Once upon a time, I wrote a book about debugging in .NET . After some 4 years I decided it was time for the old fellow to become available to everyone. PDF | MOBI | ePub Some topics covered in the book are: Advanced debugging techniques with Visual Studio .NET Core and .NET Framework on Windows, Linux, and Mac Performance issues Memory leaks and...
A prior iteration of this site had a page called "Project ideas" that listed a bunch of things that I'd like to build. This was a good idea and useful in its own right (I got a few people to build companies and projects based on them, and it was a useful avenue by which folks could tell me which ideas were already implemented.) I still haven't...
A prior iteration of this site had a page called "Project ideas" that listed a bunch of things that I'd like to build. This was a good idea and useful in its own right (I got a few people to build companies and projects based on them, and it was a useful avenue by which folks could tell me which ideas were already implemented.) I still haven't...
Yesterday I posted this video about a Mac app called Supercharge which adds a number of quality of life features to your Mac, one of which is the ability to cut and paste files in the Finder. I commented how nice this was, as it was something I use all
The WordPress saga continues. Theo Browne has a great video overview of things up to October 14. Since I last wrote about this there was more back-and-forth between David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH) and Matt Mullenweg. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not a fan of DHH, but I agree with his takes on this situation. On October 13, DHH commented on the...
The OmniPlan giveaway has ended, and I have winners to announce! The winners! Congratulations to: Ishan Mahapatra Chris Messina You should have received an email with details, please let me know if you didn’t hear anything! But I didn’t win! If you didn’t win, sorry, but OmniPlan is still worth checking out. OmniPlan is totally worth checking...
OpenAI promised this at DevDay a few weeks ago and now it's here: their Chat Completion API can now accept audio as input and return it as output. OpenAI still recommend their WebSocket-based Realtime API for audio tasks, but the Chat Completion API is a whole lot easier to write code against. Generating audio Audio input via a Bash script ...
You're going to have outages in production. They're inevitable. The question is how to best minimize outages, both their frequency and duration. Common wisdom advocates for using managed k8s and databases, containerized services, horizontal scaling for redundancy, building images in CI/CD, and defining your infrastructure as code. This is Best...
Every now and again I start listening to music on MacOS through my headphones and the audio is tinny and crackly. After some dicking around with quitting Apple Music, reconnecting the headphones, even rebooting the Mac nothing fixed it. I finally worked out the fix[1] - changing the input settings of the Mac to not be the headphones. No more...
I found a letter I wrote to a homophobic friend 27 years ago and I reflect on what is different and what is the same in 2024.
What is speculative decoding, how it works and what are some of the recent advances in this area?
In this quick post I'll dispel a common confusion in the basic math of complex numbers. It's often useful to calculate the norm-square (also known as absolute square) of a complex number z. This norm-square is denoted |z|^2. One could naively expect that: \[|z|^2=zz\] However, that's false …
This is one of my favorite bits from fellow anglophone Québécois Norm McDonald: One of the goals I believe that we all share for post-incident work is to improve the system. For example, when I wrote the post Why I don’t like discussing action items during incident reviews, I understood why people would want to … Continue reading If you don’t...
I'm of the opinion that you should never use mmap, because if you get an I/O error of some kind, the OS raises a signal, which SQLite is unable to catch, and so the process dies. When you are not using mmap, SQLite gets back an error code from an I/O error and is able to take remedial action, or at least compose an error message. — D. Richard...
Icons are an essential part of modern web development, providing visual cues that enhance user experience and making interfaces more intuitive and appealing. However, choosing the right set of icons involves considering both aesthetic appeal and licensing terms. In this article, we’ll explore three primary sources for web development icons: truly...
Using static websites for tiny archives Alex Chan: Over the last year or so, I’ve been creating static websites to browse my local archives. I’ve done this for a variety of collections, including: paperwork I’ve scanned documents I’ve created screenshots I’ve taken web pages I’ve bookmarked video and audio files I’ve saved This is such a neat...
And so, while we software engineers enjoy free hosting & custom domain support with GitHub Pages / Cloudflare Pages / etc, normal users are stuck with a bunch of greedy clowns that make them pay for every little thing, all while wasting ungodly amounts of computational power to render what could have been a static website in 99% of cases. Yes,...
The Federal Trade Commission today announced a final “click-to-cancel” rule that will require sellers to make it as easy for consumers to cancel their enrollment as it was to sign up. Most of the final rule’s provisions will go into effect 180 days after it is published in the Federal Register. I believe there’s similar legislation in place in CA...
