This is just a heads up, fresh installs of Docker 29.0 will break flows relying on pinning containers by hash.

ⓘ Note

Docker Engine 29.0 and later uses the containerd image store by default for fresh installations. The containerd image store uses snapshotters instead of the classic storage drivers described on this page. If you’re running a fresh installation of Docker Engine 29.0 or later, or if you’ve migrated to the containerd image store, this page provides background on how image layers work but the implementation details differ. For information about the containerd image store, see containerd image store.

(I should say I’m safe, just lonely.)

No idea for whom, what or even why. Maybe for someone to feel less alone. But for me oestrogen has helped be less depressed on average. Not this week. It has been a lot, without anything specific being much. Work went okay, if I were to recall other things besides work I’m sure they went okay too.

But I felt unable to connect to others or even myself, which is a big ongoing problem for me. I have tried a lot of what life has on offer and it seems like programming is the only thing marginally enjoyable, but sometimes I get tired and burnt out from it.

There is an excellent tool called entr that can be used to run commands on file change. I always forget what it’s called, so I’ve put this tip here. (N.b.: it stands for Event Notify Test Runner.)

It can be used to automatically re-compile (and even restart servers) while you are editing the source files. A simple example is

git ls-files | entr make

Which works well for repos which only track source files. And depending on what is in your makefile, it can for example build and flash the embedded program onto the embedded target. (I tend to use CMake for projects, with a simple makefile to avoid setting long makeprg/makecmd, so I can just do :make<ret>.)

While I didn’t design the DO52Pro keyboard, I did cobble together the system for attaching it to my thighs. I call it the “keyboard garters”, which is as far as I can ascertain, the first use of this term. I like it, both because it sounds queer (and looks queer too), and even pretty. Which is not often the case with geeky tools. Especially when used with skirts. I’ve even added a clip to hold up programming socks.

I have a setup for coding on the go which I have had a few people compare to gargoyles from Neal Stephenson’s novel Snow Crash¹. Gargoyles are people who are connected to their terminals all the time by wearing goggles and other tech equipment.

Which is precisely what I am doing on the overground, during my commute to and from work (one hour each). It does make me look a bit odd (if I’m being generous), but it means I spend that time constructively, and to be honest, who cares about other people on the London public transport.

I recently got a new keyboard off AliExpress, and been very happy with it! It is sold under the name DO52 Pro. The whole thing cost me only about £90 (about £40 for the keyboard, £20 for the keycaps, £20 for the switches, £5 for the hot-swap sockets and £5 for the batteries). Given it has a trackpoint, I think this is very good value for a mechanical keyboard.

It has quickly become one of my favourite keyboards, I’m using it with an nRF52840 SuperMini with ZMK firmware, OUTEMU half-height switches (full-height Cherry footprint compatible) and XVX wavy pink skyline low-profile keycaps.

One of the things that helps¹ my depression is having interesting projects to do. A long running one for me is bootstrapping a high level language with the maximum interactivity, rather than with some opaque binary blob.

The original inspiration came from the GNU Mes (Maxwell’s Equations for Software), but there are numerous other sources of inspiration, some I have probably forgotten.

Initially I started with a small stack based VM which uses printable ASCII characters as instructions, so could be typed, but quickly came across JONESFORTH, which at the same time is both a nice introduction to assembly programming, and an introduction to Forth, a language only slightly less minimal than my stack based printable ASCII interpreter, but is much more powerful.

One very common way of tracking tools that I have now seen at several companies is a spreadsheet, or equivalent chat/channel, where when you borrow a piece of equipment, you are meant to update the tracking spreadsheet.

The problem with this is that this is easiest to do on your desktop, but when you sit down at your desktop your mind goes to using the tool you borrowed, and forget to update. Or you are borrowing it to go to somewhere else, so you can’t update it until you come back, again leaving a lot of scope for forgetting.

Having access to a laser cutter can be very useful – while I was at the computer lab I had access to one and used it to make a keyboard suited for my fingers.

Conclusion: the natural resting position for fingers didn’t take into account the differences in reach/the awkwardness of pinky bottom/ring finger top row, especially since on my right hand the pinky and ring fingers are connected.

The firmware is available on my fork of qmk_firmware, branch kovirobi-steno-updated.

I had the fortune of snagging a cheap Stentura 200 SRT from eBay. I did end up using it for a while, even wrote my CompSci bachelors dissertation (both the software and the write-up) using it.

Later, I modified it to make it look more steam punk: put leather imitation key covers, repainted it; and I also replaced the internals with a Raspberry Pi (model 3B I think) to make it be more like a laptop and not require a serial port.