Chris Bowdon ๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง๐Ÿ‡ช๐Ÿ‡บ

@cbowdon
151 Followers
197 Following
1,020 Posts
Yet another software engineer filling up the Internet with drivel. Toots about Clojure, Lisps, Python, JS, GNU/Linux, FOSS, Privacy, Emacs, DevOps, etc. โ€จ#nobot

Hmm, the local timeline on Mastodon.social is quite a stream of junk (not vile stuff, just things I have no interest in). Time to stop being lazy and move to less mainstream instance.

Anyone got recommendations for an instance for people interested in:

#clojure
#emacs
#linux
#fp
#foss
#devops

?

Ever get halfway through writing a toot before realising itโ€™s all bollocks and bailing out? #daily
Wondering what to put in the description field on an image? A quick guide:
1. Just say what's in the image--you don't need to say it's an image.
2. Describe only what's relevant to the conversation. "Annalee writing in a notebook" or "An example of candid portraiture" or "A person using a fountain pen" are all good captions of the same image, in different contexts.
3. All text that's meant to be read should be transcribed. Screencap? Transcribe. Sign in background of selfie? Don't transcribe.

My timeline seems to be awash with #linux #distro recommendations, so hereโ€™s my standard pitch: #openSUSE #Tumbleweed has been fantastic for me:

- rolling release, so new packages, kernels
- well tested so very stable despite being rolling
- good KDE support
- great rollback utility, configured by default
- coolest logo and branding

Not great for:
- minimalists (lots of packages included by default - configurable of course)
- systemd-haters (understandable, though personally I tolerate it)

@cbowdon Yup, and add to that the evolutionary still deeply engrined desire of the human body to put on reserves for bad times, something western societies definitely no longer need to do. This instinct adds to the craving. I found that supplementing sugar with Stebia actually works very well for me, reducing callory intake by a lot. :)

We made waffles with a THIRD of the sugar in the recipe and the kids are absolutely bouncing. I shudder to think what carnage weโ€™d be seeing if it was the full amount.

Speculating a bit, this sugar excess is probably a result of the free (read: under-regulated) market. Food corps are incentivised towards taste over health (because you can fool people with claims of โ€œlow fatโ€ etc. but you canโ€™t fool the tongue) and so add sugar, conditioning consumers to crave sugary sweetness, and so on.

Boris Johnson is publicly insulting a minority (British Muslims) in that same โ€œracist dog whistleโ€ way as Trump. Guess thereโ€™s no doubt the reports about him meeting Bannon are true then.
#WhyIStayOnMastodon
Itโ€™s the healthiest social network: friendly, inclusive people and not a โ€œhow many followersโ€ contest. The quality of conversations here are the best.

Please consider writing your hashtags in upper camelcase so screen readers have a chance at figuring them out.

#whyistayonmastodon sounds like an giant undecipherable mess of sounds.

#WhyIStayOnMastodon reads out "Why I Stay On Mastodon" ๐Ÿ˜„

(Reason #44 I stay here: my previous requests like this have been generally well-received, proving that most people are awesome.)

Ended the week with a nice feeling of accomplishment: managed to get a hybrid #Clojure and Java app building with boot. (Turned out to be mostly very easy, just had to build a separate jar so that the Java classes could be made available in the REPL.)

The end result works just like before I started rewriting it in Clojure, but with much gnarly code thrown away and huge improvements to the functionality already. Yay!