Nostr notes by rixx

It's a nice pun; Russian Карандаш means “pencil”.

2026-05-13T13:42:24Z

In reply to nevent1q…802j
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It's a nice pun; Russian Карандаш means “pencil”.

TIL there is a pencil manufacturer in Switzerland called Caran ...

2026-05-13T06:43:59Z

TIL there is a pencil manufacturer in Switzerland called Caran d’Ache, lmao.

Excellent post on the correct SI unit for (HTTP or not) request ...

2026-05-08T06:43:56Z

Excellent post on the correct SI unit for (HTTP or not) request rate: https://entropicthoughts.com/si-units-for-request-rate

The world needs more blog posts like this.

“What if I Simply put tailscale in initramfs?”: statements ...

2026-01-24T10:16:01Z

“What if I Simply put tailscale in initramfs?”: statements dreamed up by the utterly deranged (that is, kulupu jyn (npub1429…5dlm) ). Very cool blog post on remotely unlocking an encrypted boot partition: https://jyn.dev/remotely-unlocking-an-encrypted-hard-disk/

39C3 Ticket Marketplace: now available at ...

2025-11-21T11:13:54Z

39C3 Ticket Marketplace: now available at https://tickets.events.ccc.de/39c3/secondhand/

FAQ: https://events.ccc.de/congress/2025/infos/tickets.html#reselling

#39c3 #39c3tickets

Klarer Fall von „der schnellste Weg eine Lösung zu finden, ...

2025-11-03T09:20:19Z

In reply to nevent1q…nu9k
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Klarer Fall von „der schnellste Weg eine Lösung zu finden, ist, laut zu behaupten, dass es keine Lösung gibt, und auf hilfreiche Nerds zu warten“. Danke!

git config --global alias.cherry-mash '!f() { git cherry-pick ...

2025-11-03T08:40:58Z

git config --global alias.cherry-mash '!f() { git cherry-pick "$1" && git reset --soft HEAD~1 && git reset; }; f'

Looking for a laptop for my (very cool, she's having me tell ...

2025-09-10T07:49:48Z

Looking for a laptop for my (very cool, she's having me tell you) sister who is about to start uni. So on the light side (and 14"), should last a good number of years, and be able to run stuff like Krita and CAD tools.

I'm probably looking at Lenovo or Dell by default, but any recs welcome. What would y'all go for in terms of memory and power? 16g enough?

in (trad, nobody uses it) IT German, a stack is called a ...

2025-07-17T09:15:01Z

in (trad, nobody uses it) IT German, a stack is called a "cellar", which always struck me as ridiculous: it doesn't fit what's going on at all. like, what is the commonality with a stack – is it that you can put stuff in and take it out again? absurd

(it's not even badly translated, it's an original term, patented in the 50s)

however, I do think using names that illustrate what's going on is a great idea to make things more memorable

so anyways, a doubly linked list is now a paternoster

It’s a great day when you find yourself placing a PDB ...

2025-06-05T11:00:43Z

It’s a great day when you find yourself placing a PDB breakpoint in django.db.models.sql.compiler.SQLCompiler._order_by_pairs

Delightful morning reading: “An ssh adventure” (or: smuggling ...

2025-04-14T08:05:49Z

Delightful morning reading: “An ssh adventure” (or: smuggling your bashrc onto remote servers)

The perfect amount of unhinged. I was already sold on reading the whole thing and giggling throughout when I got to “The filesystem is basically global state, global state is morally wrong.”

https://gitlab.com/-/snippets/2149340

Nostr event nevent1qqs0ps60qyahfe7tzcshty6kjet65qdk75nvtgryr6m8avg4myj9qxczyq8seev6pzt8mycr02xdpr7g56vx80m4t2fvhppy0fl4zsauylalkrhqkvn

2025-04-10T17:09:21Z

OH: putting the sad in sysadmin

1) vote (esp in the German election today, but also generally) 2) ...

2025-02-23T09:43:47Z

1) vote (esp in the German election today, but also generally)

2) this, when you look at the results and want to cry / burn things down / stay in bed forever

ooh, #Inkscape feature I often want and didn't know existed: ...

2025-01-26T07:25:04Z

ooh, #Inkscape feature I often want and didn't know existed: you can hold 'f' in order to hide everything that is outside the document boundaries

this is so neat

I'm still sad that phone cards aren't a thing anymore for ...

2025-01-15T08:04:13Z

I'm still sad that phone cards aren't a thing anymore for the weird art you got to carry around with you, and any local train company providing physical Deutschlandticket cards should get on that imo.

But in all fairness, the Berlin one at least isn't boring

If the Dutch camps are looking for a new name for the next ...

2025-01-02T13:35:49Z

If the Dutch camps are looking for a new name for the next iteration already, may I suggest

TLD

Three Letters, Dutch

#why2025 #mch2022 #sha2017 #ohm2013

Form, meet function (via ...

2024-12-10T13:22:54Z

Form, meet function (via https://morphimus.tumblr.com/post/171062926274)

At my book club, we've just decided that the correct genre ...

