Andy Lowry @AndyLowry@qoto.org

@AlgoCompSynth
Hahahaha of COURSE I misread that. 😆 It's scary to think that not everything was covered in what already exists, because it seems pretty thorough as is!

Earlier today, I was reading an essay by Jayarava Attwood on a Buddhist concept and came across this line:

"Real and unreal are not qualities that can be imputed to experience."

I've been turning that over in my head ever since. I think there's something very important in that observation.

@AlgoCompSynth
I didn't know he hadn't totally worked through it himself. 😆

I was a sysadmin for about twenty years, but never thoroughly learned any programming language. I kept bumping into situations that required a tine little utility of some kind-- for example, I once needed something that would check to see if a cell data connection was live, and if not, restart its process to get back online-- and would pop in and out of Knuth to see if my problem had already been solved more efficiently than whatever my first idea was.

Got a tiny amount of familiarity with Python (mostly for Excel macros), C (did some little automation stuff for Linux server maintenance) and, just because it had a different approach to logic than I would naturally have, Ruby. Knuth was always there to help me find a way to think about whatever the issue was.

I'd always planned to go through the whole thing as a keep-the-brain-working challenge when I retired. But then when I actually did retire, I found that I had more fun things to do than that, so I gave the set to a friend who actually works as a programmer. 😉

@AnEnglishHuman@mstdn.party
That was marvelous. You have outdone yourself.

@AlgoCompSynth
That's so weird, I was just talking about Knuth with a friend here a couple of days ago. It must be a sign.

His "The Art of Computer Programming" was a sacred text for me at one time, though I'm ashamed to say I never worked my way through it completely.

In the statuary hall in my head, he's in the same room as Claude Shannon, Alan Turing, and Charles Babbage.

@mattblaze @malwaretech
I think I've been doing the "interesting times" thing since the days of Walter Cronkite talking about Vietnam. No, that's not when it started, it started with JFK's appointment with an assassin. It's just never really gotten better since then, and in many ways inexorably worse.

@SandyO@urbanists.social @tchambers
It's nearly magical how new connections have just happened here for me. In six months on whatever that old place was called, I made two friendly acquaintances. In one month here, it's more like twenty.

@JaneGray
Oh dang, looks like I have to subscribe. Too bad, it looked interesting.

Her book on how the South won the Civil War was briliant, though.

@waitnwallflower
Is there a way you could slip Perry in there too?

@SrRochardBunson
I wish there really was such a thing as Antifa. I'd have signed up years ago.

@juddlegum
Oh no! How will they know what else they can sell you, then? That's really irresponsible of you, not to mention antisocial. Please report to your nearest police station immediately for enhanced education.

@marksteadman @siracusa @hotdogsladies
I wonder what would happen if one tried to describe looking nonplussed.

@kevinrothrock
Must be the Land of the Midnight Sun.

Hey, let me write that down-- would make a great song title.

@alanthwaits@noc.social
All it shows for comms on the Mac is Bluetooth, so I won't be using that OS. Dangit.

I don't know about VSCode, will have a look! Thanks!

@darren @everywhereist
😆

@alanthwaits@noc.social
I'm looking at it as a small general display-- you can get all kinds of cool sensor kits for it, like temperature/barometer/hygrometer/air quality, for example. I'm not all that excited about the name badge thing. 😉 Cameras, robots, there's a whole bunch of stuff.

Reality noticed that I'd made fun of the cable, and had ignored my spare Pi, and promptly punished me. The OS on my Macs is too new to work with the Thonny IDE, as the interpreter can't find the COM port for it. 🙄 So Pi it is! Boy is my face red.

@alanthwaits@noc.social
It's really cool that Thonny is Estonian. Those Estonians really got it going on. I looked into their e-citizenship program at one time because I thought it would be fun, but then realized I'd be setting myself up for all manner of tax unpleasantness, so I wound up not doing it.