@alerque@mastodon.social
@alerque@mastodon.social avatar

alerque

@alerque@mastodon.social

Recipient of Grace, child of God, student of the Word, ambassador of Christ, tentative wordsmith, dabbler in languages, regex aficionado. #nobot

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simonmic, to random
@simonmic@fosstodon.org avatar

I came across this oldie today, it's a lovely post giving a practical taste of hledger-ui, and those are rare so I'm sharing.

https://forum.plaintextaccounting.org/t/why-we-chose-plain-text-accounting-with-hledger-2019/278

alerque,
@alerque@mastodon.social avatar

@simonmic Nice write up for sure. The currency hack strikes me as a bit weird though. Easy enough to revere later of it is problematic but it seems like there should have been a more "correct" way too get the needed info without faking currencies.

Foxboron, to linux
@Foxboron@chaos.social avatar

Current mood.

alerque,
@alerque@mastodon.social avatar

@Foxboron Where does one sign up? Some days I probably would.

nixCraft, to linux
@nixCraft@mastodon.social avatar

Admit it.

You love htop.

alerque,
@alerque@mastodon.social avatar

@nixCraft I'm sorry @hisham_hm but after years —neh actual decades— of htop use on hundreds of machines, btop came along and kinda stole my heart. Nor am I alone.

https://pkgstats.archlinux.de/compare/packages#packages=atop,bashtop,bottom,bpytop,btop,gtop,htop,ytop

simonmic, to random
@simonmic@fosstodon.org avatar

Learn from my mistake, make your scripting life easier: I really, really wish I had not used spaces in account names.

Added to https://plaintextaccounting.org/Choosing-accounts .

alerque,
@alerque@mastodon.social avatar

@simonmic Shouldn't a change be relatively easy to script with a before-after map and search and replace?

I almost went the space route but ended up with CamelCase. Maybe partly because of that refactoring them is relatively straightforward. Usually I start with an alias so prints and other outputs start using the new name, then normalize existing ledger files with a print using the aliases file, then VCS-aware project level search/replace (rgr) to catch scripts, report templates, etc.

stephaniewalter, to random
@stephaniewalter@front-end.social avatar

Need some tips pairing fonts? Jake Giltsoff got some nice tips for you (and a pairing AI file):

  • Start with one font, then anchor the rest of your decisions around it
  • Look for similarities in at least one attribute to ground the pairing together
  • Bring in some contrast in a different attribute to spice things up
  • Find the balance of those two aspects to keep the harmony but make it more visually appealing
  • Throughout keep in mind the roles these fonts will play
alerque,
@alerque@mastodon.social avatar

@stephaniewalter Was the cover image font pairing supposed to evoke an "ew that's a terrible pairing!" emotion? Because it doesn't inspire me to read the article. If it was a deliberately bad pairing to make a point some other indication of that intent would have helped.

Additionally the article's choice of sans body font and serif heading font likewise did not inspire confidence in the subject matter.

jhilden, to Typography
@jhilden@vis.social avatar

Typographical detail time:
The book ”Elolliset” (eng. ~ ”living beings”) by Iida Turpeinen features geographical coordinates with minutes and seconds of arc. Instead of the correct prime symbols, quotation marks have been used. This is a common mistake and can happen e.g. if straight quotation marks are used and then replaced. Also, surprisingly many fonts miss these symbols, but as they are simple in form they can usually be borrowed.
60°10′16″N 24°55′52″E

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_(symbol)

alerque,
@alerque@mastodon.social avatar

@jhilden Nice one!

I did some playing around with a few engines and seems to make this mistake pretty easy to make and hard to avoid; also bungles it a bit although differently.

