How to cross the Capilano suspension bridge if you’re scared of heights - use blinders!

If you're like me and scared of heights, crossing a suspension bridge like the Capilano Suspension Bridge might feel like a scene from a horror movie. But fear not! I found a hilariously practical (and slightly ridiculous) solution: homemade blinders. Yes, blinders, like the kind horses wear, but for humans! Here's how it worked for me:

The Genius (and DIY) Behind the Blinders

Blinders are simply pieces of material that limit your field of vision—think tunnel vision but intentional. For my contraption, I rummaged around the house and found an empty box from a Swiffer dusters kit. Here's the step-by-step brilliance:

1. Cut an arc for your forehead.

2. Snip a triangle for your nose.

3. Staple this masterpiece to a trusty baseball cap.

Voilà! You now have your very own anti-height-anxiety accessory. Here's what my creation looked like:

What It Feels Like Inside the Blinders

From the inside, the view is blissfully boring. You can only see straight ahead. The terrifying 230-foot drops on either side? Completely blocked out. Ignorance truly is bliss!

So, next time you find yourself facing a vertigo-inducing bridge, grab a box, some scissors, and a baseball cap. Who said DIY couldn't save the day—and your nerves?

Using AI to create a dynamic Tip Of The Day

One of the cool things about ChatGPT Projects is you can instruct it to be like someone or a combination of someones, and you can choose these to be experts. Then one you have created this "super-expert", you can ask it to give you a daily tip.

For example, I have a ChatGPT Project called Parenting Experts with these instructions to draw wisdom from four great sources:

Draw from the wisdom of the following parenting experts: Gordon Neufeld, Vanessa Lapointe, Becky Kennedy, and Deborah MacNamara. I will be asking you for a parenting tip of the day.

Then each day I can ask them for the tip of the day and I get something super-insightful back:

You can also ask your experts any questions you might have, not just for a tip-of-the-day.

Pinboard vs Notion

 I discovered a great alternative to Pinboard: Notion, the note-taking database. Set it up according to this video, and you have a free alternative to Pinboard with a Chrome extension that is actually good. 

Also having an image for each bookmark is nice. I like how it will pull an image from the page or you can screenshot the current page for the image.

AI podcast version of my entire blog

 I fed all the posts of this blog into NotebookLM and it created this podcast;

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ugg1GAfUWnY-EltVKIx9OC8lrTx4Pls3/view?usp=sharing

Tools used:

• blogger.com export to xml format
• blog2md tool to convert xml to markdown
• NotebookLM for generating the audio

Trying out Cursor editor

I'm trying out an editor called Cursor and am quite liking it as a replacement for VS Code + GitHub Copilot Chat. It is more aggressive in autocompleting than Copilot, which is good.

Another cool thing about Cursor is you can ask it questions about a specific PR (set scope to @PR):

A Raycast extension I contributed to

 I contributed a couple of commands to the excellent Raycast app and command launcher (similar to Alfred). The commands are called Transform and Transform Preview and are in the ChatGPT Quick Actions extension (needs a ChatGPT User API key).

Basically you select some text anywhere, do ⌥ Space to bring up Raycast, then select Transform and give it a prompt to act on and replace the selected text, like:

• beautify JSON
• do the math
• count the occurrences of each line

Transform Preview displays the result in a window instead of replacing the selected text.

Things I bought that I wish I knew I could have gotten at Ikea for cheaper

 These are things I bought that I wish i knew Ikea sold so I could have bought them more cheaply:

• doormats
• rugs
• saucepan
• boot tray
• cleaning gloves
• microfibre cloths
• soap dispensers
• flat bedsheets
• food containers
• garbage cans
• measuring cup
• tape measure
• can opener
• salt and pepper shakers

Asking ChatGPT for voting advice

 It's elections time in British Columbia, so I asked ChatGPT:

do the bc conservatives or the bc ndp align more with catholic values?

It had a detailed response that ended with:

Conclusion:

• BC Conservatives may align more closely with Catholic teachings on pro-life issues, religious freedom, and traditional family values, though these are not always central to their platform.

• BC NDP aligns more with the Church’s teachings on social justice, care for the poor and vulnerable, and environmental stewardship, which are key aspects of Catholic social teaching.

A Catholic voter in BC may weigh these different elements depending on which aspects of their faith are most important to them in the political context.

So not a straightforward answer, but gives good food for thought. 

Arc Browser

I’m really liking the Arc browser. One cool thing it does is: if you hover over any link and press Shift, it displays a small popup with an AI summary of the web page behind the link.

Another cool thing I learned is you can ask Arc to summarize the current page by pressing Cmd-F, typing "summarize page", the click the Ask button. You can probably ask it other questions about the page as well.

