Monkinetic Weblog

XVI Edition, September 2025

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Entries for #pro

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I am sorry, but everyone is getting syntax highlighting wrong

Syntax highlighting is a tool. It can help you read code faster. Find things quicker. Orient yourself in a large file.

Like any tool, it can be used correctly or incorrectly. Let’s see how to use syntax highlighting to help you work.

Niki Tonsky makes some good points.

I am sorry, but everyone is getting syntax highlighting wrong

Replying to a Mastodon post from the blog

Fedi/Mastodon programmers... with the #MastodonAPI, and given a url to a post on any instance (assuming I have access to the toot from my account), how might I get my instance to fetch it and give me a "local" ID that is suitable for passing as the "inReplyToID" in a toot payload?

Wondering if I need to:

  • perform a search (https://docs.joinmastodon.org/methods/search/)
  • find the relevant status in the results
  • use the ID for the status

Would that be the "local" ID?

#MastodonAPI #fediverse #programming #blogging #indieweb


TFW your sweet sweet db storage changes and your not-close-to-ready-for-release feature share a branch #programmerproblems

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Mo Martin: On Jews, Looting, and Whiteness

Mordecai Martin, a thinker and writer who I follow on Play Vicious, posted this powerful piece on the Jewish response to racial protests and - yes looting - during the 60s and now with the George Floyd protests.

I'm not sure that – being neither Jewish nor black – I have a platform for comment, but Mo's writing speaks to his own Jewish people with real power and love.

As Artist Marcia X on Play Vicious responded:

imagine being this tender and powerful at the same time???


In order to fix my archives and daily digests, I might have to address timezone handling on my blog. Or I might just stop blogging #timezonehell #blogging #programming


So, while I do want to make a work light like @dontrythis, my lunch project was a basic friction-adjustment stand for my work light made with 1/2" square tube and a remnant of 1" square tube #diy #shoptime #project

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Adam Savage's one-day-build for his LED worklight #bookmark #project https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JL3uZ88vA_0

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Data Processing with Apache Beam https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ppsHzhdTnU&feature=youtu.be #bookmark #dataprocessing


Reading through some Apache Beam examples in #python #apache #dataprocessing


New Posting UI on Goldfrog

I've started messing around a bit with javascript-enhanced UIs for #goldfrog. Rather than use all of JQuery, I decided on a small subset of Jquery's functionality as implemented by Sprint.JS.

  1. I only load the JS for me, since I'm logged in.
  2. It's only used on the home page to power the new switchable post form, and
  3. It powers a character-counter for the note UI.

Here's the new posting UI:

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I'm trying to implement some basic progressive enhancement - the forms work as is without javascript, but the switcher and the counter are niceties for me, the author.


Josh Barratt: Effective Technical Diagrams

Sometimes in software design it's great to develop a visual of the system in question to help in the thinking process.

Josh Barratt is a software architect at Twilio, and blogs about system design at [Serialized.Net]((https://serialized.net/). His recent post Effective Technical Diagrams has some great guidelines for improving the technical diagrams that we use to communicate.

Images convey ideas and structure far more effectively than text. Especially for software systems, they can even help with reasoning about things like capacity, connectivity, reliability, security and performance.

Like any craft, methods of designing visuals that communicate effectively and efficiently can be studied and improved. We have probably all seen diagrams which led to an immediate “aha!” – and others, that after minutes of squinting, led to only more confusion.

I too, adore OmniGraffle, and have made my share of good and bad technical diagrams in my pursuit of a better design. Here's one I made in the last year, the usefulness of which could be argued both ways:

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string.hexdigits

I recently found the following in a bit of #python sample code:

python random_data = random.sample(string.hexdigits, 8)

Wait, hexdigits? I'd use string.ascii_letters and string.ascii_lowercase before, but this was the first time I'd seen hexdigits, which is exactly what you'd think:

The string '0123456789abcdefABCDEF'.

That's useful.


What's a good, tiny, javascript toolkit for adding minimal #progressiveenhancement?


Black Panther Party #survival_programs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Panther_PartyNone#Survival_programs


Timezones Got Me Again

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Dammit


RT @chrismessina: This post from @steveivy that @ErinJHolmes found on the 10 year anniversary of the #DiSoProject is also newly relevant: h…


Randomized color choices in SASS

For a bit of variety, I decided to figure out how to generate a new front page header background and link colors whenever I rebuilt the blog (new posts, etc). This is still a static site, so no wizzy javascript stuff, I just wanted to do it in SASS.

This is what I came up with.

```sass $colors-list: ( // background color, link color #DAE076 #AD5C55 #A9C9C5 #4A676D #AD5C55 #5E7D68 #374768 #718A8A, ); $color-index: random(length($colors-list));

// Header description box
$colors: nth($colors-list, $color-index);
$header-desc-background-color: nth($colors, 1);
// Link color
$link-color: nth($colors, 2);

```

I may rework this as a map (dictionary) later on so I can add other theme-y things, but it was kinda fun to work out for now.


So fed up with InnoDB issues (with Repeatable reads) that I'm installing Postgres. Cue #nowihavetwoproblems jokes.


RT @drance: √ Gas stove √ All Clad saucepan √ Top Ramen

#pro


RT @bitprophet: @zeeg it's HN dude, the demographic is made of distilled #firstworldproblems

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