2024-12-04T20:55:12Z

At my book club, we've just decided that the correct genre for LotR is Bromantasy.

you're welcome / sorry

Ugh, just saw the new #wrapstodon feature that adds a “Year in ...

2024-12-03T10:15:03Z

Ugh, just saw the new #wrapstodon feature that adds a “Year in Review” to Mastodon – it’s up on mastodon.social already, and will be part of v4.4.0.

It’s super number-go-up brain: You’re part of the top x % of Mastodon users! You had so many new followers and posts!

Plus a super cringe and unnecessary “We won’t tell Bernie” message under the top-% stat. Jfc.

I opened an issue asking to let server administrators turn this off before it even starts: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/33150

#mastoadmin

Nostr event nevent1qqsdg9a6llx8qdwct3wnvpclh59yrgswg90sm93yugns0824stm53ugzyq8seev6pzt8mycr02xdpr7g56vx80m4t2fvhppy0fl4zsauylalkr73k6r

2024-11-27T10:13:20Z

Today is a `pip isntall e- .` kind of day.

I’ve finally caved and wrote an auto moderator for Mastodon ...

2024-11-23T15:32:49Z

I’ve finally caved and wrote an auto moderator for Mastodon that can take care of some reports automatically.

Running it manually for now to see if it works as intended, but I think this will be a net positive for us. Watch this space 👀 #mastoadmin

it’s cold and gloomy, so it’s time to knit something warm and ...

2024-11-23T09:33:52Z

it’s cold and gloomy, so it’s time to knit something warm and cozy

and like every year, my main observation is that programmers could stand to learn a thing or ten from knitters re: documentation. a good pattern is a beauty of clarity, technicality (with a helpful appendix for the noobs), but also further guidance and observations rather than just "I auto-generated this documentation, good luck"

If you’re ever in an interview for a software job and are asked ...

2024-11-07T14:41:03Z

If you’re ever in an interview for a software job and are asked what happens internally when you open google.com, then a new answer has just dropped:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atcqMWqB3hw

So, when you block an instance as a mastodon administrator, on ...

2024-11-06T14:58:02Z

So, when you block an instance as a mastodon administrator, on account of that instance spewing spam like mad and also none of your users following anybody there, this will NOT resolve any of the >100 reports your users have openend against that instance, despite the reports now being useless.

And of course, Mastodon still has no bulk editing of reports, so you die the death of a thousand ~~papercuts~~ report-clicks … or you just add report-resolving to your management script:

#mastoadmin

“Harry, did you put the Olson database into your init ...

2024-10-27T20:52:31Z

In reply to nevent1q…tsr5
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“Harry, did you put the Olson database into your init system?”, Dumbledore asked calmly.

Imagine wondering “When’s the next time that Christmas will ...

2024-10-27T20:49:08Z

Imagine wondering “When’s the next time that Christmas will be a Tuesday/Wednesday, for those sweet optimal public holidays (Jan 1st being exactly a week later)?”

Now imagine asking, idk, google or Siri or god forbid an actual calendar, instead of turning to the best tool for the job: systemd.

#systemd #linuxadmin #linux #systemd

Late to the party, but another consequence of the whole IO ...

2024-10-18T07:01:52Z

Late to the party, but another consequence of the whole IO territory thing:

“On Friday 21st March 2025 at 02:50 UTC the sun will finally set on the British "Empire"”: https://www.reddit.com/r/geography/comments/1fv9ti6/on_friday_21st_march_2025_at_0250_utc_the_sun/

When I plug in the second display after booting up, sometimes my ...

2024-10-15T01:32:54Z

When I plug in the second display after booting up, sometimes my it'll properly choose a second background image (I have a random rotation going on). But some other times, it'll just extend the outermost pixel for the entire second screen. Today, this turned out really well. The second display was even prettier than the first one!

Finally got around to fixing my custom Mastodon stylesheet after ...

2024-10-14T11:16:48Z

Finally got around to fixing my custom Mastodon stylesheet after the big update.

It's now 185 lines long and there are still things that I want to get around to (but mostly in the admin UI, which – I'm suffering anyway if I'm in there, might as well leave it ugly).

It's not even about anything big, but the dark purple direction of stock Mastodon is really uncomfortable to look at for me.

(Though I am proud of the CW rendering as "▸ Subject:", see rightmost column).

Thanks! This'll definitely end up as some kind of blog post, ...

2024-10-11T14:12:50Z

In reply to nevent1q…9qvw
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Thanks! This'll definitely end up as some kind of blog post, I'm just waiting for Carlton to publish his first, both to learn something and to write something that complements his.

I do like a cookbook kind of approach – I most often find myself wondering "wait, how do I add a class/attribute to this form field again? something with the widget? what if it's an implicit modelform field?", and either search online or look at other code …

"short" braindump of the frustrations I had with the form ...

