I’m a space junkie. So tonight, like all the other space junkies on the planet, I watched in awe as Perseverance seamlessly and beautifully landed on the surface of Mars. This is a phenomenal achievement. Of course, I will eagerly follow her1 progress. As I was following the live broadcast, I wondered: What kind of hardware and software runs all this incredible technology? It was launched in 2020, so it must be some cutting-edge stuff. As it turns out, that isn’t really the case. ...

I came back to reading Shirley Jackson almost by coincidence. I had just finished watching The Haunting of Hill House, and, as I always do with stuff that tickles my curiosity, I was doing a little research on it. That’s how I learned that the TV Series is loosely based on a novel by the same name written by… Shirley Jackson. Still imbued by the TV Series’s atmospheres, now knowing about its connection with Jackson, I was ready for another dive into her literature of psychological suspense and terror. Terror, not horror. Because one thing to appreciate in Jackson’s writing is that she relies on the former rather than the latter. To elicit emotion in the reader, she uses the tension between characters’ psyches and the complex relationships between mysterious events. Stephen King opens his own novel, Firestarter, with this dedication: “In memory of Shirley Jackson, who never needed to raise her voice.” ...

About seven years ago, I presented the Eve Framework in a very crowded Python room at FOSDEM 2014 in Brussels. If you don’t know about FOSDEM, well, you should check it out. Every year thousands of developers who recognize themselves with the free and open-source movement gather in Brussels from all over the world. And I mean thousands of them. According to Wikipedia, since 2011, the meeting hosts about 4,000 visitors every year. It’s huge, and it’s a one of its kind. ...

Today I learned the hard way: don’t you dare running a vanilla install of VirtualBox together with Windows Subsystem for Linux v2 (WSL2). It won’t work. That’s because WSL2 uses Hyper-V under the hood, which is incompatible with VirtualBox. According to the official documentation for VirtualBox v6.0: Oracle VM VirtualBox can be used on a Windows host where Hyper-V is running. This is an experimental feature. No configuration is required. Oracle VM VirtualBox detects Hyper-V automatically and uses Hyper-V as the virtualization engine for the host system. ...

What music do you listen to while programming?1 For me, it’s usually jazz, classical, electronic, lots of it, or nothing. There are some specialized websites and podcasts I sometimes recur to, like [Music for Programming][1]. Several Spotify playlists I dig a lot, [Every Day I’m Nerdin’][2] being one of them. What can I say? I am musically omnivore. However, I recently discovered something different: the [Field Recordings podcast][3]. “A podcast where audio-makers stand silently in fields (or things that could be broadly interpreted as fields).” I am told it was launched last year, just about when the COVID lockdowns started, by acclaimed UK audio artist and producer Eleanor McDowall. It’s free, updated daily with submissions coming from all over the world, and holds many treasures. Most episodes are short, I’d say around the 5 minutes mark, with some notable exceptions like [The Sound of 2020][4], “A slow weave of some of 2020’s Field Recordings in chronological order”. One of my favorites has got to be the “[Inside the log burner][5]” episode by Chris Attaway (Devoran, Cornwall, UK, January 2021): ...

Ever had your old, trusty Python virtual environment fail on you? I sure did. Sometimes, when I activate or switch between virtual environments, I get the following error: $ workon eve dyld: Library not loaded: @executable_path/../.Python I never really took the time to look into it. When this happens, because I am in a rush (and because I am a lazy old fart), I shrug it off, recreate the virtual environment on the spot, and get back to work. ...

The Water Dancer is the debut novel for Ta-Nehisi Coates, an author and journalist best known for his nonfiction works. Set in a slave plantation located in pre-civil war Virginia, this is a bold and ambitious story about slavery. From the editor website: Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage. When his mother was sold away, Hiram was robbed of all memory of her—but was gifted with a mysterious power. Years later, when Hiram almost drowns in a river, that same power saves his life. This brush with death births an urgency in Hiram and a daring scheme: to escape from the only home he’s ever known. ...

After six years in the field, Chris has shared his strong opinions on software development practices, languages, and methodologies. I like his attitude. Willingness to continuously put one’s personal views under scrutiny, eventually adapting or even changing them as needed, is not a common trait. Not in our field. While I generally agree with most of his opinions, I feel the urge to comment on a few of them. Typed languages are better when you’re working on a team of people with various experience levels ...

As a non-native English reader, I had to look up the true meaning of “Unbundling” as a neologism. According to Wikipedia Unbundling is a neologism to describe how the ubiquity of mobile devices, Internet connectivity, consumer web technologies, social media and information access in the 21st century is affecting older institutions (education, broadcasting, newspapers, games, shopping, etc.) by “break[ing] up the packages they once offered (possibly even for free), providing particular parts of them at a scale and cost unmatchable by the old order.” Unbundling has been called “the great disruptor.” ...

I am presenting at two different events in February next month. Given the current COVID situation, that is entirely unexpected. In 2020 I only gave four talks, three of which were virtual. I am not holding my breath for 2021. Conferences are going virtual all year-long. Next year too, most likely. There are some clear advantages in going virtual, but the final result is a net negative. Any conference junkie will tell you that she/he attends for the people first, and only then for the sessions themselves. At these events, the most exciting stuff happens in the corridors, usually during breaks. A little story here. You might know that I run a motorcycle club. Well, the very idea of founding it was actually ignited by a corridor chat, few minutes after I delivered a session. Replicating this kind of in-person interaction online is, well, next to impossible. ...