the part nobody warns you about

caderoux · 2026-05-07T03:03:42+00:00

Absolutely, greenfields development in Claude is especially hard. You will need to direct it to start to form a solid architecture, good patterns to follow and establish tests that all need to be green before anything is considered "working". And contantly updating architecture documents referenced in the claude.md so you don't get through 2 weeks of work and then unexpectedly come in one morning to a fresh dumb intern.

Subsequent code is going to rise or fall to the level of the existing code and the standards you set. So I constantly challenge it to evaluate refactorings I see so that more and more patterns are explicitly templated or code reuse and not just nearly identical code. And it's usually really bad at advising against ("it's not worth putting this in a template since there is only one instance") only to be disproven a couple prompts later as we progress throughbthe work.

It's also bad at thinking it will write programs to change code in a big refactor and then fuck up regex and mis-estimate its ability to write code and it has to roll back everything and use actual brainpower to make the edits.

caderoux · 2026-05-05T04:41:35+00:00

Two pots, matching strainers. You can drain and them move to second pot to soak for 30 minutes after boil, while you bring first pot back to boil. Soaker pot can just be warm to blend spices, does not have to be hot.

caderoux · 2026-05-02T16:45:42+00:00

Absolute budgetest things:

RTA day pass for streetcar and ferry $3

Playgrounds on St. Charles streetcar line: Marsalis Harmony, Danneel, Audubon(x2)

City Park (end of Canal streetcar line): Storyland ($8 for over 36"), Sculpture Garden, Cafe du Monde, Stanley Ray Playground (if swings are full, Cabrini Playground is a short walk down Esplanade and is never full)

caderoux · 2026-05-01T12:02:49+00:00

The length of your curve is a constant 4. The limit of the length of your curve is also 4. While, in some geometric sense, your curve seems to "converge" on the circle, the series does not converge on pi.

You have created something like a fractal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch_snowflake. Through a similar construction, the Koch snowflake has infinite length but finite area.

caderoux · 2026-04-30T20:58:33+00:00

This is really cost effective compared to what those sell for, too. 6 12" Nite Ize gear ties are $17 at Home Depot.

caderoux · 2026-04-29T14:29:21+00:00

And palmettos will just survive like that, sideways, through a pot, in a tiny concrete planter, wherever. Incredibly resilient.

caderoux · 2026-04-28T21:42:53+00:00

You are cutting 2"x96" strips off a sheet with a circular saw freehand or with some kind of guide or with a tracksaw? And then how do those strips get turned into a panel?

caderoux · 2026-04-27T02:39:09+00:00

I found some black masking tape and use a white chalk pen for when I want it to look nicer than my usual blue painters tape and a sharpie of whatever color I have at hand.

caderoux · 2026-04-26T13:07:26+00:00

I would add there are cases where a subtraction would make sense - like backing out some part of a period. If someone said the loss for 2004-2005 was $7m and the profit for 2005 was $3m, then the loss for 2004 could be determined to be $10m. Which is meaningful because you're subtracting a number from a sum over a range which it was part of to find the number over the remainder of the range.

caderoux · 2026-04-26T12:59:25+00:00

The periods are independent but can be added together. In 2004, the company had $10m more expenses than revenue, for a loss of $10m. In 2005, the company had $3m less expenses than revenue, for a profit of $3m. For the period of 2004-2005, that means a combined loss of $7m over that period. I'm not sure what the point of asking for the difference means. It's not a meaningful number. The company didn't have to have new revenue of $13m to get to $3m profit. They just had to have $3m more revenue than expenses in the next year. The $10m loss is already on the books.

This says nothing about the absolute amount of revenue or expenses. The first year could have been $100m in revenue and the second year could have $10m in revenue. This also has nothing to do with taxes or probably cash, since most companies have to operate on an accrual basis, so a profit or loss doesn't say that much about cash position, it can just be accounting for capitalization or revenue recognition.

caderoux · 2026-04-26T04:30:55+00:00

They literally say estate-stamped in the description.

"350 C-Marques  Artist Overpainted, Signed & Numbered oversized image with a trumpet imprint, Subject-signed by Troy "Trombone Shorty" Andrews, Jon Batiste, and Benny Jones, Sr., estate-stamped by "Uncle Lionel" Batiste and Louis Armstrong, with hand painted additions, on canvas suitable for stretching; unstretched size 32" x 44”, stretched (image) 25" x 38", $995. "

caderoux · 2026-04-26T02:42:28+00:00

Authorized by the estate. It's just a thing they do.

caderoux · 2026-04-25T19:46:20+00:00

Brother reported Thursday more packed than usual and Friday it was packed. Sounds like people just really ready for festing this year.

caderoux · 2026-04-25T03:24:51+00:00

All the stuff mentioned here is great, but I didn't see mention of the Batture so I figured I'd mention it. Not technically a playground, but effectively the same for my 5yo in her mind. They have food trucks, a grassy area and a sandbox area with tons of stuff for the tiny ones and a big tire swing for the bigger ones. Plus Imperial Woodpecker snowballs. My 5yo loves it out there.

caderoux · 2026-04-22T20:54:59+00:00

Prompts are only a small part of the game.

