No Open Office Hour On May 27th
Just a quick heads up: this week, I’ll have to skip open office hours. We’ll resume next week (on June 3rd / 2025-06-03).
Microsoft Recall and Signal: When You Don’t Worry About 3rd But 1st Party Spy Software
Signal on Windows disables screenshot-taking via DRM tools to protect from recording sensitive information via “Recall”: Microsoft Recall takes screenshots of your apps every few seconds as you use your computer and then stores them in an easily searchable database. In Microsoft’s own words, its goal is to act as a sort of “photographic memory” for everything that you do on your computer. The words that other people chose to describe Recall upon its debut were decidedly less positive.
Insert Cc and Bcc Mail Headers Conditionally in Emacs message-mode
In my Emacs email setup (notmuch.el using message-mode), I had this for the longest time: It would insert Cc and Bcc headers into email composition buffers so that I could quickly edit these fields. However, the message-default-mail-headers insertion is done unconditionally, so when replying to mail with people receiving a carbon copy, I would end up with two such header lines:
New Era of Small Software Shops
You will have heared something along these lines: The era of the junior developer is over. Why would anyone hire a junior when an LLM is at a higher level? I positively can imagine how Big Tech can cut cost this way for a while, not training juniors. Eventually, they’ll run out of new seniors, of course. You can’t make a sound moral principle from this.
The Inlined Agile Software Craftsmanship Manifesto
Did you know that the Software Craftsmanship Manifesto extends the Agile Manifesto? Like this first line from the Software Craftsmanship Manifesto: “Not only working software” is a reference to the Agile Manifesto:
Xogot, Godot 4.4 for iPad, Just Dropped
Miguel de Icaza has been working on an iPad adaptation of the Godot editor with all native UI. Check out his blog on the process and the SwiftGodot talk from GodotCon 2024.
SwiftGodot provides Swift language bindings to the Godot game engine so you can use Swift Packages from Godot. Check out the tutorial.
So: Yes, you can now create and run Godot games on the iPad.
It’s a $50 one-time in-app purchase if you want to buy it.
Read the Xogot release post
Variadic Types in Swift and How to Count Them
Rick van Voorden in yesterday’s Open Office hour told me about the fact that variadic types in Swift can, in fact, have an empty list of associated types. A quick refresher of variadic types in Swift using parameter packs:
Cloudflare Tunnel via Docker with SWAG Nginx Reverse Proxy using Subdomains in Proxy Network on Unraid
Assumed audience: You need a domain managed in Cloudflare dashboard for any of this to work. I assume you do, and want to point to your Unraid NAS, with SWAG as the reverse proxy. So this is a niche topic. I used the old cloudflare/cloudflared Docker container configuration with a local YAML file via aeleos’s Unraid plugin. It was a very simple file, being just:
My Current Compilation Window Display Settings in Emacs via display-buffer-alist
For the longest time, I had my compilation buffers split to the right in a rather large window. Until I started programming in Emacs. Previously, I looked at LaTeX build outputs, or the static site generator’s progress. That was it. Lots of logged text, so I wanted the space. But compiling C++ or Swift code compulsively, as I do, this got on my nerves really quick. So here’s a more normal configuration, showing compilation-mode buffers in a 25% bottom split “side window” (essentially a sidebar, but anywhere).
Start of a Zettel: Modern UICollectionView
I want to start a new series where I show snapshots of my Zettelkasten work. Because it’s tremendously useful for programmers – but at the same time it’s hard to grasp what I actually do. The mechanics are very simple. Trivial even, especially for programmers who have their favorite editors and writing tools.