neverartful

2 for me: scuba diving and welding (not at the same time). scuba diving is such a surreal experience and incomparable to anything I've ever done. It's unfortunate that there are no decent diving sites close to where I live. Welding is an incredibly rewarding hobby that makes you forget about everything else because it requires a lot of focus. Being able to join 2 pieces of steel according to your own imagination almost feels magical.

Not all of them are as vinegar heavy as Tabasco. For example, Crystal hot sauce is excellent and is not vinegar heavy like Tabasco.

Agreed! Avery Island is a salt dome and is interesting in its own right (just the salt dome). There are other salt domes nearby (Weeks Island and Jefferson Island). If you visit Avery Island and see alligators, you should leave them alone. Despite them appearing that they might move only slowly (and often they do move slowly) they are very fast and can outrun you.

Original - FoxPro: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FoxPro

Successor - Visual FoxPro: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_FoxPro

I've been working on a cross-platform GUI system called Affiche.

The basic idea is to separate an application's UI semantics from the toolkit that actually renders it. The same application can currently be presented using native Win32, Cocoa/AppKit, Qt6, GTK3, GTK4, Swing, or a web browser. The UI can run locally or be rendered remotely by a client, without the application itself being rewritten for that environment.

I've also been working on a declarative layout format and, lately, a visual designer.

It started as a rewrite of an architecture I worked on many years ago, mostly because I wanted to see how far the idea could be pushed with modern systems. It has turned into a considerably larger project than I expected.

Still private and very much under development, but I'm curious whether other people have run into the same problem: maintaining applications that need to survive changes in GUI toolkits, operating systems, deployment models, or client environments.

Good times! I was 75060,264 and I used software called Golden Compass on os/2 to connect, post my messages, and retrieve new messages.

I think Lazarus is a nice way to make native GUIs on each platform. It's underrated.

I've been building CheckSitePulse, a website auditing tool that crawls sites and reports issues like broken links, spelling mistakes, accessibility problems, SEO issues, missing security headers, and content policy violations.

https://checksitepulse.com

One thing I've focused on is producing reports that are actually actionable instead of overwhelming. I'm also putting a lot of effort into reducing false positives—for example with spell checking and URL analysis.

It's still under active development, but it's reached the point where I'm starting to get feedback from other developers and site owners.

I'd love to hear what kinds of website issues you wish existing audit tools did a better job finding.

paul@checksitepulse.com

The author also has a youtube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@PeterSantenello) with some really well done videos. He's curious, respectful, and gives a fair reporting of the different local cultures.

One aspect that is most definitely easier with Chromebooks is that it only takes a powerwash (1-2 minutes) to make the device ready for someone else. With Windows devices it takes our school district hours to get a device re-imaged and fully updated to be ready to issue to the next person. Not sure what the process would be with Macs but I strongly suspect it's much more akin to Windows than Chromebooks in this regard.

I still very actively use a Mac Pro 2013 (aka trashcan). It has 64 GB RAM, an 8 core Xeon cpu, and 1TB NVMe. I'm running macOS Monterey (12.7.6) on it. The hardware is still plenty powerful enough to be very useful. Supported software is getting to be more troublesome as the days go by. When the pain gets too great I'll look into installing Linux on it with the goal of continuing to use it.

I agree with you. I'd go one step further and let it be the only mode available starting with new versions of the library.

I understand your point, especially for company websites whose products/services aren't oriented to the blind.

However, there are many companies with products/services that are just as much for the blind as the sighted (government, insurance, legal, medical, etc.) and many of them don't even make an attempt. The blind are still people and they should have equal access.

I'd like to connect with you offline for further conversation. I didn't see any contact information in your profile (and there's none currently in mine either).

There are a couple of different ways of using Ceph with a filesystem: (1) CephFS, or (2) RBD (Ceph block device) volume mounted and then create filesystem on the mounted RBD volume. Historically, the RBD approach would likely have been the more common of the 2. Which of these 2 ways were you referring to?