And yet: as much as the Fediverse is different (the governing structures, the incentives, the moderation, the absence of ads and engagement tricks), so much of it is also unsettlingly familiar—the same small boxes, the same few buttons, the same mechanics of following and being followed. The same babbling, tumbling, rushing stream of thoughts. I...
I’m a big believer in solving problems yourself if it’s possible rather than waiting for app updates that might never arrive. Making extensions for the Nova editor that I do most of my programming and blogging in is so much fun! So, here are some of my own creation: YAML Tag Picker Allows you to easily select tags for the front matter in your...
I’m a big believer in solving problems yourself if it’s possible rather than waiting for app updates that might never arrive. Making extensions for the Nova editor that I do most of my programming and blogging in is so much fun! So, here are two more: Reindent-o-matic Allows you to apply .editorconfig indent rules to the current file, or all...
When I linked to this post about DNS, Dave replied and mentioned he uses DNSControl for managing this kind of stuff. I'd heard of it before but never actually looked into what it did so I jumped into the getting started guide. I'd recommend reading that if you want a more in-depth guide, this post is just an overview of what I did to get what I...
When 8BitDo announced they were selling a new keycap set that matched my keyboard I got from them I ordered immediately. I didn't need new keycaps for it but I really wanted to get rid of that pesky windows key. They arrived this morning in nice little trays: At lunch I swapped out a bunch of them including a lot of the ones with symbols on,...
Over on social I’d come across this by Liam Konemann for The Guardian about music clubs and gigs for neurodivergent people, which I read mostly through the lens of having just attended a concert as an autistic person. I don’t really understand anything the article describes as the accommodations for neurodivergence, although I do appreciate the...
Yesterday, Elizabeth Siegle, a developer advocate for CLoudflare, showed off a really freaking cool demo making use of Cloudflare's Workers AI support. Her demo made use of WNBA stats to create a beautiful dashboard that's then enhanced with AI. You can find the demo here: https://wnba-analytics-ai-insights.streamlit.app/I found this incredibly...
I ran across the following theorem in Ross Honsberger’s book Mathematical Morsels: Every odd square ends in 1 in base 8, and if you cut off the 1 you have a triangular number. A number is an odd square if and only if it is the square of an odd number, so odd squares have […] The post Squares, triangles, and octal first appeared on John D. Cook.
Qualcomm cancels Snapdragon Dev Kit, refunds all orders This afternoon I received the following email from Arrow, regarding the Snapdragon Developer Kit for Windows: Dear Valued Customer, Please see this important message from Qualcomm: ”At Qualcomm, we are dedicated to pioneering leading technology and delivering premium...
New in NotebookLM: Customizing your Audio Overviews The most requested feature for Google's NotebookLM "audio overviews" (aka automatically generated podcast conversations) has been the ability to provide direction to those artificial podcast hosts - setting their expertise level or asking them to focus on specific topics. Today's update adds...
MathJax.Hub.Config({ CommonHTML: { scale: 105 } }); table.xyz { table-layout: fixed; border-collapse: collapse; margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto; } table.xyz th, table.xyz td { border: 1px solid black; } table.blueTable { border: 1px solid #1C6EA4; background-color:...
Do you know where Milk Duds got their name? They were chocolate candies that came out bad in the manufacturing process. They were duds. But they still tasted good. So why not sell them! And now you know the rest of the story.
I’m a big believer in solving problems yourself if it’s possible rather than waiting for app updates that might never arrive. Making extensions for the Nova editor that I do most of my programming and blogging in is so much fun! So, here are two more: Reindent-o-matic Allows you to apply .editorconfig indent rules to the current file, or all...
First, I’m a lifelong Mets fan going back to 1962 when I was seven years old. Second, in the 1973 World Series, which the Mets were in, against the Oakland A’s, starting pitcher Tug McGraw coined a slogan — Ya Gotta Believe! Since then a lot of Mets fans say it when the Mets are […]
Thinking about thinking when coding, and the differences in what we see in our minds eye
The other day I found myself needing to add up some numeric values that were scattered across twelve different emails. I didn't particularly feel like copying and pasting all of the numbers out one at a time, so I decided to try something different: could I record a screen capture while browsing around my Gmail account and then extract the...
For once, pop psychology gets it right. We are doing the best we can do with what we have to work with.
Welcome to my new blog! My first computer. A TRS-80 Color Computer. I still have it in my garage. Hi there! It’s been a while. I’m almost not even sure how to write these things any more, after doing it daily for like a decade or so, it seems weird starting again. But it’s time - it seems long-form writing is making a...
