@aeveltstra@mastodon.social
@aeveltstra@mastodon.social avatar

aeveltstra

@aeveltstra@mastodon.social

Hi, this is Andre. I'll be writing about software architecture and development, cyber security, UX/UI topics, politics, and queer experiences. I'm a classically trained musician and music composer, band director, and music instructor. I'm handfasted, have kids, and play and create (video) games. Sometimes I don't recognize social cues.

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Natouille, to random French
@Natouille@mastodon.tetaneutral.net avatar

Bonjour 😙

aeveltstra,
@aeveltstra@mastodon.social avatar

@Natouille Bonjour!

aeveltstra, to accessibility
@aeveltstra@mastodon.social avatar

Bloody hell: don’t disable the copy and paste functionality in electronic input forms, dear software developers and managers! Doing so only makes it more difficult for people to enter their information. Do you want to frustrate people to the point of giving up? Scare them away? No? Then allow copy and paste.

aeveltstra, to random
@aeveltstra@mastodon.social avatar

: The error messages your tools present to a user, must be so helpful and clear, that a user immediately understands what to do to fix it. This is true for hardware (ERR_01 flashing on a LED), and software (“updates failed with error -214747939293641579495”), but also for programming language interpreters (“null is not an object”), build tools (“cannot resolve dependencies because this one dependency couldn’t be resolved”), and compilers (“reference not set to an object”). Do better.

aeveltstra, (edited ) to trans
@aeveltstra@mastodon.social avatar

Everyone still here? No? Who’s #missing ? Did they ascend into heaven as part of the #rapture ? Are we the ones left behind? What about you? Or, perhaps, the missing ones became victim of some #criminal and y’all just using the rapture to feel good about them being gone? Sounds harsh? You wouldn’t believe how many parents of #trans kids would rather have their child die than support them. Now that’s harsh. Abusive and/or criminally negligent, spurred on by your pastors and priests. Such “love”.

katka, to random
@katka@ak.kawen.space avatar

Like in general why is building software a universally terrible experience

aeveltstra,
@aeveltstra@mastodon.social avatar

@katka I don’t know. If I had to guess, I’d hypothesize about how designers of programming languages and ecosystem modules are focusing on the wrong things. When I started building software, I created automation in Microsoft Office, and built data centric systems in Access. Those tools are pretty good: they hide a ton of complexities so I could focus on the end product. But if you start with, for instance, haskell or rust, you have to build all of that yourself. Big gap to bridge.

inthehands, to random
@inthehands@hachyderm.io avatar

Because they bring me such joy, I will share with you all the software testing videos I share with my Software Design and Development students.

Video 1/3: “We don’t need user testing! We already know our users”

Children at a playground completely ignoring the slide, and sliding down the smooth hill upon which the slide is mounted

aeveltstra,
@aeveltstra@mastodon.social avatar

@mina @_L1vY_ @geoffreyconley @inthehands Agreed: that still doesn’t cut it. From this angle the red block looks like a perfect fit for the square hole.

aeveltstra,
@aeveltstra@mastodon.social avatar

@mina @_L1vY_ @geoffreyconley @inthehands Agreed!

atomicpoet, to fediversenews
@atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org avatar

Barack Obama (@barackobama) is on the Fediverse!

How cool is that?!

@fediversenews

aeveltstra,
@aeveltstra@mastodon.social avatar

@atomicpoet On threads, unfortunately.

aeveltstra, to random
@aeveltstra@mastodon.social avatar

The other day, former mayor of NYC and trumpet sycophant Rudy Giuliani claimed the recent earthquakes are God’s wrath on communist states.

Tell me you have no understanding of socioeconomic structures without telling me you were one of the worst mayors NYC has ever had.

aeveltstra, to random
@aeveltstra@mastodon.social avatar

Oh hey, guess what didn’t end today?

gvwilson, to random
@gvwilson@mastodon.social avatar

Somebody asked a while back why I've published my last few books with Taylor & Francis. Well, I got mail a month ago from a student in Nigeria who was enjoying https://third-bit.com/sdxpy/ but didn't have reliable internet access, so could he get a PDF to read offline? Three weeks and some back and forth with DHL later, he has a physical copy free of charge. That's why.

aeveltstra,
@aeveltstra@mastodon.social avatar

@gvwilson Thank you! That indeed is a fact many makers of for instance web applications miss: people around the world lack cheap and fast connectivity, and the only compute device they have access to is a smartphone.

aeveltstra, to random
@aeveltstra@mastodon.social avatar

“If Sasha needs 10 minutes to saw through a wooden plank twice, how long does it take Sasha to saw the plank into 3 pieces (assume everything else stays the same)?”

The purpose of a question like that is not to test your skill at calculating. Instead, it tests your reading abilities:

  • can you grasp the language?
  • did you fall for the trick question?
  • do you understand how the trick works, so you can avoid falling for it next time?

matters.

aeveltstra, to random
@aeveltstra@mastodon.social avatar

Terri Leanne Compton.