It was fun to play with, but I'm guessing your sample is more likely to trace back to a GUI like InDesign. In any case somebody went to the trouble of getting the right degree symbol, then botched the rest.

https://polytype.dev/prime-symbol/

nobodyinperson, to taskwarrior
@nobodyinperson@fosstodon.org avatar

Before I go out and make it myself, I'll ask here if someone knows of an existing solution. I am looking for a cli time tracking solution with the following hard requirements:

  • conflict-resistant git-syncable plain text storage
  • tracking multiple simultaneous events
  • tags, notes
  • simple checkin/-out commands with some intelligence
  • data analysis tools built-in, at least data export

I'm using but it's lacking in most above regards.

alerque,
@alerque@mastodon.social avatar

@nobodyinperson @simonmic @Anachron To avoid merge conflicts keep mobile and desktop appending to different files and use a common one that imports both for queries. Doesn't tick all your other boxes but merge conflicts never need to be an issue. You can even normalize to a single ledger later by flattening, but keep the appending input steams in different files.

b0rk, to random
@b0rk@jvns.ca avatar

git rebase: what can go wrong? https://jvns.ca/blog/2023/11/06/rebasing-what-can-go-wrong-/

alerque,
@alerque@mastodon.social avatar

@b0rk git revise can help with a lot of those pain points like splitting commits and git absorb is pretty handy too for when you have a couple major curated commits in a branch and want to keep stuffing new little bits in them. Also worth mentioning that Git can now pretty robustly rebase while preserving merges.

gutenberg_org, (edited ) to literature
@gutenberg_org@mastodon.social avatar

Last year, the American Library Association documented the highest number of attempted book bans since it began compiling data on library censorship more than two decades ago.

These digital libraries help Texans access banned books — for free.

https://www.lonestarlive.com/news/2023/10/these-digital-libraries-help-texans-access-banned-books-for-free.html

via @TXLoneStarLive

alerque, (edited )
@alerque@mastodon.social avatar

@gutenberg_org Removing or not including some titles from a library, a section of a library, or schools does not equate to "book bans" or censorship. Not all content belongs everywhere. Some of it distinctly belongs nowhere. Certainly some of it does not need to be disseminated using pubic funds.

vruba, to random

Dear software people,

Unicode is older now than ASCII was when Unicode was introduced. It’s not a weird new fad.

It’s complicated but so is the domain it represents. We recognize that we have to think about time zones and leap days and seconds, for instance. And it’s a cleaner abstraction when you aren’t halfhearted about it.

Sincerely,
Charlie

alerque,
@alerque@mastodon.social avatar

@isagalaev @vruba

> Nobody writes new software that's not unicode-aware

This is just categorically false. It happens all the time in new software. Frequently some parts of the system will accept Unicode but many little corners either won't take it or mangle it or whatever.

hisham_hm, to random
@hisham_hm@mastodon.social avatar

People who use Dvorak/non-"standard" keyboards:

do you use QWERTY keyboards on your phone?

(I do, because it seems to me there's no benefit to changing since I type on the phone with two fingers anyway...)

alerque,
@alerque@mastodon.social avatar

@aeva @hisham_hm I ran into the same issue, the advantages of Dvorak do not translate to thumb or swipe interfaces, especially not the latter. I found MessageEase to be a better match for mobile use than going back to Qwerty though.

alerque, to random
@alerque@mastodon.social avatar

@Codeberg I've been trying for about 9 months to get into my Codeberg account after loosing 2FA. I've emailed your help a couple times, most recently 2023-03-23 with GPG signed requests and such but have gotten no response. Is there something I can do to get somebody to work with me to restore access?

alerque,
@alerque@mastodon.social avatar

@Codeberg Thanks for the reply. Running public services myself I understand the problem that resets create, but I've tried multiple times over 9 months. I have lots of ID to verify plausibility from. Can someone search for an email regarding caleb@alerque.com? I just re-sent in case spam got cleared since my last attempt.

pixelcode, to random
@pixelcode@social.tchncs.de avatar

Here are two footnote designs. Can you guess which one was created in and which one in ? 😉

See the poll in the replies ⬇️

alerque,
@alerque@mastodon.social avatar

@pixelcode Both have different issues. I don't like the weighting in the first one as much as the second, but the second has leading issues. The in-paragraph leading needs to be the same or less that the paragraph skip between notes, not more.

