Jim Winstead

A software developer who happens to own an art supply store in downtown Los Angeles.

Public Key

npub1ksanydqfgdgeg7hcwxhw09wcjeaz5mhnkyl4lharu38fakfrjrqs26k3c9

NIP-05 Address

jimw_at_mefi.social@mostr.pub

Profile Code

nprofile1qqstgwejxsy5x5v50tu8rth8jhvfv732dmemz06lm737gn57my3epsgpzemhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumn0wd68ytnzv9hxgjkyf4u

Publishing to

relay.nostr.band

Author Public Key

npub1ksanydqfgdgeg7hcwxhw09wcjeaz5mhnkyl4lharu38fakfrjrqs26k3c9

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Last Notes

2025-02-22 15:09:32

When I work in #Python instead of #PHP, I am struggling with how to organize my code at both what I’d call the architectural design level, and how that translates to actual code in files.
I was able to get my head around #Laravel pretty quickly, and now I’m trying to climb the similar hill for #Django.
What would be a good Django project of non-trivial size and scope to look at in order to see a model code base?

2025-02-19 03:48:08

Might be building something new, and trying decide if I should just embrace #Laravel Livewire and Tailwind, or stay true to my preferences and use a lighter weight CSS framework and a more progressively-enhanced JS something. (Am I committed to Laravel? Not necessarily, but it seems like a path of little resistance and I've grown comfortable with it. Fairly certain it'll be #PHP, at least.)

2025-01-18 20:19:31

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@nprofile…dhpg I have no idea who would have those. But I think the discussion I was talking about would have been on the private core list, so it may only exist in private archives, if at all.

2025-01-18 19:09:52

In the early days of #PHP, I had to argue against the type conversion of strings to numbers not interpreting it using the '0x' hex and '0' (octal) syntaxes. I wish I'd considered scientific notation.
(I think this would have been around PHP/FI to PHP 3, and was on the non-archived core list.)
Does #PHPStan have a "comparing strings with == isn't safe" rule?
https://toot.cat/@woozle/113849828962032884

2024-11-26 01:33:24

It only took three months, but now the very small section I wrote for the #PHP documentation to include information on Composer is live. There’s a new example that uses Composer in another section. https://www.php.net/manual/en/install.composer.intro.php

2024-11-24 03:27:21

It would be nice if @nprofile…etup could find a way to direct more of its resources towards the #PHP documentation. Documentation bounties, maybe? Would need to make sure both writing and reviewing are funded. https://github.com/php/doc-en/pull/3941#discussion_r1855325661

2024-11-20 16:49:08

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@nprofile…d6h6 The only way it will be continued will be in service of putting Google under the thumb of Trump loyalists. “Nice monopoly you’ve got there. Now we own it.”

2024-11-02 23:45:31

Started poking at using https://github.com/phikiphp/phiki for syntax highlighting code snippets on my site. Looks like it will be relatively straightforward to integrate, but I need to handle the exception it throws when there’s a code block in syntax it doesn’t understand (like Caddyfile) and put together a theme file that uses `light-dark()`.

2024-10-11 02:53:49

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@npub1rem…fw9u This is hilarious: “I think in the long run it’s going to elevate the brand.”
Because if anything has been proven time and again, it’s that everything Trump touches turns to shit. Very “I am good at business” vibes.

2024-10-08 18:08:33

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@npub13vv…0sze The mouseover stuff can be turned off. https://mastodon.world/@namelessblob/113272235496824417

2024-09-24 02:31:51

Looking for a way to get involved in the #PHP project? There’s a bunch of documentation issues tagged as “good first issue”. https://github.com/php/doc-en/labels/good%20first%20issue

2024-09-20 22:45:17

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@npub1jpp…u59l There is, and I was planning to surface that soon. (Probably just the address like internals+get-1234@lists.php.net at first, maybe a real interface later.)

2024-09-20 22:19:39

Added a small subscription form to the archives for #PHP mailing lists, such as the one at: https://news-web.php.net/php.internals

2024-09-18 21:16:45

Spent some time today working on some PRs for improving the download page on the #PHP website and the installation chapter of the documentation.
If anyone wants to help contribute information for other Linux distributions similar to the existing Debian section (which I’ve maybe badly cloned into one for DNF-based distributions), I’d be happy to incorporate them into my PR.
https://github.com/php/doc-en/pull/3763

2024-09-14 00:30:07

Where do I complain about a political campaign that ignores a ‘STOP’ response when the message itself says ‘Text STOP to end’. Just got my second text from the same number from the same campaign. (In California, for a State Assembly race.)

