2022 September
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A couple of months ago I got access to the DALL-E, an AI/machine learning model that lets you generate images from natural language descriptions. Basically they have a server they run and you get some limited number of credits per month (?) to generate images. I only got around to trying it last week and posted some of my samples in the most recent weeknotes. Since then, I feel like there's a spike in the number of AI image generation-related news and articles I encounter. (More likely than not, I just notice them more now that I've actually played with
2022 March
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Interesting Twitter thread about naming conventions in Southeast Asia: Vietnamese and other peoples of Southeast Asia have naming conventions very much different from those in the Anglosphere. For us, writing our names overseas is a big headache. Let me first explain Vietnamese names, then I'll touch on names in other cultures. The comments in the thread are full of examples of Western people and systems having trouble with cultures that have different naming conventions. Of course, the Philippines isn't included in the discussion because we largely follow Western-style conventions. When my dad and I had to check in at the -
(Warning: Medium) I found this interesting only because when I started out in web dev, our company's standard test plan required that we autofocus the first editable control on page load
2022 February
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🔗 Misidentifying talent via web
Dan Luu on difficulties identifying talent in both sports and software dev
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We used to attend these online quiz nights where at the top of the quiz, the host would do his introductory spiel explaining how the quiz night works. This is typical of quiz nights. But this quiz group in particular always had a semi-complicated final round where each team makes a wager against how many answers you can get in the final question which has multiple answers. They introduce this mechanic during the intro spiel, and at the end of the night, if there are any new teams during the quiz, they will inevitably raise a question or two that
2022 January
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I've solved all #CSS puzzles on CSS Speedrun™ within 06:03:8 and all I got was this stupid tweet.
2021 December
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Have mercy on those of us who don't always have access to fast broadband.
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More CSS Flexbox/Grid tips
2021 November
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TIL that if you don't put
type='button'on yourbuttontag, it will automatically submit the form when clicked. -
🔗 People Matter via web
Dan Luu on how corporations treating people as fungible is a mistake
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Some notes on posting to Mastodon via their HTTP API using Python. The backend of this site uses similar code to enable automated syndication to my Mastodon account. Creating an access token Go to your mastodon preferences (it's the gear icon above the search bar in the web interface) and click Development. (Or go to [yourservername]/settings/applications) Click "New Application". Specify application name. Default permissions should be fine. Save. Click your application name in the grid on the Development page. Your access token will be in the top part of the screen. Posting a status (or as they call it, a
2021 October
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Look, am I a webdev with over 18 years experience? Yes.
Did I just spend 30 mins wondering why my file upload wasn't working because I forget to set the form as multipart? Also yes.
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Just spent an hour trying to figure out why my Django webapp suddenly wasn't working because apparently if you accidentally delete an
__init__.pyyou're gonna have a bad time.It took me a while because the issue only happened on the live server and not on local. Django only complained when it was run via WSGI and nothing was showing up in the logs.
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I was never big on Ruby, but I did read through _why's poignant guide back in the day, it was a joyous way to learn a language.
2021 September
2021 June
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HBO Max caused a bit of a stir among its subscribers last week when they accidentally sent out an email titled "Integration Test Email #1" to some large number of their subscribers, which spawned a lot of clever commentary and snarky remarks on Twitter. A few days later HBO Max sent out an apology blaming an unnamed intern for the boo-boo, which spawned a lot of "Dear Intern" tweets with many commiserating with the unnamed intern by sharing their own stories of mishaps from their younger days. There was also a thread of other developers and their stories of how
2021 May
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I'm not big on modern frontend JavaScript frameworks (mostly because I think web pages should use as little JS as possible), but when I do find the need to use one, my weapon of choice is Vue.js. I dislike React, but mostly because (a) my first experience with React was with mobile development using React Native for mobile app development, which I generally don't like; and (b) I don't like Facebook, which backs React. I have no opinion on Angular. Despite being my frontend framework of choice, I don't actually have that much experience with Vue beyond a few small