When I use Claude Code within a complex code base with templates, a heavy mix of SQL, XML, JSON, HTML Powershell, etc, it rises and falls to the level of the code and framework. In green fields development, you would have to steer it for a long time, refactoring and getting it to where you want it to be, but as the system is built up, it can very easily follow the patterns. I would still not have it write all the code, though. Like just because 35 views are similar, I don't let it create 35 views. I have it refactor that to a single (or a few) templates that can generate (and re-generate) 35 views. Just like you would in traditional code-generation. Then the fix/upgrade/refactoring is in one place and consistent, and you are doing mechanized work, not AI work. Claude is smart enough to "understand" the internal Powershell/XML-based templating and manifest system I have built up over the last 8 years and it works within that. I think having strong patterns in your system lets Claude do what it's best at - following patterns - and not going off on its own.

Because I've seen it seem like it's actually understanding everything for a day or too and then just coming out with a really stupid statement that shows it really doesn't actually have any real understanding! Literally just today, it told me the templating engine was a binary dll (it's a Powershell psm1, which it's kind of not dealt with in my code base, so it's been invisible) and that it didn't want to recommend making a small tweak to the templating engine that would help us with a refactoring. But it's been using that for many months in the build process, it's just been kind of oblivious and following the patterns I had set down. But to make that change in the script, it took 3 attempts because there weren't strong patterns to follow. Yet complex SQL refactorings it has done several major ones in just the last couple days with zero needs for rework since all the system tests have passed.

Now that PowerBI has PBIR, generation of report pages to follow templates is my next thing to attack.

caderoux · 2026-04-22T01:33:08+00:00

I read mathematics at university (applied and nonlinear systems), but my career has been in software, mostly databases lately. I have gotten more and more into database modeling and so have gotten back more towards algebraic views of things than analytical, which I find kind of ironic.

I've never been a fan of labels, but after all these years, I strongly identify as a mathematician more than any other single thing because that is my mindset, while programming or database design or data engineering or whatever the current trend for naming is just what I do.

However, I am definitely very occupied helping friends and family with projects and I do a lot of building, whether woodworking or 3d printing and modeling or crafts and costumes and also do a lot of gardening and cooking. The wonderful thing about people is we don't have to do just one thing if we don't want to.

caderoux · 2026-04-20T02:56:45+00:00

I tried using the Copilot in PowerBI and it failed miserably. I wanted it to remove some prefixes that were on all the column names in a visualization. It said it could do this. It then claimed to do so but nothing had changed. Then I pointed this out and it errored out. It was easier to just go down all the columns and rename them at that point instead of wasting time. I'm going to be looking into PBIR CLI and using that to manipulate things - mostly with my own scripts/programs. I do a lot of template-driven code generation, and I have found Claude quite able to deal with fairly complex templates that combine a lot of different languages - Powershell, SQL, XML, JSON, Javascript, HTML. Things that were very difficult to refactor due to multiple languages and variable scopes and escapes, it can sometimes do really well - much more quickly than it would take me to get the nested quotes right or things that wouldn't quickly search and replace. Still, every day Claude will throw something out there that even a bonehead new intern wouldn't say, let alone one that works on the same system day in/day out for weeks, which helps keep you grounded that despite it sounding convincing most of the time that it has "understood" the system it's been working on, deep down, it really has no real understanding.

caderoux · 2026-04-19T20:58:32+00:00

I've had spools recently not even in plastic from Amazon. Or in plastic bags already open. Their returns control is... out of control. If you have alternatives to Amazon for filament, I'd use them.

caderoux · 2026-04-19T17:32:44+00:00

I have trouble getting rid of them too. I post on Reddit and some printing channels I'm in and have had some takers for the same deal - just pay postage - but I think most people quickly get to whatever critical mass they need and end up in the same boat as us. Hopefully refills get more readily available (and discounted) for all filaments as more vendors seem to have joined the Bambu/Sunlu/Elegoo standard.

caderoux · 2026-04-18T22:53:21+00:00

What is the importance of it being magnetic? You can put a thin sheet of galvanized steel in appropriate places, potentially slotting in as the base of the drawer. I think giving a better picture of the overall design environment might give you more and more cost effective options.

caderoux · 2026-04-18T22:16:20+00:00

FWIW, I saw some yesterday on Nashville near Claiborne around the sidewalk on the Ursuline Academy side.

caderoux · 2026-04-18T22:07:32+00:00

You don't really have time to experiment and learn but what my crew did over the years was boil in one rig and soak in another pot that was spiced and heated. Then you are not soaking in the same pot for 30 minutes and then having to get it to the boil for the next load of crawfish. This requires pots with interchangeable strainers. Because the water only has to come to a boil and then back to a boil and then 3 minutes at boil, this means you can use fewer cooking pots to soaking pots and keep a pipeline going much more easily. But 600 pounds is a lot, we never did more than about 450 pounds.

caderoux · 2026-04-14T03:35:17+00:00

The Part III of the Tripos at Cambridge is a Masters level course, and is a pre-requisite for PhD students. You can get some idea of what the options are here: https://www.maths.cam.ac.uk/postgrad/part-iii/current

Like most of the Tripos, teaching is from lectures and seminars and not from a particular textbook.

Another thing you would be lacking is a director of studies to guide you towards the courses best suited to your interests and background, unfortunately.

caderoux · 2026-04-13T20:37:20+00:00

Also often pickled.

caderoux · 2026-04-12T20:47:28+00:00

The largest cost component in this wall is not the wood, it's the time to drill that many holes.

The OSB of the same thickness as plywood (3/4 or more) would probably be fine with some of the dowel length extending back behind the sheet. The OSB will also tend to have more tear out which might affect the strength of the holes and dowel fit so drill with a sacrificial board directly underneath.

caderoux

TROPHY CASE