What are you doing this weekend?
14 points by caius
14 points by caius
Feel free to tell what you plan on doing this weekend and even ask for help or feedback.
Please keep in mind it’s more than OK to do nothing at all too!
Celebrating! I signed a job offer.
I hope I can be as helpful and supportive to others looking for work as people have been to me.
Congratulations! What sort of role did you find? Anything that makes you particularly excited about the new job?
I found a remote software engineering role in game development. I really clicked with the team during the interviews and I'm excited to work with them.
A big positive of the job search was that it pushed me to go out to meetups and events. I've met a lot of great people doing that!
Beginning to study for the GRE. I made the decision yesterday that I am going to get my MSCS (maybe M Eng CS? any opinions?) because I want to have a deeper grasp on computer science. I'm self-taught and work in systems administration and I want to have a more full education on software engineering.
I went through and would highly recommend Georgia Tech's fully online OMSCS program.
I've seen that program mentioned a lot, and heard exclusively good things about it. I am apprehensive about doing an online degree: did you find that it negatively impacted your retention of the material / experience of the program?
Being online was great, and it sets up a lot of good habits for working remotely. You do miss out on in-person interactions, and I still have never been on the GT campus. However, it let me relocate halfway across the country between semesters with no issues. I also found my last job through a job board entry someone posted who was also in the program.
Another OMSCS alumnus here, wrapped it up in 2021 (time sure flies!). I can second the recommendation.
I was active on the OMSCS Slack, and while it's certainly not an adequate replacement for face-to-face encounters on campus, it was a great way to maintain a sense of community. That said, I was privileged enough to be able to travel to Atlanta for the graduation ceremony, and it was a great experience.
Retention-wise, I'd say it's proportional to the level of investment. I've had some on-campus experience during my undergraduate years: up to any recency bias shenanigans, I can't say there's much difference to the retention I've had online.
If you're interested in a good curriculum and don't care too much about the campus experience, it's quite difficult to beat the value for money. It does require a fair deal of discipline, though!
Happy to answer any other questions you may have.
Sounds like a great goal! I find CS knowledge to be useful surprisingly often for such an abstract subject.
going to renee good's vigil, and bidding on a cool scarf
Thank you for that. I don't know if you are in Minneapolis - there are vigils elsewhere too - but as a Minnesotan, I appreciate your support.
I'm resubbing to EVE online. Kinda like saying "im going to do hard drugs" but slightly more socially acceptable. Maybe.
I'm working on a PR to add support for the workspace symbols query to the Gleam language server. I also mean to give jujutsu another shot. Of course, I have a bunch of assignments to work on and studying to do too.
Very much enjoying jj I've been using it at work since april? Steve Klabnik's tutorial is great if you haven't seen it: https://steveklabnik.github.io/jujutsu-tutorial/introduction/introduction.html
Yes, I started reading Steve's book last time I tried using jj and I quite liked it. I'll have to pick it back up.
Pizzas. The dough and the new plates (no PTFE) are ready. I feel like I'm close to making pizzas without the hassle.
On a related note, I've basically achieved 100% whole wheat flour baguettes baked in the morning without it being a chore either.
And yes, obviously I've been doing as much engineering as cooking.
Less than I expected. The city I live in had a (light in the grand scheme of things, but it's Aarhus so they're not remotely fucking prepared) snowstorm the other day so public transport is limited or canceled, and driving is recommend against.
Probably going to go for a walk, have a beer, and pick up some vegetables and fruit to ferment for a sauce to pair with a beef wellington next weekend. I'll bring my laptop with me while I'm out and might continue some work on my wireguard implementation while having that beer.
Still thinking about whether I want to go full in on a PhD in deep learning. It has been difficult for me to think about my future in software development in the last 2 years
As an old guy who has been through quite a few cycles, and someone who uses Claude Code quite a lot, I think software development isn't going anywhere. I've enjoyed thinking about systems rather than syntax, so using AI has been fulfilling.
I'll try to find some time to work on my side project https://rootdoc.app. I like collaborative web apps that can make changes 'client-first' and then sync, so I wrote my own operational transformation library.
Feedback welcome!
You should check out the https://braid.org/ working group / discord if you haven,t they're talking about cool stuff there w/ local-first crdt type things <3
Fighting an eye infection... Started with a persistent itch, grew into an inflammation. Hopefully the antibiotics cream I've got will get rid of it.
And working on my second blog post, still about Guix. Everywhere I've shown my first post reacted very positively so far, so I'm hoping there will be interest in a post detailing the process of how one would go about packaging a moderately complex package too.
I don't think I'll be doing very much.
A couple days ago I destroyed the little collection of drawings I'd made, because I don't really feel there's any point in it anymore (I deleted some 20 years' worth of personal project code in autumn 2024, for the same reason).
