Posts

Mathematics as the study of relationships: in this aspect lies the similarity and affinity with politics. And then the need in both cases to proceed with stubbornness and trust, without fearing error which, as in all difficult things, is not only lying in wait but inherent, and often, when it is discovered, it is the stimulus and engine of new successes and goals. Hence the need to respect rules and (not or, mind you) the compelling need for revolutions. The parallel narration of the author’s life and the change, over the years, of her own beliefs and points of view, makes this short essay more credible and streamlines the story. ...

We want our test and production stacks to be automatically updated every time something new is pushed to the test or release branch. CI builds the docker image on successful test runs, then stores it in our private registry. But how do you automatically pull and deploy those updated images? I looked into the Watchtower project, which is interesting. You add Watchtower to the stack, and it will diligently check for new versions of the images used by the containers in the stack, pulling, building and deploying as needed while the stack is up and running. In my experiments, however, I had little luck in making it talk with our private registry. Also, I’m not too fond of polluting my stack with foreign containers. I want my docker stack to be simple, tidy, clean, and single-tasked. ...

Today I searched the internet for something, and the first result I got from @duckduckgo was a note I wrote months ago to my future self; how meta is that. Learn in public, it gives superpowers1. Also, in recent years, adopting POSSE was the best thing I did for my personal development. I should do better. Post more TILs, for example. [rss]: https://nicolaiarocci.com/index.xml [tw]: http://twitter.com/nicolaiarocci [nl]: https://buttondown.email/nicolaiarocci ↩︎

I spent the last few days migrating our ASP.NET REST services, MVC web applications and Blazor server apps to .NET 6. Overall the process was pretty straightforward. The few issues I went through were easy to solve and well documented. Things got more involved with the EF Core 6 transition, especially with the Npgsql Entity Framework Core Provider. The official ASP.NET Core 5.0 to 6.0 migration guide was my first stop. It offers the perfect entry point, rich with in-depth links. At this stage, I am not interested in switching to the new .NET 6 minimal hosting model (aka Minimal APIs). I think it’s a significant improvement, and we will likely adopt it for new projects, but our production projects aren’t going to be refactored right away. Should minimal APIs also prove to be remarkably performant, we’ll reconsider them1. ...

Flo, our dog, spent her whole fifteen-years long life with us. Many, many times after she passed away, I wondered if she lived a happy dog life or not. In The posthuman dog (Aeon), Jessica Pierce poses a fascinating question that somehow helps find answers to my troubling question: If humans were to disappear from the face of the Earth, what might dogs become? And would they be better off without us? ...

Tonight someone opened a ticket on the Eve repository. I jotted down a quick reply and was about to hit the Comment button when I thought a more articulated reply was in order. I also want it published on my website. So the question is: Is Eve still maintained? My reply goes like this: Hello, yes, Eve is in ‘maintenance mode’, as I call it. I don’t actively develop new features anymore. Still, I am more than willing to code-review and merge relevant pull requests, especially so if they are bug fixes or improvements over existing features. ...

In this scholarly biography by Janet L. Nelson, Charlemagne is stripped back from the years of mythologizing and idolizing that have occurred since his death. He is presented as distinctly human, and this book is the first time I have felt I could reasonably understand Charlemagne as the man he was, not the man he has since been painted to be. Moreover, Nelson is excellent in her discussions of Charlemagne’s wives and their roles. For example, the commonplace assumption that Fastrada was a cruel person is questioned, and she emerges as a capable companion and queen instead. ...

In this introduction to classical music, Jan Swafford explains the different musical periods and their differences. Each period has its introductory chapter, followed by chapters dedicated to the most influential composers of the era. The choice is comprehensive and well cared for, with the most relevant names well-investigated both in biography and works. For each composer, Swafford also offers some listening suggestions. Biographies thicken as we get into the contemporary era. Here, some are limited to just a page or two while others, obviously those of the author’s preferred composers, remain as thorough as those of the older periods. ...

I sit under a wild apple tree at the edge of the clearing. Like a plant, I absorb the mild October sun. At the same time, I attentively listen to the sounds of the forest. Suddenly I hear a stomping of dry leaves about twenty meters ahead of me, slightly to my right. A wolf emerges out of the thicket. He stops for a moment, glances around, then starts crossing the clearing. A few moments and another wolf appears. After a brief pause, he follows his pal. They parade right in front of me, sinuous, silent, and feral. They do not see or hear me, and yet I am right there, by their side, in plain sight1. It is all over in a few seconds. The couple leaves the clearing and disappears into the forest. I stand sitting there, shocked and in complete awe. ...

A few months after I released my first .NET open source project (a niche one targeting the Italian fintech world), I was contacted by a representative of Team Digitale, the digital innovation branch of the Italian Public Administration. He suggested joining the Developers Italia initiative and moving my project to the their organization on GitHub “to enjoy enhanced visibility and broaden the audience”. I politely refused. I did not doubt my counterpart’s good faith. At the same time, I was concerned about the possible long-term consequences of a seemingly easy move. Moving a GitHub project away from your profile or an organization you control means ceding control over it. I was assured I would keep control of the project. But what happens if sometime in the future, when people in charge might even have changed, they revoke my access rights? As long as I am involved with my project, I should be in control. Also, I was not convinced that the move would help promote the project. We live in the search-engine age; people search for solutions to their problems. I was, and still am, confident that if I did my due diligence and my project is any good, people will find it1. ...