tinker.ph

my hypertext journal + learning in public
© 2024 Marc Obaldo
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  1. A reminder from Bionic Bay to just keep building

    Game developer @JuhanaMyllys frequently posts clips about their progress on a Sci-Fi platformer called Bionic Bay. In this particular video, he shows the difference between the current state of the game and what it was four years ago.

    As someone who is in a perpetual state of building things outside of my primary job, it’s a hopefuly reminder that it’ll all eventually come together. I often get frustrated that it is taking me too long to ship, but sometimes I take a step back and appreciate that I make good incremental progress, get to talk to interested customers, and commit code every now and then.

  2. I did not invent most of the technology I work with

    Steve Jobs frequently sent himself emails containing his thoughts, which I also often do to myself using my [email protected] address. There’s one particular email from Steve Jobs that stuck with me.

    Despite wanting to go lower and lower in the tech stack, being a generalist, and touching pretty much every part of a system, I am reminded how I’m still dependent on others who’ve built things for me that I enjoy the convenience of.

    From:	Steve Jobs, [email protected]
To:	Steve Jobs, [email protected]
Date:	Thursday, September 2, 2010 at 11:08PM
    I grow little of the food I eat, and of the little I do grow I did not breed or perfect the seeds.

    I do not make any of my own clothing.

    I speak a language I did not invent or refine.

    I did not discover the mathematics I use.

    I am protected by freedoms and laws I did not conceive of or legislate, and do not enforce or adjudicate.

    I am moved by music I did not create myself.

    When I needed medical attention, I was helpless to help myself survive.

    I did not invent the transistor, the microprocessor, object oriented programming, or most of the technology I work with.

    I love and admire my species, living and dead, and am totally dependent on them for my life and well being.

    Sent from my iPad

  3. Whitepilling the world one startup at a time

    S³ by @jasonjoyride publishes weekly documentaries of startups that are poised to take over the world. For example, one of my favorite ones is how Impulse is creating high-performance stoves, which might not seem like a big deal, but what they’re actually doing is putting high-performance batteries in every house to help power the future.

    I’m a huge fan of what S³ does, and that’s why I’m excited about this tweet, which seems like they are taking whitepilling the world to the next level.

  4. The GitHub CSS vulnerability saga

    A few days ago, @cloud11665 tweeted about a vulnerability on GitHub that allowed users to inject custom CSS (among other things). Lo and behold, users everywhere started customizing their home pages a la MySpace. For a brief moment in time, we had the 90’s back.

  5. Re-inventing muscle memory with zoxide

    Going down the rabbit hole of updating my terminal, I came across zoxide. In a nutshell, it’s a modern replacement for cd. It seems both a gift from heaven and hell.

    From their README.md:

    zoxide

    1
    z foo              # cd into highest ranked directory matching foo
    2
    z foo bar          # cd into highest ranked directory matching foo and bar
    3
    z foo /            # cd into a subdirectory starting with foo
    4
    

    5
    z ~/foo            # z also works like a regular cd command
    6
    z foo/             # cd into relative path
    7
    z ..               # cd one level up
    8
    z -                # cd into previous directory
    9
    

    10
    zi foo             # cd with interactive selection (using fzf)
    11
    

    12
    z foo<SPACE><TAB>  # show interactive completions (zoxide v0.8.0+, bash 4.4+/fish/zsh only)

    On the one hand, it makes digging through long directory trees faster. On the other hand, I came across a YouTube video saying they aliased cd for z. Seems like a recipe for disaster when you run bash scripts with expand_aliases, where previously working scripts would suddenly execute commands on the wrong directory.

    As for me, I’m getting used to re-wiring my muscle memory around the z command and how I navigate directory trees. So far, despite the extra convenience it offers, I’m still a bit slower than using just plain cd.