Paul Ganssle @pganssle@qoto.org

Been using an exercise ball for a chair for the past 3-4 business days and I can't tell if my back is sore because it's being exercised or because I have terrible posture.

Quite possibly both.

My brother apparently has a kidney stone, so of course I had to send him this: http://www.thomas-morris.uk/the-self-inflicted-lithotomy/

I should write a bot that cross-posts my tweets from my Twitter account, but also translates them into British English first.

A futuristic version of going to a new school where no one knows you and affecting an accent.

It's weird to me that in all the reporting about how a gender reveal party kicked off the CA wildfires, no one mentions what the gender of the baby was.

#python #pep615 #timezones

Generated using Ye Olde Yorker: https://yeoldeyorker.hashbase.io/

It's pretty fun to generate New Yorker cartoons.

Oops., time to stop using pep517.build!
https://github.com/pypa/pep517/pull/83

Instead, you should start using a brand new library that doesn't have a release yet!

Sorry if you took me seriously when I recommended this tool for the past few years because there was nothing else...

"Now, I see your birth plan involves Mike standing guard at the door with a spear because of... prowling sorcerers?"
"Yes, they can be very tricky."

Do you hate the feeling of being a useless spectator while your mate is laboring to bring your child into the world? Consider hiring "prowling sorcerers" who you can fend off with a spear!

(Note: This will likely not be covered by insurance.)

Apparently the OSI approved the Unlicense as a "Special Purpose" license a few months ago, but I do not see what the special purpose is anywhere on their main site. There's some more background in this mailing list post:

https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/2020-June/004890.html

I'm still not clear what the "special purpose" is that they're suggesting, though. Seems like they don't want to be seen recommending it because it's somewhat weirdly drafted and is partially a public domain dedication.

Maybe it came out of a conversation with a frustrated just-arrived time traveler:

"What's today?"
"Thursday"
"No, the date!"
"August 27th."
"Be more specific!"
"Uh... 12:34:56? AM? Central standard time?"
"THE YEAR, MAN!"
"Oh, 2020."

Also, who picked that as the default date format? Was it someone trying to make American MM-DD-YY formats look sane?

Day of week, then month, then day of month, then time, then time zone indicator *then* year.

For me "CST" maps to "Central Standard Time" (UTC-5) rather than Cuba (UTC-6) or China (UTC+8):

$ TZ=UTC date --date="Thu Aug 27 12:34:56 AM CST 2020" --iso=min
2020-08-27T06:34+00:00

Interestingly, that time doesn't exist in America/Chicago, but it still applies UTC-5!

Interesting, #GNU `date` seems to support dates with ambiguous three-letter offsets, though it's unclear how it decides to disambiguate them. Looks like "IST" defaults to "India Standard Time":

$ TZ=UTC date --iso=m --date="Thu Aug 27 12:34:56 AM IST 2020"
2020-08-26T19:04+00:00

Oh man, I just found out that many TVs have a built-in setting (called CEC) for controlling devices and that you can control your OSMC Raspberry Pi with your TV remote by just enabling it. I could have had a single unified remote for YEARS!

https://www.instructables.com/id/Raspberry-Pi-Remote-For-Free/

Warning from @try_osmc@twitter.com, though:

"On paper, it's great, but due to different implementations by AV equipment manufacturers, it can also cause a lot of problems."