueur 750mL ($12-$18) Ballin' out: Saint Germain…
I am a stingy person. I have found that I will always look for ways to put off purchases, whether they are wants or needs. For example, on the wants side, I have been eyeing upgrading my monitor to an ultrawide for about 11 months. It would cost anywhere from $300-$1500 + tax depending on the model. On the needs side, I have been putting off buying new underwear, even though the pairs I own now…
# install pyenv on your machine curl https://pyenv.run | bash # install python in pyenv pyenv install 3.9.5 # create virtual environment: pyenv virtualenv 3.9.5 deez-nuts-joke-generator-dev # set deez-nuts-joke-generator-dev as the default virtual environment for the current directory pyenv local deez-nuts-joke-generator-dev # install poetry in your virtual environment pip install poetry #…
Note: This post is a dramaticized development experience I had at work that stemmed largely from miscommunication and bad assumptions. Nonetheless, if you're in a situation like this, here's what I did. The Problem Let's say an existing codebase uses Python dataclasses as follows: @ dataclass class Potato : x: str y: int But what if I want to use the sexy new Python library FastAPI to build a REST…
Convert MOV to Gif, Get good speed and optimize file size. Takes some time Note: This seems to actually increase file size sometimes! ffmpeg -y -i Omnibot \ v40-cropped.mp4 -vf " scale=800:450 " -f image2pipe -vcodec ppm - | convert -delay 2 -loop 0 -layers Optimize - gif:- | gifsicle -d 3 -O3 -o optimized.gif source: https://superuser.com/a/1061409
WTF is an ODAF? An ODAF, is a multi-year joke project started during a conversation at the Santa Clara University Graham Hall front desk in Winter Quarter 2017. A conversation along the lines of "Bro wouldn't it be hilarious if you put a fishbowl on a roomba?" was had. From there I thought, in fact, it would be hilarious if such a robot existed. And so began the multi-year journey of building ODAF…
Abby and I wanted to get away for a weekend, originally to Santa Barbara. After I realized Santa Barbara is a 4 hour car ride, I proposed a few alternatives, and Abby was excited about Sonoma and Napa. We settled on Sonoma and planned our trip! Day 1 - Friday, March 26 2021 Buena Vista Winery - Sonoma, CA We arrived at our first wine tasting reservation at the Buena Vista Winery in Sonoma. We were…
What is scu-course-evals.com? SCU Course Evals is a searchable aggregated directory of ~20k PDFs generated by student surveys of classes on a quarterly basis. Students and alumni can login and search for classes or professors and find the aggregated ratings of each class. Story Time The Beginning SCU Course Evals was a multi year project that started in 2018, my junior year of college. It started…
You can find this project at budget.zachbellay.com . Source is available on GitHub . What is "Simple Budgeting App"? This webpage is a calculator to get an idea of how much money you can afford to spend on certain things. For example, a rule of thumb is to spend no more than 30% of your income on rent (ideally). This would be easy, if you knew exactly how much you make after taxes and then…
The Story I was watching Zack Freedman on YouTube, an up and coming hardware hacker. He mentioned Shodan, which apparently is a directory of devices accessible via internet. They include industrial controllers, webcams, databases, and video games, purportedly. I checked it out and couldn't find any live streams, which reminded me of a site I have visited before insecam.org. So I went there and I…