Another cool thing about Microsoft edge for GitHub users

Another cool thing about Microsoft Edge (in addition to my post before) is you can select some code on GitHub then choose Ask Copilot, and it will explain whatever you selected on the right:

What i like about the Microsoft Edge browser

 I'm really liking the Microsoft Edge browser on Mac:

1. The Read Aloud feature is really good. The voice quality is as good as Speechify
2. I like the vertical tabs. The only thing I don't like is the vertical tabs snap shut after you click X on one of them, so it's tedious if you want to close a bunch of them.
3. I like the Split Screen feature. You can right-click a link and choose Open Link In Right Split Screen

Workaround for AI hallucination: Make them sound less sure

 At work I asked our Confluence (wiki) AI, "What does BADF stand for?" It answered

BAMDF stands for Bidder Advertiser Metadata Framework

But I couldn't find “Bidder Advertiser” anywhere in our wiki.

It turns out this was completely wrong. My coworkers told me it actually stands for "Binary Augmented MDF".

To work around the hallucination problem, maybe AIs should prefix everything they say with “I think that...” or  “It seems to me that…” instead of sounding 100% certain all the time.

Myers-Briggs code: ISTJ

 Apparently, my Myers-Briggs code is ISTJ. 9 years ago, I thought I was an INFJ.

My Holland Code

My Holland code is still CIA, as it was in 2020. In 2004, it was different: IAR.

C = Conventional. I like to work with data and numbers, am detail-oriented, and am good at following instructions.

I = Investigative. I like to learn, figure out how things work, and solve problems.

A = Artistic. I have a bit of an artistic bent, using intuition and imagination. I'm a visual person.

Favourite Things

Here is a list of some of my favourite things.

1. Chocolate chip mint ice cream
2. Trying new technological devices and apps
3. Audiobooks, like Jane Austen novels
4. Podcasts, like Called to Communion or The Journey Home
5. Wrestling with my son
6. Assisting at Mass
7. Eating out with my wife
8. Harrison Hot Springs
9. Fettuccini Alfredo
10. Computer programming, especially UI projects or small backend projects
11. Reading tech news
12. Producing quick data visualizations
13. Comparison shopping, researching products, reading reviews
14. Conversion stories
15. Tools and books for self-improvement
16. Being a great dad
17. Personal finance
18. Lord of the Rings, Narnia, other imaginative fiction
19. Watching tech documentaries
20. Visiting the beach with my family
21. ChatGPT, GitHub Copilot
22. Computer programming tools
23. Smart home devices
24. Lex Fridman podcast - interviews remarkable people

One Mouse

One mouse, two mice.

One house, two hice.

One louse, two lice.

One blouse, two blice.

One nouse, two nice.

One rouse, two rice.

One twouse, two twice.

One ouse, two ice.

"Grug Brained Developer" in a Yoda voice

 A couple of days ago, The Grug Brained Developer was posted to Hacker News. It is a collection of programming wisdom written in a caveman style, like:

Instead grug try to limit damage of big brain developer early in project by giving them thing like UML diagram (not hurt code, probably throw away anyway) or by demanding working demo tomorrow

When I shared the link at work, one of my co-workers said, in her head, she was reading it in a Yoda voice.

Well it turns out I actually do have a speech synthesizer app with a Yoda voice! It's a pricey app called Proloquo4Text and it has a voice called Little Creature which sounds like Yoda.

For your enjoyment, here is the app reading “The Eternal Enemy: Complexity” from The Grug Brained Developer, in a Yoda voice.

 

Wordblender

Maybe I'm the only one in the world who needs this tool, but I made a webpage called Wordblender. You paste in a bunch of text and it will chunk it up into chunks of 3 consecutive words. It then shuffles the chunks and outputs it.

Use this if you have a long piece of text and you don't want to understand the overall meaning, but you do want to scan it for small runs of local meaning that might be interesting to you.

Like I said, pretty unique use case. Leave a comment if you find this useful for some reason.

http://jonathanaquino.com/wordblender.php

Love static typing

I'm currently working in an all-TypeScript codebase, and have also recently been working in Go, and I must say I'm really loving static typing, especially compared to huge JavaScript and Python codebases. Why? Simply because it adds some checks to make sure that the connections between pieces of my code are still sound when I move code around. It doesn't check that everything is correct, but checking connections is an essential sanity check.

Don't follow Marie Kondo's advice to give your books away - you'll regret it

 A couple of  years ago, I read Marie Kondo's The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up and one of its recommendations was to part with a bunch of books you don't use. I dutifully followed it and gave 1 bookshelf of books to Value Village (keeping 1 bookshelf of books for myself).

How I regret that decision.

Years of accumulated books, books I wanted to read someday, books I want to read today – gone, just like that. I warn my fellow bookophiles to not follow Marie Kondo's advice. Do not part with your books. Or if you must part with some, part with the ones you hate. Keep the ones you haven't read yet but plan to read someday, or the ones you plan to re-read someday.

Some books I regret throwing out:

• My undergraduate physics textbook (Halliday and Resnick). In fact, all of my university textbooks. Engineering Physics was my major and I just threw out everything I'd learned. Fortunately bookfinder.com lists an old edition of Halliday and Resnick for $20 so I will at least recoup that.
• A great undergraduate biology textbook – I think it was by Mader.
• Dialogues of St. Catherine of Siena. Never got around to reading much of it, but I'd like to sometime.