We need an HTML Document standard I’ve recently been messing with Markdown (to my utter chagrin) with the idea of using it to update my resume and blog. I was simply astounded by how much recreation of solved problems is going on in that space. I prefer JavaScript/Node so I’ve played with UnifiedJS (remark/rehype), MarkdownIt, MarkedJS, and...
The Hypertext HTML Document Editor Introducing the Hypertext HTML Document Editor World Wide Web: Phase 2 Hypertext is a new rich-text editor for creating documents using HTML instead of using an 18 year old text format or complex word processor files. It's an app created using web technologies for creating actual documents, not websites, web...
My simple blog generator: Hypertext Blogmaker So in addition to the Hypertext HTML Document editor PWA app I made, I also created a quick NodeJS static blog generator which works with the docs that Hypertext spits out. You can grab it from Github here. Here's a quick intro on how to use it, first grab it from the repo, either with git or...
Hypertext Demo Video I whipped up a quick introduction video which shows the features and functionality of the Hypertext Document Editor. As I said in the video, it's a basic run through - I'll create something fancier, as well as actual documentation - soon. If you have any questions/comments, let me know! -Russ
Why is Markdown so popular? Notable's Markdown Editor... The left is somehow better than the right. I truly loathe Markdown. Truly. But given the widespread use of Markdown, it might seem strange that I have such aversion to it. If you somehow really like it, or are so used to it by now, you might be tempted to think I'm the oddball....
About my father This is a long, personal story about how I discovered five years ago at age 45 that my dad wasn't my biological father, who he was, who I am and the effect it has had on my life and mental health. It helped a lot to write it, hopefully it might be of interest for someone to read it. My family and I By 2017, I had suspected...
The decades long quagmire of encapsulated HTML This is part of a series of posts I'm writing about creating an HTML Document format: We need an HTML Document standard The Hypertext HTML Document Editor My simple blog generator: Hypertext Blogmaker So my first thought when I started down the path of creating...
Twitter and the rebirth of the long form weblog Long form writing contained in blogs served as static web pages seems to be making a comeback. In addition to consumer sites like Substack, which are making it easy for people to build both a following and an income from their writing, the latest trend among techies is a simple...
H2G2 is still relevant The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy isn’t just a humorous sci-fi novel, it’s a roadmap to the future and has been my go-to book for 30+ years. The entire series is a gold mine of predictions, analysis, and commentary about every facet of society from tech to religion, quantum physics to philosophy, genetics,...
Information Ochlocracy DALL-E generated image of "information ochlocracy" I decided to play with ChatGPT: Write an essay of at least 500 words about "information ochlocracy". Information ochlocracy, also known as "information anarchy," is a term that refers to the overwhelming and often conflicting information that...
I'm selling my name... For Sale... rb.io So I've been out of work for a while, so to raise cash I've been selling all the extra stuff I have. It's amazing how much money one can spend on tech gadgets, only for the prices to drop to literally 10% of what you spent on them! I tell my son all the time that it would have been nice if I had...
My job search "Impressionist painting of someone looking for a job." So I've been ramping up my search for a job in what is without a doubt the worst tech job market in a decade. If you haven't seen https://layoffs.fyi it's pretty bad out there! I've been applying to Senior Technical Product Manager positions, but my experience with...
DevRel Portfolio Large screen kiosk screen from Nokia Research Center's 25th anniversary. Below are links to some of my work as a Technical Evangelist, Marketing Technologies Manager and blogger. Resume Online portfolio deck with images. Blog posts Work Articles by Russell Beattie on Amazon Developer...
How I saved Super Bowl 50 for Amazon CBS Sports Super Bowl 50 Streaming Ad Since today is the Super Bowl, I figured it would be a good moment to reminisce about something that happened a few years ago when I was working at Amazon. Part I: The oops It all started because someone at Amazon forgot to return an email. It was December...
LLMs and the Future of Human Computer Interaction Create a modernist image which expresses the idea of information mechanization. This is a pretty exciting moment in tech. Like clockwork, every decade or so since the broad adoption of electricity there’s been a new technical innovation that completely upends society once it becomes...
Quick thoughts on Mark Twain's Travelogues My favorite Twain quote... I've been inspired to jot this down because I've been reading Mark Twain's travelogues, which are truly a revelation to me. Yes, Twain is Twain, but having never read anything beyond Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn before, I really didn't have any idea of what an incredible...
If you’ve ever sat at a stop light that was just stuck on red, where there was clearly a problem with the light where it wasn’t ever switching green, you’ve encountered a liveness problem with a system. A liveness property of a specification is an assertion that some good thing eventually happens. In the case … Continue reading A liveness example...
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working on solving a problem that’s been nagging me for a while. Whenever I wanted to launch som