Posts

I’ve recently moved away from my custom Neovim configuration to embrace LazyVim. LazyVim is a Neovim setup with sane default settings for options, autocmds, and keymaps. It boldly aims to transform Neovim into a full-fledged IDE that is easy to extend and customize. It comes with a wealth of plugins pre-configured and ready to use, and it is also blazing fast. Elijah Manor has a fantastic introductory video on YouTube; I suggest you take the time to look at it....

Regarding space-related topics and scientific research, Casey Handmer’s blog is one of my references. So when Casey started his Mars Trilogy Technical Commentary and I learned about Kim Stanley Robinson’s masterpiece, I was instantly intrigued. In Casey’s opinion, KSR’s Mars Trilogy is “one of the finest works of literature ever composed.” It took a couple of weeks of futile resistance before I gave in and ordered the first book in the series, Red Mars, a 420 pages tome that attempts to depict a scientifically credible human colonization of Mars1....

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On February 13, 2023, about ten days ago, [Leiji Matsumoto][3] left this world. A phenomenal Japanese manga artist, he created several space operas that influenced me as a kid. Matsumoto directed Space Battleship Yamato1, wrote and illustrated Galaxy Express 9992, and then released the magnificent Space Pirate Captain Harlock. Regarding visual operas, I suspect my fascination with space, astronomy and all things science has much more to do with these three than with the Star Wars movies that came later, or Star Trek....

Today I learned about psql-tips.org by Lætitia Avrot, an excellent repository of psql (the CLI tool, not the database itself) tips. I like how one randomized tip is playfully served on the home page while the complete list is always at hand.

Brian Rinaldi has an insightful post on his blog about the current state of developer conferences, where ‘current state’ means post-COVID pandemic. Brian is well-positioned to reason about this space as a long-time conference organizer. I appreciate that he also takes the time to explain how the developer conference business works. The core of his blog is about post-pandemic conference attendance, which has plunged. independent, in-person developer conferences are hurting. Based on my own observation as well as talks with organizers and sponsors that I have come to know over the years, the average independent in-person event is still down 30-40% from pre-pandemic attendance levels....

Sanguina Ancora (Still Bleeding) is not a biography but a passionate and informative tribute to Dostoevsky. The nonlinear, not literary style works and the continuous back and forth between Dostoevsky’s epic and the author’s own experiences as a scholar and Russian literature enthusiast is probably a good idea as it helps stress the actualness of Dostoevsky’s opus. However, the continuous jumping in and out of the Russian’s life, though sympathetic at first, gets tedious over time....

The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. –Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Jim Nielsen: That is why owning a domain (and publishing your content there) is like planting a tree: it’s value that starts small and grows. The best time to own a domain and publish your content there was 20 years ago. The second best time is today. More here.

We’re doing a DevRomagna meetup this month, and I think it will be a super-interesting one. It’s titled Heading to Go: A Look at Building a Video Encoder and the presenter will be Daniel Enrico Botta, a C# software engineer who recently switched to Go for his video encoding projects. Here’s the abstract: This talk will discuss the experience of moving from C# to Go for a video coding project. The pros and cons of using Go, a modern and efficient programming language, and how it compares to other languages will be shown....