2024-10-10T22:58:49Z

In reply to nevent1q…9ccy
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"short" braindump of the frustrations I had with the form rendering stuff

https://gist.github.com/rixx/70fbc8197ed445d9b16652fc42ac269f

(nearly-none of this is about new Django features, fwiw)

It probably boils down to "I'm bad at reading the docs and the code exists and things happen in BoundField oh god", but if we're a bit more charitable, then there are some possibly hard to follow bits in both the docs and the code.

noo, wait, it's not in a readable state yet!

2024-10-10T06:06:20Z

In reply to nevent1q…sh7e
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noo, wait, it's not in a readable state yet!

I managed to rip out (finally, FINALLY) django-bootstrap4 in ~a ...

2024-10-10T00:47:15Z

In reply to nevent1q…xjtx
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I managed to rip out (finally, FINALLY) django-bootstrap4 in ~a day (assuming 10h work days: https://github.com/pretalx/pretalx/pull/1846), so it's not terrible, but there are a bunch of conveniences that I feel a framework should provide – and the real trouble is that they are hard / impossible to add.

(And sure, I could fix some of the things I want to fix by just overriding the default Django widget templates, but eww.)

… off the record, though – this ain't podcast material. ...

2024-10-09T18:18:03Z

In reply to nevent1q…jvx6
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… off the record, though – this ain't podcast material.
(I keep thinking about writing a blog post, but it's not that, either – too negative, too grumpy etc)

My list of grumps is steadily growing, and I'd say maybe half ...

2024-10-09T14:53:42Z

In reply to nevent1q…4pjt
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My list of grumps is steadily growing, and I'd say maybe half of it is documentation? But parts of it are definitely structural. If I was less used to digging around in library source code / less experienced, I think I'd have quit in frustration hours ago – like I said, it's not due to field groups being around (that's actually definitely good), it's more that … once you try to seriously use them, everything else is janky and in your (well, my) way.

The field group template isn't really the issue, it's ...

2024-10-09T14:31:37Z

In reply to nevent1q…uqfp
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The field group template isn't really the issue, it's more that it's the cause of me finally rendering my forms rather than relying on meh-ish libraries, and the whole experience does not spark joy. There are so many janky corners, and I spend half my time reading Django code to figure out why and where things happen.

Switching from yesterday's grump about HTML forms to ...

2024-10-09T12:40:05Z

Switching from yesterday's grump about HTML forms to today's grump about #Django forms.

And here I thought updating to current Django would make form-rendering fun and games.

Instead of my rant, I present to you this beauty. Frontend ...

2024-10-08T12:03:04Z

In reply to nevent1q…5cfl
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Instead of my rant, I present to you this beauty. Frontend development is great.

#machKaputtWasDichKaputtMacht

I'm home sick, so I'm naturally reading HTML specs and ...

2024-10-08T10:17:14Z

I'm home sick, so I'm naturally reading HTML specs and composing my latest rant at how frustratingly half-baked HTML5 is, particularly with respect to forms and inputs.

(I have like three drafts of this rant lying about, time to add a fourth …)

If I ever create a programming language, it will accept ...

2024-09-01T20:45:39Z

If I ever create a programming language, it will accept "elseif", "else if", "elif", and "elsif".

(he said, having just confidently and without checking committed the wrong version in a language he uses every day)

Yeah uh thank you for that contribution, very helpful, amaze

2024-08-22T08:50:40Z

In reply to nevent1q…6kd4
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Yeah uh thank you for that contribution, very helpful, amaze

Imagine if web.dev, the web development blog by the Chrome team, ...

2024-08-22T08:39:10Z

In reply to nevent1q…4kyx
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Imagine if web.dev, the web development blog by the Chrome team, had the latest coolest tech like … RSS feeds for their blog. Then you could just subscribe to https://web.dev/series/baseline-newly-available and get notified about newly availble CSS features …

(To add insult to injury, they load their list of blog posts via JS, so you can't even point a good feed reader at the /blog/ page and have it scrape for new posts. Eww.)

Related: Is there something like a caniuse.com newsfeed that ...

2024-08-22T08:29:20Z

In reply to nevent1q…63xy
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Related: Is there something like a caniuse.com newsfeed that tells me when a feature has become supported by all major browsers (or, ideally, supported by major browsers for a month, half a year, a year …)?

TIL: relative colours in #CSS. You define an origin colour, and ...

2024-08-22T08:21:15Z

TIL: relative colours in #CSS. You define an origin colour, and then modify (with the magic r/g/b/alpha variables for rgb) or override the values. Supported in all major browsers now (except Firefox for Android): https://caniuse.com/css-relative-colors

Example: Use the primary colour, but make it transparent and reduce how green it is:

rgb(from var(--primary-colour) r calc(g/2) b / calc(alpha * 0.5))

Geschlechtsneutrale Sprache schon krass, ich hätte ganz ...

2024-08-07T06:46:26Z

Geschlechtsneutrale Sprache schon krass, ich hätte ganz unreflektiert "Spaziergänger" gesagt statt "Gehwegende" 🤭

The officially best news of the $interval: World of Goo 2 is now ...

2024-08-02T20:02:24Z

The officially best news of the $interval:

World of Goo 2 is now out (and you can buy it directly from the publisher, DRM free):

https://worldofgoo2.com/