Paul Ganssle @pganssle@qoto.org

As promised a few days ago, we now have a 2020.4 release of the first-party tzdata package on PyPI:

https://pypi.org/project/tzdata/

This includes changes to Palestine's DST rules that take effect THIS SATURDAY, so a good time to upgrade this (and your system package) is now!

#python

And for the "try before you buy" types among you, my slides are already available!

https://pganssle-talks.github.io/pytexas-2020-upstream-bugs/#/

The @PyTexas@twitter.com talk schedule is up!

If you're interested in my talk, "What to do When the Bug is in Someone Else's Code", it'll be airing from 14:00-14:30 CDT on Sunday, October 25:

https://www.pytexas.org/schedule/#:~:text=Speaker%3A%20Paul%20Ganssle

To be honest, I feel like I may have shot myself in the foot by trying to get the word out about this the last few years. It's so widely misunderstood that I may have been able to make the case for a backwards-incompatible change based on "we'd be fixing more code than we break".

This is starting to come up a lot more as people switch from pytz to zoneinfo, so a reminder about datetime arithmetic semantics; addition is NOT referring to elapsed time:
https://blog.ganssle.io/articles/2018/02/aware-datetime-arithmetic.html

(Relevant SO question: https://stackoverflow.com/q/64440016/467366 )

#python

This was all within ~10 minutes of one another.

Three different kinds of woodpecker in my back yard today. Yellow-bellied sapsucker (male, then female), hairy woodpecker (male), then downy woodpecker (female).

You can tell the hairy and downy woodpecker apart because the hairy woodpecker has a longer beak, and the downy woopecker has black bands on her white inner tail feathers.

#birding #birds

Going to be a confusing few weeks for anyone in Palestine. Evergreen link:

https://codeofmatt.com/on-the-timing-of-time-zone-changes/

The first-party `tzdata` module on PyPI has been updated to 2020.3 to reflect the upstream 2020c release!

https://pypi.org/project/tzdata/

This includes the short-notice changes to Fiji's DST. 2020.4 should be out soon, though, since Palestine just changed their DST on ~4 days' notice.

My son saw a blue jay at the feeder this morning and called over to my wife: "Mama, bird! You need the nocalurs! Take a picture!"

So it begins...

#birding

Since September 24th, I have taken over 750 photos of birds.

I... may have a problem.

#birding

Wow, that's a... significant bulk discount on extension cords.

Some Eastern Bluebirds at the feeder the other day. Male first, then female.

#birding #birds #photography

Male and female northern cardinal.

Possibly a breeding pair? They showed up together, and I didn't see any other cardinals around.

#birding #birds #photography

TFW a tufted titmouse tries to photobomb you.

#birding #birds #photography

Looking at some old pictures of baby starlings waiting to get fed and something jumped out at me...

Looks like another kind of bird has discovered my feeder...

Red-shouldered hawk next to a brave or foolish white-breasted nuthatch.

#birding #birds

I have been defeated by ffmpeg. I cannot find a way to remove the first n seconds of a video without re-encoding the entire video and without losing any video.

It feels like it should be possible to just re-encode the dangling portion of time between keyframes...

At this point I'm thinking the best thing for everyone would be for me to quit software engineering and become an artisinal cheese maker.