Pondering hard questions about what to do with my life post-programming, how to find a place in a world that has no further use for me, and how to settle into life when human creativity is obsolete.
Also I have a terrible splitting headache due to antidepressant side effects. And I have barely slept since the Claude 4.6 announcement.
Sorry to hear that you're still struggling, datarama. In one sense, I think destroying your own art out of a sense of "no point" is really sad, but in another sense, I think it's good to be an artist who is not too precious about their creations. You created these things once, you can create them again! Regardless of if there's a "point," I think it's a good thing that you create, whether it's art or writing or programming.
Last time I saw you post you said you had started leather working. How's that going?
What about going on a vacation? I once heard a man talk about his struggle with depression, and he would book a vacation like half a year away, and that would give him happiness having that vacation to look forward to.
Perhaps you need to get out of your regular habits, do something completely different for a while. Like try some new hobby, do a new activity, or travel somewhere. I had times during my life when I went to dancing classes, sang in a gospel choir, did group workouts, trained MMA, worked as a security guard during evenings and weekends, did volunteer work, etc. I just tried anything that I found interesting.
Now I have a wife and a 1 year old child. During the summer we went on a road trip in Europe, visiting 7 different countries. I can recommend to get out on an adventure. We had literally not booked a single thing beforehand. During any day of the trip we didn't know where we would sleep the next day. It's fun to see new things, take a break from the computer, sleep at bed & breakfasts, and meet new people. We stayed at a farm in Austria, with an old couple in Italy, with an old woman in Germany who had adopted about 50 children, etc.
During the summer we also went on a second road trip, but to Ukraine (my wife is Ukrainian). Since the war began I have been multiple times in Ukraine, but this was my first time driving in Ukraine. I love Ukraine and wouldn't mind living there part of the year, if it wasn't for the war. Especially Lviv is gorgeous, I can highly recommend it. I don't mind it, but the living standards are definitely worse in Ukraine than what I'm used to. Commuting by marshrutka, shopping at an open street market, not being able to drink tap water, having limited hours of hot water, etc. And now during the war, hearing air alerts multiple times per week when there are missiles, rockets or drones in your oblast. Being away and experiencing a different culture for a while, it gives some perspective to life.
Just some thoughts. I wish you the best. Take care.
The thing I'm looking most forward to at the moment is my summer vacation in Sweden, in fact. I have a good friend who lives there, and I visit him every summer. Those visits have been the lone bright spots in the last three horrid years.
I've tried establishing new habits. I really have. There aren't many sporting activities I can do due to severe asthma (and a bad back + a nerve injury in my elbow), though. I first tried to revive an old programming project from when I was happier (and then got hit by how pointless AI makes it, and deleted all 20 years of personal project code I had), took up pixel art (and got tired of AI bros showing up with diffusion models to show me that what I was doing was worthless), started tending bonsai, took up pen-and-paper drawing, tried my hand at playing modular synthesizers - and it all seems like pointless coping attempts while I look at my entire life devaluing to zero in real time. That's why I destroyed my pen and paper drawings - all I could see when I looked at them was a pathetic pile of "copium" (as the cool kids say). Like all the old programming projects I'd made just looked like a sad monument to a wasted life.
If at all possible, find a therapist. I say this as someone who is currently going to therapy. It will help, believe me.
I'm seeing a therapist regularly, and have done so for three years.
Good to hear. Keep at it! :)
To be perfectly honest, while it provides relief, I'm not sure I can say it helps. I'm not going to recommend against therapy for anyone (myself included), and it's very likely I'd be even worse off if I weren't going to therapy and taking medications - but, well, I'm still doing very poorly, and I'm not getting better.
I'm perfectly aware that I need help, but I don't think the help I need exists.
(I'm not dissatisfied with my current therapist; of all the ones I've gone to over the years he's by far been the best fit for me.)
I'm sorry that you are struggling. I'm glad you have a therapist who is a good fit. I'm not sure what to say to try to nudge you in a helpful direction, but know that for myself, I had to figure out how to allow myself to improve from therapy. Additionally, for me, it took several tries with different docs to get my brain chemistry right.
When I read this:
Pondering hard questions about what to do with my life post-programming, how to find a place in a world that has no further use for me, and how to settle into life when human creativity is obsolete.
I just don't see either of those things as being the case. I don't think we are moving into a post-programming world, nor do I think creativity is obsolete. I wish I could be more helpful than just saying that I think your depression is lying to you.
Are you new to antidepressants? If so may want to discuss switching to something else that doesn’t give you specifically headaches
I've used various antidepressants on-and-off for almost 30 years. The cocktail I'm currently using has the mildest side effects I've experienced while still having an actual effect.
