markjgsmith

2024/04/05 #

• I'm busy updating the test suites for all my static site generator's plugins. It's to try and dig myself out of a hole at least partially caused by being blocked tidying up the code. The very thing I was worried about happening, which was the reason I was tidying up the code, actually happened when the world blocked me from tidying up the code! #

• I'm finding that very humid environments make my lungs worse. More coughing. Also air polution. People keep banging on about masks, and seemingly everyone wears them, especially here in HCMC. But imho they don't work!

  They don't filter the air very well, because the poluted air just goes around the sides of the mask. So you inhale it anyway. And ontop of that, the air on the inside of the mask is hugely humid, because obviously the air that comes from your body is full of water vapour.

  Isn't this mask theatre really just a dangerous way to avoid the air polution problem? #

• cat << EOF > Masks are sort of dumb

  I'm finding that very humid environments make my lungs worse.

  I end up coughing quite a lot and eventually that results in coughing up flem. I'm also finding that when I wear a mask and ensure that it's a tight fit, so the air I'm breathing is definitely being filtered by the mask, that the air in the mask itself gets very humid because obviously, the air I breath out contains water vapour created in my body. I know it's humid because when I wear my glasses while the mask is on, they immediately fog up.

  The point is that when I wear the mask for a long time, I eventually start to cough because of the humidity, and eventually it results in coughing up flem.

  It's a tough choice. Filtered air with coughing and flem, or non-filtered air with coughing and flem. If I wear a looser fit mask, the air doesn't get filtered, so what's the point?

  Like I was saying before, masks are sort of dumb.

  title: 'Masks are sort of dumb' date: '2024-04-05 22:06:00 +07:00'

  EOF

• cat << EOF > Module caches and reusable workflows

  The last few days have been a bit of a disaster development-wise. I was forced into pressing forward down a difficult path because I was blocked for many days on all other paths. It ended quite badly, and I was unable to deploy to the website and a bunch of stuff broke.

  I was able to fix it within a day, but it was kind of scary, because since I'd been forced into pushing directly to main branch on several repos, the only way out was to reset hard the branch, losing several days work. Anyway it's fixed.

  All sorts of irony surrounding the whole episode. Here from a note I wrote mid way through:

  "The very thing I was worried about happening, which was the reason I was tidying up the code, actually happened when the world blocked me from tidying up the code!"

  There were a couple of useful take aways from the exercise.

  Firstly I've found a better way to implement the npm module caches used in Github Actions that makes it easier to refresh them when code changes in the plugin modules. That's a big deal because it was a massive source of confusion and wasted build minutes. I've also removed all caches that were used in plugins. The plugins now use simplified local versions of the server components in tests rather than those in the plugins. I guess you could call them mocks. That means there's no dependencies, no need to install plugin repos, so no need for an npm cache. The only repo that still needs an npm cache is the main website because it has to npm install all the plugins.

  That should make things much less confusing. Imagine how complicated it was debugging the main website with a cache, when the bug is in a plugin that also has a cache.

  Another thing I realised earlier was that the work I did trying to tidy up the plugins by consolidating them into a couple of repos might not have been for nothing. Reason being that I got reusable workflows operational between private repos. Theoretically it means I should be able to consolidate all the plugin workflows into one workflow that they all use to build and deploy. That will be much easier to maintain.

  The final thing I realised was that it would be nice to update the cache refresh logic into a seperate reusable workflow. Currently the build deploy backup workflow is dual purpose which is confusing and error prone. Since I know reusable workflows between private repos work, that might be possible. But for it to work the caches need to be useable across workflows in the same repo. The cache refresh workflow would create the new cache, which could then be used by the build and deploy workflow. I'm not sure if that's possible yet.

  To be clear having lots of private repos is still a bit of a headache, but all in all if I manage to get all or most of these optimisations working, the simplified cache setup and consolidating the workflows might make the overhead of having seperate repos for each plugin just about manageable.

  EOF

Today’s links:

• German state ditches Microsoft for Linux and LibreOffice - It would be cool to find out more about this project. Do they have a team of developers working on features? Seems like Linux could be a good fit for government, big possibilities for automation, but I'd say you would need to have a great technical team. www.zdnet.com #

• Just 57 companies linked to 80% of greenhouse gas emissions since 2016 - Mostly oil and gas companies, the worrying thing is they are mostly paying very little attention to climate deals, increasing emmissions significantly in the last few years. www.theguardian.com #

• Opera allows users to download and use LLMs locally - I predicted this would happen recently when I wrote about LLMs in the browser, seems like an obvious combination. Interested to see what form it takes. It's not obvious how it will change the browser UI. It's nice to get a prediction right for once :) techcrunch.com #

• Apple’s electric car loss could be home robotics’ gain - Apple robots for the home sounds like it could be awesome. I'd love to have access to the design teams that are working on this at Apple. I bet a greenfield hardware project like this would have a ton of really crazy ideas sketched out with weird prototypes. Some Apple engineers are likely having the times of their lives right now, which makes me smile :) techcrunch.com #

• Linux On The Laptop Works So Damn Well That It’s Boring - It's amazing how far we've come with Linux on the desktop. If I ever have a chance to have another laptop, please god :), I'd most likely run Linux on it. My biggest worry would be how it integrates with mobile devices. You really want stuff like syncing photos abd videod to 'just work'. clivethompson.medium.com #

• New Post: Masks are sort of dumb markjgsmith.com #

• New Post: Module caches and reusable workflows markjgsmith.com #