Abbie Normal @catonano@mastodon.social

reading through @aral' breakingthin.gs for the first time. it's lovely to see his thoughts from so long ago (6 years is long okay!), and has given me a lot to think about and also what kind of content i would like on my own blog.

here's to archiving and preserving things for posterity.

@natecull @freakazoid I'm gonna go back to UNIX here and say: the scripts and shell functions on any unix box used by a technically-minded professional with shell experience but who is not a programmer slowly becomes a very efficient DSL for their everyday tasks within 15 years of daily use. Forth systems seem to undergo the same kind of slow drift in the general direction of greatness.

New to Mastodon? I made this automatically updated dashboard of potentially interesting people to follow, with the magic of #Wikidata: http://tinyurl.com/y9spytlq . Ping me if you want to know how to add to this list!

it’s not enough to produce free alternatives to scabware if we can’t support the labor and materials to steward the ‘ware through every cycle of its development and usage. linux is a spectacular failure in this regard: a vital technology and thriving community eclipsed by corpers who can just buy lifetimes, who can turn our works into rent-generators with impunity. to make better software, we must enmesh our obligations to the craft with our communal survival and wellbeing.

I've written a #blog post about writing and using #brutaldon. If you've followed my microblogging on development, there's not much new, but it's a short read if you're interested.

https://jfm.carcosa.net/blog/computing/brutaldon/

#webdev #django #python #intercooler #bulma

on my beach again https://peertube.servebeer.com/videos/watch/d8ccc5e7-1d01-43ad-9f25-256cb7690695

on my beach https://peertube.servebeer.com/videos/watch/8e648f92-5e42-4ca0-9b1e-92c93287f3bb

nearly 2500 Jewish children of Warsaw were saved from the Holocaust by Irena Sendler and people like her. Irena was not Jewish. She was tortured and never released any info on the kids' whereabouts. She was sentenced to death but a bribe saved her on the last day. She died in 2008, aged 98.

viale del tramonto https://peertube.servebeer.com/videos/watch/0988e53f-fdb0-446b-bdc5-ff37a9d46d1f

my beach as usual https://peertube.servebeer.com/videos/watch/b8cbcb00-daf5-40db-adfa-6a8264c555d7

Homogeneous Operating Systems Are Better https://ecc-comp.blogspot.com/2014/12/homogeneous-operating-systems-are-better.html

The City of London Corporation's survey on gender identity closes soon, on Sep 14:

https://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/about-the-city/how-we-make-decisions/Pages/equality-inclusion.aspx

If you're trans, or are an ally, please take a few minutes to complete this, if you're in a position to do so, and help offset the TERFs' responses.

The Corporation is responsible for a variety of London spaces, including the Barbican and Hampstead Heath - their future policy will affect many.

Free Software is good but on its own isn't enough.
When you look at the definition of Free Software you will notice how it is very programmer centric in its sense of freedom.

Those who can't program and don't have the time to acquire the skill are directly excluded from most of the freedom we associate with Free Software.
The only freedom they have is to run a free program and redistribute it without restriction.

If your software could be useful to non-technical people, make sure they still have access to the participatory part of Software Freedom.

Write accessible documentation.

Provide ways for non-technical people to contribute to your project.

And most importantly: Listen to the feedback of non-technical users equally, if not more than that of technical people.

I'm almost 50 and am generally clueless about lots of things other people handle daily with grace and aplomb, and I constantly question the validity of what so-called knowledge I am considered to have.

I also have started to suspect my almost 60 year old friend is mostly just making shit up with a strong delivery.

http://stevelosh.com/blog/2018/07/fun-with-macros-if-let/ is an excellent post on implementing if-let and when-let macros.

It discusses the different ways you could expand the code, and ensuring the macro composes with other (Common) Lisp features.

Really useful macro too, I'm a big fan of the elisp equivalent.