What to say during 1:1s

My old manager challenged me to do 1:1s with all 22 engineers in my business unit (RollWorks), and out of that came the following three topics that I would enjoy sharing in any 1:1, whether with someone above me or someone below me.

1. Anything fun done recently or any hobbies. For them and for you. This helps to connect on a personal level, which is always good.
2. Main worries or priorities (or what is currently being worked on). For them and for you. It's good to know someone's top concerns or what they are working on.
3. Anything learned recently or new tools. For them and for you. It's fun to share something you learned recently.

I'm going to try this with 1:1s with my manager.

Annoying basic things that golang lacks

 Go lacks some basic features that I am going to document here:

• abs() for integers
• min() and max() for integers
• sets

Lego City piece count vs price

 It is interesting to look at a chart of Lego piece counts vs. price. The higher the set is, the better the value. Here is a spreadsheet of Lego City piece counts vs. price for November 18, 2020:

Why IntelliJ is better than VSCode

I've been trying to use VSCode as my main text editor for several months, for Python/Java/JavaScript. But there are important things that VSCode can't do that a dedicated IDE can do with ease. For example, I just got this Java exception when running my code in VSCode:

But will VSCode let me click the line to jump to the code? No it won't unfortunately. IntelliJ will. In fact, IntelliJ will even let me set a breakpoint in the code so I can stop and look around.

And I was really hoping that VSCode could serve my editor needs for any language.

Favourite authors and influences

The following authors and people have had a big influence on my life.

• Kent Beck
• Dave Thomas
• Marshall Rosenberg
• Stephen Covey
• Richard Bolles
• Edward Feser
• St. Joseph
• Fr. Jacques Philippe
• John Gottman
• Gordon Neufeld
• Jane Austen
• St. Francis de Sales
• Josef Pieper

Contexts vs Witch

I'm evaluating a couple of Mac task-switcher tools: Witch by ManyTricks and Contexts. I think I'm going to go with Contexts for the following reasons:

Advantages of Witch:

• Can switch to a specific tab in Chrome and some other apps

Advantages of Contexts:

• Faster than Witch. Sometimes Witch takes a few seconds to open for some reason.
• Reliably binds to Command+Tab. When Witch is bound to Command+Tab, sometimes the old switcher opens on Command+Tab, for example, when the Google login screen is being shown. Contexts doesn't have this problem.

My Holland Code

My Holland Code is CIA/CIR. This code is one way of summing up your interests.

My main ones are Conventional and Investigative. Conventional folks are people who like working with data and math and who are detail-oriented. Investigative people love to learn, analyze, and evaluate things. Yes I am detail-oriented and yes I like researching stuff (especially when shopping 🙂).

My secondary ones are Artistic and Realistic. Artistic people like to use their creativity and have artistic abilities. Realistic people like to work with machines and tools. I have a bit of both although they aren't my primary strengths. I am a visual person and I like to show data visually. I also like to use my tools to do minor household repairs.

Great software engineers I love working with

This is a list of some good software engineers I have really enjoyed working with closely. I love how they code and the depth of their knowledge.

• Andrey Sukhachev - Ning
• Thomas Dudziak - Ning
• Jon Hartlaub - Ning
• Henning Schmiedehausen - Ning
• David Sklar - Ning
• Martin Traverso - Ning
• Miguel Lara Encabo - AdRoll
• Emmanuel Garcia - AdRoll
• Piyush Srivastava - AdRoll
• Kushagra Verma - AdRoll
• Nathan Clegg - AdRoll/Ning
• (to be continued)

Meld: A good diff for OSX

Aside from the very expensive Araxis Merge, I think Meld is the best diff for OSX, at least for me, because:

• It has the option to start with two blank textareas that you can paste text into.
• It allows you to edit the textareas.
• It gets the diff right almost all of the time.
• It has optional line wrapping. Some other tools do not have this (such as Beyond Compare).
• It can compare directories.

Check out this example of Sublimerge getting the diff wrong:

It fails to recognize that what is happening is that there were four removals. Meld gets it right:

Beyond Compare I just don't get. I know a lot of people praise it, but it seems buggy to me. For example, when I want to paste in the above example, I paste the code on the left:

And then to paste the code on the right, I click in the middle of the right textarea and press ⌘V, and now things are messed up:

So then I press ⌘A, ⌘V, thinking that will fix it, but it's still messed up:

Only when I press ⌘A, ⌘V on the left side are things finally fixed:

I don't know – there is something funny about the way Beyond Compare handles alignment. Like if the right side is blank, why is it letting me paste on different lines present on the left side, instead of pasting on the first line like a normal empty textarea?

I have also noticed that DeltaWalker gets diffs wrong too - I don't have an example at present, but will provide one when I can.

Slack: green z vs gray z

Today I learned the difference between the green z icon and the gray z icon in Slack:

From Slack support: "Green means they are currently online. The "z" indicates they have Do Not Disturb turned on which prevents notifications popping up on their screen."