Work

That long winded message was what greeted me this morning when I did my morning update the computer routine. E: linux-firmware: installed linux-firmware package post-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 2 Nothing like a bug that sticks in your craw and prevents you from starting the day. And then leads you down that crazy path of figuring out what the error is. And then going down the rabbit hole of realising that this error happened because that went wrong. And then tracking it all down. And then going batshit crazy. And then trying to figure whether updating Linux was a good thing to do in the first place. And then wondering if even installing it was a good thing? And then questioning your life choices in general. ...

*Update: 15/01/2021. It’s done. I moved everything and it all seems to be working. If something is broken, let me know, on [the fediverse][cbj], or mailing me at jason at this domain. To my tech posse, no there is no forwarding of old links happening. The site is too small and I have no time. Nobody is going to miss this. And to that one little friend, who noticed that the site was dead and actually cried, I love you.* Happy New Year and welcome to the first newsletter of the year :) ...

Whenever Emacs saves a file, it makes a backup of the original. So if I had a file.txt and I make changes and save it, Emacs firsts backs up the original to file.txt~. While I love this functionality, and it has saved me from a pickle more than once, I don’t love the way my folders get polluted with ~ files all over the place. My blog’s drafts folder had hundreds of these. ...

Could not focus much on programming today. So decided on doing things with Python programs. Nikola Upgrade I use Nikola to generate both my websites. It is an extremely easy to use, no fuss static site generator, which is easy on my server’s resources. Version 8.1.2 was released a few hours ago and I hopped on and installed it. I follow a slightly unconventional upgrade path, because I was terrified of breaking my server in the early days, when I was still learning about how to go about installing things on servers. ...

I started playing with a way to control Git via Python. Kushal had asked me to write a program, that would show me the local git branches. So here it is! I call it Git the Branch. (painfully, punny, I know :)) And now I realise why he asked me to do this. The program itself is trivial. Here’s the code on my code repo, Gitlab, and Github. It just consists of me using GitPython to access the current folder via a GitPython Repo object. And then querying it for its branches. ...

The Itch Aiming to write a tool using this which will show all the git branches in the current directory and the last commit date on those branches (and only the local branches :)) What I did today I had to carry my phone in to the service centre, so I did not quite have as much focussed time as yesterday, with all the coordinating and carrying, but I learned a few new things ...