Codex

Former president and current chair of the face-eating leopard party shocked at the amount of hungry cats patrolling around their mansion.

People in times of desperate oppression and violence rarely turn to the uncaring vastness of the chaotic universe for comfort.

Is it just me, or is it worrying how companies keep packing up and selling off the only parts of their businesses that actually, you know, make stuff, in favor of becoming full time bullshit peddlers?

It’s posts that are a step up from piss-posting, but below regular unmodified posting.

I came into the industry right when XML fever had peaked as was beginning to fall back. But in MS land, it never really went away, just being slowly cannibalize by JSON.

You’re right though, there was some cool stuff being done with xml when it was assumed that it would be the future of all data formats. Being able to apply standard tools like XLT transforms, XSS styling, schemas to validate, and XPath to search/query and you had some very powerful generic tools.

JSON has barely caught up to that with schemes and transforms. JQ lets you query json but I don’t really find it more readable or usable than XPath. I’m sure something like XLT exists, but there’s no standardization or attempt to rally around shared tools like with XML.

That to me is the saddest thing. VC/MBA-backed companies have driven everyone into the worst cases of NIHS ever. Now there’s no standards, no attempts to share work or unify around reliable technology. Its every company for themselves and getting other people suckered into using (and freely maintaining) your tools as a prelude to locking them into your ecosystem is the norm now.

I’ve written Go code; they were right to fear.

I wrote a powershell script to parse some json config to drive it’s automation. I was delighted to discover the built-in powershell ConvertFrom-Json command accepts json with // comments as .jsonc files. So my config files get to be commented.

I hope the programmer(s) who thought to include that find cash laying in the streets everyday and that they never lose socks in the dryer.

Seeing this actually sent a small wave of dread through my body

I’m reminded of a very passionate post I once saw about how tiktok dances have made some people afraid to dance because they aren’t as good as people who literally live in dance training camps to factory -produce dance videos. Anyway, the plea was to just ignore that and dance! People largely have an innate desire to move when they hear music, and its OK to just vibe with it.

The internet has got people thinking that everything they make must be step 1 of their plan to monetize that thing and release it for global consumption. Write stories for yourself, letter for friends, and poems for no one! Dance no matter who is looking. Make art everywhere. And for goodness’ sake, play table top games with friends, make up stories, and let yourself get wildly obcessed about it! It’s yours! It’s ok to just love the story your friends are telling and to talk about with people, and you don’t even have to lament that your friend group isn’t charming enough to carry the podcast of your game.

I’m a big fan of the "wisdom " check before players do something that seems, to me, completely stupid. Like, hey, before you set out to storm the castle, roll your highest knowledge skill.

Tactics, architecture, history, etc, all good. But any success on any skill (or even, literally, Wisdom if nothing else) gets you a little hint that this is a terrible idea.

“OK well, as a Baker, you understand that the huge wagon pulling 500 loaves of bread into the castle means there must be an enormous amount of guards. Since you got a natural 20 on your Cooking check, you can estimate the number precisely to around 150. Even if they weild the baguettes as weapons, you are certain they will defeat you.”

And then, most parties I’ve played with will then begin formulating their plan to sneak in on the bread wagon, which is a much funnier story. Or they’ll complain that they meant the druid should cause a storm to distract the guards or something like that. It’s kind of amazing how often these bad plans arise from a miscommunication.

Reads like political fan fiction. I put this story right up there with Trump’s “Joe is going to storm the DNC and reclaim his candidacy” little wishful fantasy.

Joe Biden, in his final month as president, will pardon every guilty American politician right before sending SEAL team six to assassinate Netanyahu and Putin at the same time. Then he’s going to ride on a bald eagle into the Summer Country while eating an ice cream cone and flipping off all the Fox News pundits, whom Gandalf has previously barred from those promised lands.

Are you in the czech republic, speaking in Czech, and presumably not using a VPN?

I should get to work on my opus, “Dirty Code”

Inside I’ll reveal all my secrets like: not writing tests, not documenting anything, putting the whole app into a single python file, object-disoriented relational mapping, obscure SQL tricks, unobscure no-sql tricks, and more!

Look, this isn’t a diceocracy, its a dicetatorship. If they can’t roll right, perhaps they have no place in our society.