Paul Ganssle @pganssle@qoto.org

Latest post is a big one: "Why you shouldn't invoke setup​.py directly"

A lot of people don't know about this because we haven't been great about getting the word out. This blog post is in part an attempt to remedy this.

Please help spread the word!

https://blog.ganssle.io/articles/2021/10/setup-py-deprecated.html

From the archives of my blog but still very relevant: "pytz: The Fastest Footgun in the West", about why you probably shouldn't be using pytz:

https://blog.ganssle.io/articles/2018/03/pytz-fastest-footgun.html

Aw yeah, just preordered a Pebble Core 2: https://ericmigi.com/blog/introducing-two-new-pebbleos-watches

Now I just have to wait ~9 months. I guess in the meantime I can start working on a custom watchface for it!

#pebble #repebble

"Usually I go with the flow, but this time I decided to go for it, so I will go down to the office and tell my boss that I want to go up for promotion. If he doesn't go along with it, I won't just go away, I won't go down without a fight even if I have to go ahead and go around him and go over his head. It might be a lot to go through, but I don't want to let my life go by unlived! Sorry to go on for so long, going into so much detail. Say, you seem like a good listener, do you want to go out sometime? Then we wouldn't have to go it alone."

I am so often thankful that English is my native language. I am very grateful for everyone who, as an adult, has taken it upon themselves to learn our crazy system of phrasal verbs. I would really hate to have to try to remember all the differences in meaning that come from appending a different preposition to the same verb.

"The bully, looking for someone to pick on, picked out a boy who he saw picking at his face; the bully knocked down the boy's books that he was using to pick up lock picking and made him pick them up. Perhaps he thought this was a good way to pick up girls?"

(Note that "pick up" is used with 3 different senses in this paragraph).

My son's first video game stream had 1 viewer. The second one had 2, and today I saw 4. Now, I don't want to be premature, but I think I can recognize an exponential trend when I see one...

@hynek Though also I won't be offended if you want to go to someone else's talk, or if you don't want to go to any talk at all, or if you don't even want to go to Pittsburgh. I'm pretty easy-going that way

Oh boy, my time slot at #PyConUS is at the same time as @hynek. Well, someone's got to be scheduled against these fantastic speakers, I don't mind it being me.

If you want to go to Hynek''s talk instead of mine, I wont be offended

As someone who has been hoarding pebbles for some time now, I am very excited by this new development: https://repebble.com/

If it has an always on screen and physical buttons on the side, I'm in!

#pebble

How did they even find the time to play this much hockey?

I adjusted the prompt that generates example sentences for my Spanish vocabulary Anki deck so that it intermittently tries to include interesting facts in the cards, and it has worked out marvelously.

Apparently sperm whales (cachalotes) are the loudest animals in the world.

#anki #spanish

Is there a good library out there in Python that provides a simple abstraction over the major LLM providers, such that it's easy for me to swap out which one I'm using for a given project?

I find myself writing my own version of this because each of the LLMs have strengths and weaknesses, and sometimes for a project I want to test them all out before committing to use a specific one.

A few months back I looked at @simon's `llm`, but from what I could tell it was mostly wrapping ChatGPT or compatible APIs, and I wasn't sure how to use it for everything.

If you are learning Spanish like me, just remember that *ser* is for permanent characteristics like your job title or the location of a party, whereas *estar* is for transitory conditions like death or the location of Barcelona.