2024-09-03 00:14:06

Wrote a little about why I put the time into exposing threads on the #PHP mailing list archives, and what I’m thinking about doing next. https://trainedmonkey.com/2024/09/02/into_the_blue_again_after_the_money_s_gone

2024-08-30 22:10:45

Because of one of the mailing lists I’m on now, I think I get all of the notifications for all of the GitHub repos for the #PHP organization. It’s really amazing to see the number of people grinding away on the project.
Two projects where I’ve seen a lot of action in particular that I think are pretty under the radar otherwise are the French translation of the documentation and the work being done to clean up the autoconf build system.

2024-08-29 19:21:52

I would love to see some #PHP content at #SCALE22x. (I’m not involved in programming at all, just saying this as an attendee.) Submissions are due November 1st.
I may submit something myself, but need to come up with a good idea and have a better sense of whether I’ll even be in SoCal next year.
https://social.linux.pizza/@socallinuxexpo/113046106166507593

2024-08-28 00:19:03

Made a new release of colobus, my #Perl NNTP server that runs atop #ezmlm and now #Mlmmj mail archives. It’s only been 20 years since the last release. https://trainedmonkey.com/2024/08/27/surprise,_it_s_a_new_release_of_colobus_

2024-08-24 00:18:45

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@npub13w7…mktw No worries, it would have been something else if it wasn’t that. I have plenty of anger and frustration to apply as needed.

2024-08-23 20:50:06

Wrote a little documentation in anger today, which I realized isn’t a great way to think about it, so now I’m reconsidering it in the context of creating some “good trouble” for the #PHP project. https://trainedmonkey.com/2024/08/23/writing_documentation_in_anger

2024-08-23 20:50:06

2024-08-02 19:50:06

Very rough numbers, but the PHP.net websites handle about 10TB traffic per month, over 75% of it via CDN cache. There are various machines, mostly virtual, behind the CDN for some of the different services, but www.php.net itself is just handled by one backend machine. #PHP

2024-07-20 20:30:15

https://metamark.net stopped adding new URLs to be shortened a decade ago, and somehow has marshaled the resources to keep the existing links online despite not being operated by the 4th largest company in the world.
https://mastodon.cloud/@nep/112809848819508824

2024-07-19 02:10:40

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@npub1jpp…u59l Wonder if they’re compliant with California’s laws about that. https://www.consumerprotectionreview.com/2021/11/california-passes-updated-automatic-renewal-law/

2024-07-09 01:09:15

No rejections today (or since last week). Applied to two new jobs today. In researching one possibility, figured out I had applied a few months ago and never heard back. 👻 Anxious about hearing back on next steps after some interviews last week. #GetFediHired

2024-07-03 02:33:51

One rejection today and once again no applications. Looks like recruiters are taking the week off, at least for posting new positions.

2024-06-26 01:51:42

Looks like I’ve been a @npub13d2…lvlm customer since 2013, too. 44.6GB of email. My subscription renews on July 15. (A single-user enterprise plan, so $300/year.)
Looking at alternatives.
https://scoat.es/@sean/112680363799677187

2024-06-18 18:33:48

Today’s fun job listing: Cloud Cyber Defense Engineer for Panda Restaurant Group, aka Panda Express, in Rosemead, CA. The job description says you’d be required to get a food handler’s card within 30 days. https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/3952876597 #GetFediHired

2024-06-07 01:35:19

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@npub1jpp…u59l
https://mefisocial.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/112/572/767/657/983/899/original/6f44a75e735ad37a.jpeg

2024-05-25 04:55:33

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@npub1jpp…u59l Probably a shelf space and racking thing. Makes the height and footprint closer to bottles?

2024-05-23 00:30:54

I really enjoyed many of the talks from the 11ty International Symposium on Making Web Sites Real Good. I don’t use 11ty so the talks focused on that didn’t really hold my interest, but there is a lot of good talks focused on HTML & CSS, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLxJ6PtuF9M

2024-05-13 20:35:48

Got my stickers from @npub1vwh…szjh in the mail the other day! I think stickers are an underrated marketing tool. (Another is branded pencils. Branded pens are usually garbage, but pencils are cool.)
https://mefisocial.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/112/435/694/445/318/504/original/0f8ef466e17781c2.jpeg

2024-05-01 17:57:57

TFW when a piece of open source software is important to communities that you care about but the creator and BDFL-like figure insists on playing footsie with Nazis.
This shit really amplifies my heartache in the fact that I failed to sustain my life outside of tech.
Now back to combing through LinkedIn job listings.
https://goblin.band/notes/9srdcne5frbx9wmp

2024-03-30 19:23:54

Another thing that makes me laugh about the #xz situation is I was just some kid in college who bugged Linus to let me release the “root” disk that almost everyone used to install Linux before distributions.
Should have played the long game, pulled a Ken Thompson, and buried a self-replicating back door in that.
There’s some sort of graybeard-denial-of-service attack here where people who have long been involved in open source projects could just *claim* to have done something like that and it puts a lot of the open source supply chain in question.