timbray, to random
@timbray@cosocial.ca avatar

1/2 Open Letter from Stack Exchange moderators: They’re going on moderation strike due to being forbidden from stemming the flow of LLM spam: https://openletter.mousetail.nl

alerque,
@alerque@mastodon.social avatar

@timbray I wish you all the best, but I'm pretty sure all the incentives are against you now. The handwritting has been on the wall since the push for a sellout before I resigned. The general corporte distain for the community follows a typical pattern for when the profits people start getting to call shots.

c.f. Esty Strike from a few years ago:

> “Each of our sellers is a blade of grass in a tornado. They’re someone you haven’t heard of.” — Etsy CEO Josh Silverman

killyourfm, to linux
@killyourfm@layer8.space avatar

For anyone who still hasn't found a compelling enough reason to switch to , allow me to present the future of :
https://youtu.be/FCfwc-NNo30

alerque,
@alerque@mastodon.social avatar

@killyourfm Presented without comment.

0x5DA, to linux
@0x5DA@fosstodon.org avatar

thoughts on alpine or void? anyone with experience using either / both? (as a daily driver, not a container)

notes on packages, stability and compatibility especially.
alpine uses musl which has had patchy support at best when i've tried it before.

alerque,
@alerque@mastodon.social avatar

@0x5DA Honestly if those are the two options you've settled on you either have requirements or preferences not voiced here so any answers you get may miss the mark.

Alpine is a little easier to cope with as a special purpose OS (e.g. a container that does X) that it is as a daily driver host OS. Void is perhaps better suited to be a general purpose OS, but packages tend to run a little further behind too so there is a trade off for not having the linking issues of Alpine.

imrehg, to linux
@imrehg@fosstodon.org avatar

So far the tax filing season is going "well" for me in . I downloaded their latest required plugin for smart card readers on from the official site at https://moica.nat.gov.tw/rac_plugin.html and it seems to be breaking excellently with a error.

alerque,
@alerque@mastodon.social avatar

@imrehg For bonus danger points did they want you to curl … | bash it from an http only server too?

lauren, to random
@lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org avatar

**** Hoping that / will fail, could help to destroy the best of the Internet ****

I'm seeing a lot of people apparently rooting for Google /YouTube to fail, to be split apart by the government, to be intensely regulated and otherwise subject to massive fines and other actions.

It's difficult to emphasize how shortsighted a viewpoint this is, for among the pantheon of Big Tech, on balance Google is very much a good guy, and one of the last bastions against what amounts to a horrific takeover of the Internet by government, a takeover that is being pushed by politicians on the Right and the Left.

Is Google perfect? Of course not. Hell, there are aspects of Google I've complained about for many years, and pushed back on both publicly and during those periods that I was working inside.

But most of the complaints about Google/YT (ads, Play Store, etc.) have become overblown politically-motivated excuses to try micro-control content.

Google is bending over backwards to build an ad ecosystem that can still provide advertisers with enough info to be useful without risking people's privacy. But that's not enough for many observers. They don't want any ads. They don't want even anonymous "tracking" that can't possibly hurt users. Seemingly, they want everything for free. And often they tout the tired old "you are the product" mantra that was never true but is so often blindly parroted.

Meanwhile, government is on the cusp of imposing vast new tracking -- tied to government IDs -- requirements on the Internet in the name of "protecting the children" -- potentially turning the Internet in the U.S. into a nightmare clone of China's Internet regime, where you can end up in prison for accessing the wrong site.

You think it couldn't happen here? Think again. Pay attention to what the politicians are saying and the laws being passed in various states -- and the cases before the Supreme Court right now!

Most people who use the Net don't have a clue how much they could lose, and how quickly, if these government efforts succeed. They have been seduced by political rhetoric and are standing on the edge of a cliff that they don't even realize exists.

And unless this changes immediately, you can likely kiss most of the best of the Internet goodbye. -L

alerque,
@alerque@mastodon.social avatar

@lauren @timbray I use ad blockers extensively but also sponsor several creators directly. I also pay for YT Premium but it bothers me deeply such a small slice of my subscription actually goes to the creators I watch vs. the platform's cut. Google is a bully and uses their market dominance for both good and bad ends. I would choose not to support the platform if enough creators had alternate platforms to support them on. And I'm quite aware of the infrastructure involved.

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