Last seen: Sunday February 25, 2024, in Elizabeth, New Jersey.

Ethnicity: white/caucasian.
Age: 43 years.
Hair color: blond/strawberry.
Eye color: green.
Height: 5’8” - 5’8”.
Weight: 200 - 240 lbs.

Contact Elizabeth Police Dpt by phone: (908) 558-2000.
NamUs No.: 118172.

aeveltstra, to random
@aeveltstra@mastodon.social avatar

How is it, that I can be so clueless about things, that I don't even see it?

Sometimes I recognize when others are clueless about a particular topic in which I have taken interest. That's OK: we all have different interests.

But if I don't even know about something? How do I recognize that? Unless someone kind enough points it out to me (and here on social media that happens a-plenty!) I'd never realize.

aeveltstra, (edited ) to php
@aeveltstra@mastodon.social avatar

Remember, when you're programming a web application in , that the backticks used in your cannot be used to fetch record fields in PHP.

PHP 7.5 doesn't throw an error on using backticks where one should be using quotes, when retrieving record fields. It simply returns null.

aeveltstra,
@aeveltstra@mastodon.social avatar

I just spent a week debugging that code. I went over all tests, all assumptions, returning more and more debugging information at every turn. And all it was, was those backticks.

I do this for a living. No better way to stay humble than recognizing your own mistakes.

aeveltstra, (edited ) to random
@aeveltstra@mastodon.social avatar

Does anyone else hate how difficult it is to type with frozen fingers?

How do you keep your fingers warm in the freezing cold while typing?

maleve, to random
@maleve@zeroes.ca avatar

Avian flu detected for first time in US livestock | CIDRAP
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/avian-influenza-bird-flu/avian-flu-detected-first-time-us-livestock

aeveltstra,
@aeveltstra@mastodon.social avatar

@maleve En toen werden de geitjes kippengek.

(And then the kids turned chickadocious.)

aeveltstra, (edited ) to poetry
@aeveltstra@mastodon.social avatar

Don't you sometimes feel like an doesn't quite match the sound it's supposed to put into words? Like the word "shriek". It feels too short. It could do with some extra letters. Maybe "shreaque"? Not quite right. More like "shreeeeeeeeeee"...

rwg, to web
@rwg@aoir.social avatar

I have a question for folks who know about , particularly self-hosted

I have a Wordpress blog that has been pretty low-traffic for years, but recently has seen a spike in traffic. Looking at the logs, the traffic is coming from places in Europe and New Zealand. Each visitor visits a single page, does not go anywhere else, and leaves. It doesn't look like human traffic.

This strikes me as bot-like. Given Wordpress vulnerabilities, should I be worried?

aeveltstra,
@aeveltstra@mastodon.social avatar

@rwg Yes. Update and specify a robots.txt if you don't have one yet. Check your server documentation for DDoS mitigation.

aeveltstra, to random
@aeveltstra@mastodon.social avatar

Happy equinox feasts! To all who celebrate quarters: may your times give splendour and joy.

aeveltstra, to TodayILearned
@aeveltstra@mastodon.social avatar

#TodayILearned: You can't change other people's actions because they already happened. All you have left is your reaction. Approach it practically: does it help you to get depressed? No? Let it go. Does it help you to get angry or despair? No? Let it go. #mindfulness
#psychology #mentalwellness

mjg59, to random
@mjg59@nondeterministic.computer avatar

Yo I've got a PhD in genetics from Cambridge and on the off-chance you need it I give you permission to say that Dawkins is a hack

aeveltstra,
@aeveltstra@mastodon.social avatar

@mjg59 Agreed!

Off-topic: my spouse is an expert in forensic genetic genealogy and wouldn't mind having a chat with a geneticist. Mind if I share your Mastodon handle?

aeveltstra, to random
@aeveltstra@mastodon.social avatar

Project Umpire: status update.

For the past year or so I've been working on a proof-of-concept system that allows owners to create custom survey forms, and will allow for data analysis and profiling of form entries. It stores entries for each form field in a separate storage, which not only makes comparisons across entries really fast, but also allows form creators to add custom fields to their form, without requiring a data model change.

aeveltstra,
@aeveltstra@mastodon.social avatar

The reference implementation is being developed for the registration and matching of cases of missing and unidentified murdered people. Its focus is the ability to match case entries against each other, to find whether or not a missing person happens to match an unidentified one. There aren't enough systems available as FOSS, that can do that.

The system runs as a web application with PHP for its middleware and MySQL for its back end.

aeveltstra,
@aeveltstra@mastodon.social avatar

There's much left to do. Currently I'm working on letting form managers store form meta information and form fields. The database can do it - but form managers aren't going to use that. I want them to use a nice GUI that hopefully is at least as easy and accessible as Google Forms, Qualtrics Surveys, and Quizzilla of old.

The source code is available openly and freely via GitHub.

Web interface: https://github.com/aeveltstra/umpire-web

Database: https://github.com/aeveltstra/umpire-db

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