2024-03-30 18:15:44

One of the things that led to discovering the #xz supply chain attack was Andres doing his performance testing on a machine with the ssh port open to the internet at large, so sshd was having to fend off the usual barrage of login probes. Just one in an astounding number of usually inconsequential decisions and fortunate occurrences that led to his discovery.
https://mastodon.social/@AndresFreundTec/112180406142695845

2024-03-22 19:03:25

I was going to write more, but a pebble in my shoe today is that ZipRecruiter has a 1-click apply button that you can’t undo which is absolutely insane, and just like reason #598 that I can’t believe it’s a publicly traded company with more than 1,000 employees.

2024-03-19 00:55:24

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@npub1jpp…u59l The syntax highlighting I use on my blog is some very old JavaScript code that is based on the GNU Source-Highlight package. The language files use the Boost Regex format and it was all converted to JavaScript structures by some Perl code. I spent an afternoon trying to update it to the latest syntax files but hit some roadblocks. (But the GNU package hasn’t had a release for four years, either.)
There’s a Go package (chroma) that is based on the Pygments lexers but has converted them to an XML format, that might be easier to deal with. There must be some libraries for doing regex format conversion out there, if that’s necessary.

2024-03-18 23:00:27

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@npub1jpp…u59l When I saw this my first thought was that someone should put some energy into updating the code underlying highlight_file(). It could be marked up with classes instead of colors, and actually distinguish between more token types. That doesn’t help with other languages, of course.
For other languages, I agree that leveraging someone else’s syntax files is the way to go.

2024-03-08 19:42:04

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@npub1jpp…u59l It happens with my own site that’s not doing any third-party cookies, and I ran across other reports of similar-sounding problems last time I dug into the problem, but the solutions there were all very cargo-cult-y “delete this plist, do a little dance, and reboot between noon and 1pm” things and I haven’t wanted to take the time to really dig into it.

2024-03-08 19:23:47

Also, it would be nice if Safari stopped losing its shit and dumping cookies all the time so it didn’t do things like log me out of LinkedIn in the middle of filling out an application. (I think it’s related to having the Web Inspector open on another window/tab?)

2024-03-08 01:00:59

Went ahead and made a release of Frozen Soup. Not really because I should, but because it was easy. And then I made another one. https://trainedmonkey.com/2024/03/07/release_early,_release_often

2024-03-05 22:10:52

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@npub10pr…qn7d It is beyond ridiculous that The Hollywood Reporter did absolutely no reporting beyond regurgitating the allegations in the suit. They couldn’t get a comment from CBS Studios? Other writers who have worked on Seal Team? (They’re talking on X/Twitter!) Anyone who has done any research on diversity and hiring practices in Hollywood?
Either the reporter for the Hollywood Reporter got played by fascists, or that’s his team.

2024-03-05 22:10:52

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2024-03-05 18:56:00

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@npub1f6a…pnql So you’re saying that as people used “prompt injection” in a larger context, the original intent for that term got subverted? We should have a name for that.

2024-02-27 19:27:06

Not to defend the shitstorm that is going to descend on them, but it sounds like what Automattic/WordPress.com was trying to do is provide feeds/dumps of content being posted publicly rather than just making OpenAI crawl everything. (Sounds like they screwed up providing non-public content, which is very bad if true.)
This has echoes of when Google started to do more real-time integration of content into their search indexes instead of just periodic crawls. I don’t know much about where LLM tech is going, but I assume that feeding additional data into the models closer to real-time is on the horizon.
Has anyone looked at what crawlers come to your your blog when it pings blo.gs or you use pingomatic.com?
(Firehoses of data are valuable, and sometimes I am curious about how much of a money spigot I sold to Yahoo. It’s one of the distinguishing architectural differences between BlueSky and ActivityPub.)

2024-02-06 23:34:43

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@npub1jpp…u59l @npub1tp2…4l9u When you don’t specify a directory, it just calls AC_CHECK_FUNC, which sets found_iconv=yes. When you give it —with-iconv=/usr, it does a lot more, and that’s what is failing.

2024-02-06 23:02:18

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@npub1jpp…u59l Change —with-iconv=/usr to —enable-iconv