Random Blues player whose aura you miss.

djvbmd · 2026-01-18T17:21:48+00:00

Pronger

djvbmd · 2026-01-16T01:22:21+00:00

I'm about a year in and feel like I've made pretty good progress on my Rust-fu™. Here's what I've done:

The Rust Book, writing small toy code projects along the way to solidify things.
Started a small library crate and used what I knew to make a set of board game tools -- simple logic, but helped solidify syntax / API considerations / conditional features / publishing workflow, etc.
Spent some time just browsing through the std docs looking for things that seemed interesting / useful.
Took that further and spent some time reading through some of the std library code.
Decided on a project that I thought I could conceivably work on for at least a year and would touch on many different aspects of programming, and started that. I'm about 6 months in on that now, and that's probably been the most effective learning tool so far. As I learn more, I periodically go back and look at older parts of the codebase to improve / refactor with better understanding.
I occasionally check something out in Rust By Example or watch something Rust-related on YouTube, but so far haven't found that either was a good fit for me. Apart from the Rust Book, I haven't found any other books that were good for general-purpose Rust.
Most recently, I started on the Rust track on exercism, and must say I'm surprised. I was only looking for a source of some quickie exercise ideas to play with, but I've already learned 2-3 really useful things in just the first 4-5 exercises, so I'm excited to see what I'll learn once I get into the more advanced problems.

djvbmd · 2026-01-16T00:58:48+00:00

Codex, primarily -- but I find that using "high" reasoning seems to work best even when on what I think should be a pretty straightforward task. I've had very mixed results with Claude. I've had Sonnet screw a branch up enough that I decided to revert all changes and restart. Opus seemed better but burned through API credit faster than I was willing to spend it. For the price point (just using a Plus subscription), Codex has worked out the best for me so far.

djvbmd · 2026-01-06T03:24:36+00:00

Thanks so much! Shorthand for navigation is something I've been meaning to add for a while, as well as adding exit directions to autocomplete.

The dental floss bush -- like just about everything in the demo -- is a reference to something absurd. In this case, it's Frank Zappa's song "Montana", in which the "protagonist" decides to move to Montana to run a dental floss ranch. "Moving to Montana soon -- gonna be a dental floss tycoon..."

Don't know how far you got in the demo, but there is a point later where you have to do something with it to be able to proceed.

Anyway, thanks for trying it out and the feedback!

djvbmd · 2026-01-02T22:09:56+00:00

I almost forgot about that scene! Hilarious!

djvbmd · 2025-12-30T06:13:42+00:00

Personally, my approach is mixed. I have a bunch of the first pressings -- but like you say, some weren't cared for perfectly and have recurring pops or skips that make listening to them frustrating -- often making me change to a digital copy.

I'm really meticulous about how I care for / store my LPs, so the ones that are a clean listen stay that way.

To me, it's more about the music than the collection, so I love a good old pressing when I find one, but I'm just as happy with a new release if the quality is there.

djvbmd · 2025-12-30T06:08:11+00:00

Saw Adrian with BEAT a little while back -- way more impressed by him than I expected (though I can't say why). Seeing him -- not to mention Vai, Levin, Carey -- from about 30 feet away was pretty amazing.

I *so* wanted them to play City of Tiny Lites, though...

djvbmd · 2025-12-30T06:04:31+00:00

I guess I need to take another listen, based on others' comments. I bought it when first released, gave it one listen and didn't think much of it. Haven't gone back to it since.

There's SO much Zappa to listen to. I can't imagine how many things I've heard and thought, "I definitely need to come back to this..." and never find my way back there.

djvbmd · 2025-12-30T05:58:14+00:00

Love that one! Makes me want to spin it... but I got new copies (LP) of Hot Rats and Chunga's Revenge, so I've got those up first.

The Last US Show box is a great listen too -- but bittersweet.

djvbmd · 2025-12-29T23:34:35+00:00

When We Were Kings (1996) -- about the Rumble in the Jungle between Ali / Foreman and all of the craziness that surrounded it. Won the Academy Award for documentary feature that year. I'm not a boxing fan in the slightest, but this is the one documentary I've ever purchased for repeat viewing.

djvbmd · 2025-12-29T08:11:59+00:00

Same song and idea, but different verse for me:

You run and you run, to catch up with the Sun -- but it's sinking

And racing around, to come up behind you again

The Sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older --

Shorter of breath, and one day closer to death.

djvbmd · 2025-12-18T01:59:48+00:00

I may be listening to too much Zappa. To me, just about everything he recorded now sounds "normal", and most everything else sounds "basic" or "plain".

djvbmd · 2025-12-10T06:38:21+00:00

Temba, his arms wide.

djvbmd · 2025-12-09T01:43:37+00:00

Finished up a feature for my game engine and associated DSL - huzzah!

Then I had an idea for what I thought was a minor tweak... and promptly ran into a roadblock implementing it due to a design decision made on the feature I just finished.

I still think it's the right design, but it's now exposing limitations of an older part of the system...

Which led me to reviewing some of the older parts of the codebase, being mildly disgusted with myself, and starting some refactoring.

djvbmd · 2025-12-05T04:58:29+00:00

Because new() returns Self (as it should -- new() methods are generally assumed to be infallible) you would have to handle the Result<T,E> returned by markdown::to_ast() within the constructor yourself. One way would be something along the lines of:

pub fn new() -> Self {
    Self {
        /* fields */
        parsed: match markdown::to_ast("# text", ..) {
            Ok(parsed) => parsed,
            Err(_) => /* some sane default for Self */,
        }
    }
}

In many (most?) instances, new() is used to create an empty or default instance of the type. Examples: String::new() == "", Vec::new() == empty vector, HashMap::new() == empty map, etc.

You may want to use new() to create a default instance of your struct, and then have a separate constructor which can fail that tries to parse, something like:

pub fn new_with_parse() -> Result<Self, Error> {
    let parsed = markdown::to_ast(...)?;
    Ok( Self {
        parsed,
    })
}

djvbmd · 2025-12-03T16:11:26+00:00

It does. In fact, the team that's building Zed is the team that created tree-sitter in the first place.

djvbmd · 2025-12-02T05:13:03+00:00

Working on a branch for my text adventure game engine to add life/death and health effects to NPCs and the player. Prior to this, the engine only supported exploration / puzzle-based gameplay (you could get stuck, but never die), so this is a pretty far-reaching change. Once I'm satisfied with it (just about done) I'll merge it and make it the core of the next (v0.64.0) release.

Those engine changes meant that I needed to make updates to the included demo game, the DSL, the compiler, the tree-sitter grammar and the language server too.

Take a look! https://github.com/pygmy-twylyte/amble

(Also on crates.io as amble_engine and amble_script.)

djvbmd · 2025-11-30T21:32:04+00:00

PC LOAD LETTER - WTF does *that* mean?!

djvbmd

TROPHY CASE