I always get headaches after changing dosage, though. They subside after a week or two.
I am off to see my parents with a late christmas gift (a digital photo frame that doesn't save everything in the cloud), then dinner with my friends, and Sunday pinball, then superbowl watch party with friends.
As little computer usage as possible, really.
Seems to be a pretty serious food weekend.
Combined with hosting a dinner party last night and hosting a Kevin Bacon/bacon/bakin'-themed party next weekend, Fat Tuesday seems to be coming early this year.
Trying out my new bread baking machine and working on a better media gallery for my project https://val.build
Contributing a WIP lsp to scheme-rs; reworking my compiler and adding some ir optimisation passes; reviewing the contract for my new job and eating loads of tapas :)
Working on my personal project of adding ML libraries to LispE. I would like to add MoE control in the C++ forward loop in lispe_torch for models with Mixture Of Expert implementation. So far, I have created lispe_torch, lispe_mlx, lispe_titktoken and lispe_gguf. But lispe_torch is a little behind in terms of functionalities (it is based on libtorch by the PyTorch foundation)
I released Nixtamal 0.3.1 with a better nixtamal refresh TUI UX that isn’t so noisy & makes the input/patch phase very clear. I want to cut 1.0.0 soon; I wired up everything to support Fossil now that nix-prefetch-fossil is merged (but have some questions about its output), however, I also need to git nixtamal upgrade in so that users can upgrade to the 1.0.0 schema moving forward. At that point tho, the project might end up being complete enough. I’m still quite proud of how it has turned out meeting basically all my needs, & finding at least one interested contributor who also isn’t satisfied with the landscape. It seems the Soupault project rubbed off on my thinking / design enough that Nixtamal has been flexible / generic enough to do whatever the user needs.
Like a sibling post, I too am working on my pizza baking. I’m trying to make a deep-dish hybrid somewhere between a Detroit-style & a focaccia so the crust is less hard & would appeal to locals. Feedback has been pretty good on the flavor of the dough & sauce even if the texture still isn’t reproducible or nearing ‘perfection’. I had an idea of in 10 years opening a pizza place or a tea shop here, but at the rate things are going, I might have to consider doing it early, not on my own terms (& nest egg completely able), but dictated by the market. The LLM race + back-to-office post-COVID has made the acceptable, asynchronous, we-will-meet-again-in-a-week remote work uncommon. Along with the trend of FP-style front-end being fully dead, & functional programming as a whole waning despite it being a great way to model invariants for humans, seems ending up in this niche that made me happy is basically gone. I took time off to pivot & learn to the point of feeling very confident in Nix—even teaching it—but I’ve not seen many postings for work & teams have downsized (despite with Nix, the LLMs suggesting all the anti-patterns built up by copy-pasting of public code since many can’t be bothered with its learning cliff). At a point I had the expertise to do things that were in-demand & low-supply of that knowledge which let me physically move where I felt happiest & most “at home”—which I did—but the relaxed life here means I am a bit stranded now & my prior network doesn’t know of openings. This all crept up way faster than anticipated. I also made a few bad calls putting some folks on hold since I made prior commitments to another group a couple of times in a row, but not choosing what is the best thing for me immediately ended up in me losing all those threads in the end with the prior commitments going nowhere & those on hold moving on before I was freed up to return to their wants.
Instead, I’ll probably continue this existential dread thought cycle that “this chapter is over” for me (what to expect with an art degree?) unless I want to both be an AI code janitor (which I would do, to be fair) & wanted to move; to which the latter I don’t really want to move or sell my place—100% not if it meant being back in the West for my wallet & mental health alone. If you know of any Nix + Nix-adjacent work that allows remote, shoot me something, else I’ll be thinking logistics of local business with my partner.
Vegging around, considering going to some events some friends invited me to, working on my website :)
Need to change the tie rods (inner & outer) on the Z4 this weekend as the ones on the car are rusted solid and therefore aren't adjustable for an alignment next week. Common issue, hopefully won't be too difficult to do, but means dodging the showers in the UK tomorrow and freezing my ass off to do it. Not so much fun.
Also have a dashcam to fit in the Focus, which at least will be in the dry. Oh, and my new head unit in the Z4 is rattling now, which is driving me nuts. So that dashboard needs ripping apart too to figure that out, maybe try and do some modelling for a better angle on the screen too.
Picked up a refurb Mac Mini M4 this week, need to finish setting that up. Homelab machine, and the intention is have it mirror iCloud Drive and Photos for everyone in the house (on their own accounts), so we can have a non-Apple backup of all that data for us all. Shouldn't be too hard to setup, mostly waiting on an SSD to arrive for the machine so I have somewhere to put the ~1.4TB of data.