Still working on my web site quality assurance software. Getting close to private beta (hopefully very soon). Back end is written in Java and built with Javalin and Jsoup and persisted to PostgreSQL. Front end is JS/React. My back end crawls the designated website and for each page runs a number of analyzers to assess the quality across the following categories: accessibility, content quality (spelling, missing spaces between words, etc), performance, security, content policy (required phrases and forbidden phrases), site integrity, and seo. Each site can be configured to have its own custom dictionary (for spell checking). It's been a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to taking the wraps off it.

I have and use a Mac Pro 2013 too. Mine is 8 cores with 64 GB RAM. I haven't used mine for any LLM workloads, but it does just fine for most stuff. My biggest concern with it is the OS. I'm still running macOS (the latest supported version) but it's getting continually further out-of-date security wise all the time.

Have you discussed this with your doctor? If not, I would schedule an appointment ASAP. It's possible that medication might be able to help significantly. If it does help, it could be that it helps you enough to turn things into a more manageable situation at work. This might not be your long-term optimal solution, but it could make life less miserable until you do find your long-term optimal.

It was the best of times (WP5.1) and the worst of times (first versions for Windows). I used WordPerfect for DOS 5.1 extensively and it was a joy to use. It was not WYSIWYG, but it was fast, stable, and very capable. A couple of years later I used one of the early versions of WordPerfect for Windows (I don't recall the version number) and it was a complete disaster. It crashed very often. Hence, my love/hate with WordPerfect.

2 things: (1) trying to find a job, and (2) continuing work on my software.

I've been working on a new software product (native Windows) that is for analysis of SQLite databases. It's geared towards non-technical and slightly technical who may not know anything about SQL. The software includes an ER diagram, ability to browse table data, query building, and charting (bar, column, histogram, line, pie, scatter). Trying to get it finished up so that it can be released (hopefully in next few weeks).

Very nice on both! I've long had an affinity for non-mainstream programming languages (mostly those with Wirth lineage). I wish there were more projects that used them.

Nice list. I also delight in having purple martins nearby. They're such a joy to watch.

Consider writing your own software. Maybe something that scratches an itch, related to one of your hobbies, or a need you've observed in the market.

I voluntarily left the corporate world in spring of 2024. I already had a part-time handyman business going so I just took it full-time. I also started developing my own software product (soon to be released).

In the US the laws vary considerably by state on what electrical (and plumbing) one is allowed to do without a license.

I'm still working on development of a native Windows application for data analysis of SQLite databases. It's geared towards non-technical (or only slightly technical) users and allows queries to be easily made without knowing SQL. Additionally, it easily lets the user quickly create charts from the queried data (bar, column, histogram, line, pie, scatter). Development is nearly complete and hoping to put in the hands of testers within the next couple of weeks. Also trying to decide on name for the product so that I can start development of website for it.

My cynical take is that it's a let's buy off these folks before they sue us.

There's a big difference between physical injuries and mental/emotional injuries. I can't imagine that all (or even most) of the passengers can shrug the whole thing off with "oh, well. i wasn't hurt".

"SQL had (and maybe still has) its own C compiler"

Oh? Are you referring to something different from a database's precompiler?

I'm genuinely surprised that California hasn't figured out fire risk management decades ago. The Santa Ana winds are nothing new and have been in the southern part of the state forever. I remember seeing news reports about catastrophic fires in southern California as far back as the 1970s (when I was a kid). Doesn't everyone know that strong winds (which are guaranteed to come) can make wild fires exponentially worse? No one can control the wind though.

The 3 necessary components for fire are: oxygen, fuel, and ignition source. No stopping the presence of oxygen. Ignition sources are present with lightning strikes (among other things). That leaves fuel as the thing that can be controlled. If you can't reduce the fuel load around your dwelling, it doesn't make any sense to live there. I live in a forest that has experienced a tragic wildfire in the past, so I'm in a similar boat (but without the Santa Ana winds). Keeping fuel away from my home is something that I think about a lot -- and ACT ON a lot.

I have a neighbor who does practically nothing to reduce his fuel load. It's his legal right, but I think it's foolish. He's told me he likes to keep his property "undisturbed". It sounds like there's much of the same thinking that drives policy in California.

The combined practice of: (1) put out any fire immediately, and (2) do nothing to reduce fuel load, makes for a bad combination in the long run. It would seem to me that Californians should have figured these things out decades ago and be the experts on fire risk management. What am I missing?