Weeknotes 216

ChatGPT 5 was released last week so I gave it a try. It’s increasingly difficult to keep up with the various different models, their versions, and how good or bad they are at various tasks, but it seems “good” I suppose.

I was downloading some legally purchased media and had a text file of URLs to download (which I had to manually collate, will no one think of the children!) but my new AI overlord did help me out somewhat even offering to parallelize everything.

cat vids.txt | parallel -j4 yt-dlp \
  -f "bv[height=2160]+ba/best" \
  --merge-output-format mp4 \
  --remux-video mp4 \
  --no-fixup all \
  -o '{#}-%\(title\).80s.%\(ext\)s' {}

I’ve never used parallel before, but it sure did max out my bandwidth or at least make better use of it. After much back and forth, I had a working command which did perform as advertised, and a directory full o’ files.

I wanted to check that each file, once downloaded, had an audio track/channel, and GPT 5 came up with this for fish shell which did do what I wanted:

for f in *.mp4
  if ffprobe -loglevel error -select_streams a -show_entries stream=index -of csv=p=0 $f | grep -q .
    echo $f ': Yes'
  else
    echo $f ': No'
  end
end

Which output:

01_Linux_ISOs_Made_Easy.mp4 : Yes
02_Linux_ISOs_Made_Easy.mp4 : Yes
03_Linux_ISOs_Made_Easy.mp4 : Yes
04_Linux_ISOs_Made_Easy.mp4 : Yes
05_Linux_ISOs_Made_Easy.mp4 : Yes

Good enough for me.

The power of the command line used to rely on one’s ability to remember all the flags of some unix utility, which I don’t have. Maybe the power will be more readily available to me now, or maybe I’ll inadvertently wipe my filesystem.

Monica – Open source personal CRM.

Monica helps you organize the social interactions with your loved ones.

This is a good idea.

Why is GitHub UI getting so much slower?

If you try this out at home and play around with it, you’ll find out that opening the “Files changed” link in a new tab is actually 2x faster

Blimey.

I see this quite often with products I use. I start using them because they work well and solve a problem for me. Fast forward a few years and they’ve stopped thinking about the product itself. Instead it’s all “partnerships” and trying to sell me products. No, I won’t be getting a loan from you at astronomical rates. No, I’m not interested in insurance from your “partner”. I don’t care if the product owner needs a raise.

Maybe less chat about AI and more work making the product work well?

Griddle

A native macOS menu bar app that provides quick window tiling with keyboard shortcuts and visual grid overlay. Just press QWE, ASD to tile your windows instantly. DRM-free, one-time purchase for all your Macs.

I am a simple man. I see window tiling, I link.

Make Elixir Tests Faster – some nice tips.

Fred Armisen - 100 Sound Effects

Fred Armisen, long known as one of the most curious actor/comedian/musician/producer/author/all-round good guys in the business, likes unusual ways of entertaining people. Like this one: 100 Sound Effects is an album that can be used as a library, an industrial tool for your own entertainment projects, or simply for brain-stimulating deep listening. From basic sounds to more abstract scenarios, 100 Sound Effects is an album like no other!

A mad idea, which is why I like it.

Alien: Earth is very good 🙌

Neovim looks to be getting support for LSP’s textDocument/documentColor which allows the LSP to provide colours useful for CSS in particular, and other use cases, I’m sure.

Side note: The feedback from certain people on the PRs above are the reason I get fed up with this industry. Using words like “readable” and “objective” like they are. Learn how to talk to people, nerds.

Via Hexadecimal colors in v0.12 OOTB.

Never underestimate the speed with which banking organisations will drop the interest rate on your accounts. The same people who will take your money instantly, but insist that a refund takes 7-10 days. Bastards.

When I asked how I should share some files on my network a couple of weeks ago I was inundated with suggestions (I wasn’t) but Simon did suggest the obvious route I should have taken, built-in Mac File Sharing. I will remember to do that next time.

Ticket-Driven Development: The Fastest Way to Go Nowhere

Eventually, even the good devs stop caring.
They stop asking questions.
They stop solving problems.

Been here. Often.

The short holiday in Gothenburg was fairly successful. It was nice enough, particularly the people, but I wouldn’t rush back. Sometimes it’s just nice to get away.

Some highlights:

• We partook in a walking tour as we usually do. My feet didn’t hurt at all despite a lot of walking. Being lighter does have benefits.

• We took a day trip to see the islands of Styrsö and Donsö in the Gothenburg archipelago. Very cheap and easy to catch the ferry over.

  Styrsö and Donsö are “car less”. Sounds idyllic doesn’t it? What it actually means in effect is that everyone drives a golf cart or a scooter in the kind of manner you’d expect with no (little?) police presence.

  Still, very picturesque.

• Of course we had Swedish meatballs. Superb.

Contra the UK government, please don’t delete your old photos and emails to save water

The group failed to compare how much water each choice saves. Once you do that, it becomes clear how ridiculous this advice is. I did the math.

I am shocked.

“Sold his stock”

I earn money from my labor and pay something like 55% combined tax on it. I am the happiest person ever. Life to me was never about accomplishment, but about Happiness, which is Smiles minus Frowns. I developed these philosophies when I was 18-20 years old and I never sold out.

Woz seems to have it worked out.

OnlineOrNot Diaries 25: you can just build things

I know, it sounds cliché at this point, but you can just build things. What do I mean by just build things? I mean, don’t obsess over the right language, framework, tools, or approach to use. Just build something, and ship it.

It’s true.

In the absolute worst case, you get it wrong. Guess what? you can just fix it.

I totally agree with this. The problem is that I don’t believe it applies to me. I’ve spent my whole life trying to not get it wrong so I don’t have to fix it later. And I don’t trust that I can fix it. Rationally I know this isn’t true, but I’m not always rational.

I am looking forward to a visit from a good friend next weekend ☺️