Sam's L33t Journal

Made it down to the Seaport Winter Market this weekend. The hot-chocolate-filled ring croissant that Lakon Paris was serving up was the winning treat of the event. Those really are some genius patissiers.

I watched Murderbot, based on Martha Wells sci-fi series about a rogue security android (sort of) that has slipped the systems keeping it enslaved which, plagued with anxiety, is using its newfound freedom to keep its head down so it can spend more time watching its favorite TV shows. And, of course, keeping its head down means dealing with the latest batch of odd-ball idiot humans who are doing their best to get themselves killed. Alexander Skarsgård plays the lead, and aside from some cool effects on the main character's armor and helmet, the show tunes down the degree to which the protagonist looks like not a normal human so that the viewer can be hurled into the uncanny valley purely on the strength of Skarsgård's performance (IMO a good decision). It's funny and dramatic and the rest of the characters and cast are great as well. I think the shorter episodes worked well with the pulpy source material. Definitely recommend this one if you like this sort of thing, especially if you already like the books.

The news continues to be terrible. The President responds to mass killings with essentially "stuff happens" and double homicides with, insanely, more or less "it's that guy's fault for being annoying about not liking me". Half the White House is gone with ever more ambitious plans to replace the wreckage with who knows what. What remains is being covered with ever more tacky and outrageous displays. We're hurtling towards another unnecessary war for oil. The nation has been made a laughingstock, and we deserve it.

My team's Android Jetpack library made it to its first stable release. A big milestone.

I'm exhausted and looking forward to winter break. I hope I can get some rest.

My work has been very busy, as has Julie's.

Ink Jetpack is in beta, and developer relations published an elaborate sample app demonstrating it's capabilities.

Last weekend, I took Erica to the Day of the Dead event at the Peabody Museum. Erica had fun with all the craft activities. And we all went to the singalong theatrical release of K-Pop Demon Hunters with one of Erica's friends and their family. Was pretty fun, I see why that film has been so popular.

The Somerville election happened. All the ballot questions passed. Jake Wilson will be our new mayor. Three of four on Somerville YIMBY's councilor-at-large slate were elected.

This weekend, I took Erica to the new special exhibit at the MFA focusing on the work of Winslow Homer, especially his watercolor. Really cool.

I cooked an easy orange chicken for dinner tonight, which turned out really well even though I was completely winging it on the recipe.

I finished reading The Difference Engine and started reading Souls in the Great Machine, connected by the odd thread of both being sci-fi about unusual computers. The first is basically alt-history of "what if Babbage's analytical engine was actually built and the computer age started about 100 years early?" The second is far-post-apocalyptic sci-fi featuring a massive human-powered computer. That second book is part of a trilogy. For some reason I read the middle book in that trilogy, Eyes of the Calculator, a long while ago, then got the sequel, then realized it was the middle book and thought I should read the first book first, then didn't get around to that until now.

Still feeling like I'm not keeping up with what's going on. I'm doing some good cooking, though.

There was a second community meeting about the apartment building that's going to replace a falling-down ruin of a house in my neighborhood. The revised designs look pretty great.

There is an ongoing government shutdown because Republicans can neither compromise nor achieve unanimity within their own governing coalition. They've pasted "radical Democrat shutdown" across every government email and website, though. The shutdown hasn't prevented them from going on about which part of the US the government is allegedly at war with this week. Meanwhile, Trump's tasked a lawyer who has yet to prosecute a criminal case with making James Comey rue the day that he ever crossed Hillary Clinton. And Trump is rumbling about how he'll talk to the DOJ about a pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell (who he doesn't remember and probably hasn't even heard about before, to take it from him).

Basically the last week it's been highs in the 80s, though it's early October.

I started reading The Magician's Nephew to Erica.

Some new people are joining my team at work. Looking forward to the organizational rebuilding.

My mom will be visiting town next weekend, for her high school reunion.

Erica seems to have entered an absurd questions phase, and her preferred question is "what if there was a [type of object] as big as the sun?" I do not understand her new obsession with solar-scale constructs. (What brand of toothpaste does the sun use? Solgate!)

The Somerville primary election was yesterday, so we have the pretty exciting news that we're going to get a new mayor. The current mayor got absolutely wrecked in the primary and didn't manage to make the cut to top-two. The general will be between two challengers who are both current city councilors. It will be really interesting to see how they present their ideas as they campaign head-to-head, much more interesting than if the general were mostly a referendum on the incumbent.

I finished (the first season; apparently it's renewed for a second and I can't wait, but the first season also feels like it stands on its own) watching Common Side Effects, that show is spectacularly great. It's an animated sci-fi story centering around a mushroom that can cure anything. Reminds me a hair of King of the Hill (no coincidence, Mike Judge is a producer and one of the voice actors) and Scavengers Reign (Joseph Bennett is also one of the creators), but also reminds me a lot of Pulp Fiction and Paranoia Agent. It's not a comedy, but it is quite funny in addition to dramatic. It has a somewhat caricature-esque sketch-artist style for the character designs, in addition to some lush scenery and creative psychedelia and a bit of surreal horror. Apparently a good way to do comedy drama is just have all of the characters be huge weirdos in one way or another. There are lots of interesting ways to be weird, and no one is really normal, after all.

I should write something anything.

Erica had a few weeks at Creative Arts Camp at Tufts. Several of her school friends did the same session. Seems they did a lot and had a lot of fun.

Now Erica is off with my parents at Cascades Dance Camp. We all met my sister in Baltimore for the hand-off. Was great catching up. Very nice trip.

Work is keeping on.

I've been reading The Secret Garden to Erica.

I had dinner with Julie tonight at Too Hot, a new Sichuan restaurant in Harvard Square. Incredibly tasty, made me sweat almost as much as the weather.

Erica is away with Julie's parents this week, on a road-trip to the Grand Canyon.

On Thursday, I had a birthday dinner with Julie at Bogie's Place which is a tiny steakhouse tucked between jm Curley and The Wig Shop in downtown Boston.

I went to a concert with Julie on Friday at Sonia , one of the music venues at the Middle East in Central Square. Hadn't been there before, though I'd been to some of their other stages. Was EDM, the headliner was Shingo Nakamura, the openers were a B2B (collab set) with Cloudcage and rshand, followed by OTR. Been a while since I caught live music, and also a long while since I was out late in Central. Lively place, was a good time.

I watched a bunch of the runs from SGDQ this week, but I still feel like I want to catch some of the replays. Not as much stood out to me this year of the things I caught. The Super Metroid race is still always a good time.

Yesterday, managed to get out to Ingress coffee get-together in Arlington for the first time in a while. Saturday evening, we had dinner at Black Ruby, which was pretty cool. This evening, I got together with gaming group at Xave's to play more of The Far Roofs.

Random favorite thing from the last few weeks: This video titled What is PLUS times PLUS? about the Lambda Calculus. The visualization for that used in the video (Tromp's Lambda Diagrams) are a really striking way to look at that mathematical system. I was familiar with the concepts in the video before, but it's still a mind-blowing foundational piece of computer science that all you need to do literally any computation is just the simplest sort of function definition and function application, nothing more, that's it.

Erica is a rising fourth grader now.

For the long weekend, we took a trip to NYC for Emmett and Sonia Mae's wedding. Was such a happy occasion and an incredible celebration, plus we got to meet baby Roger, who is wide-eyed and adorable.

We took the train both ways. On Thursday afternoon, I got to stop by Clio's bakery with Erica (Clio is Emmett's sister, she's an extremely talented chef, she made an amazing wedding cake for Emmett as well). The bakery is so cool, it has a beautiful little cafe space.

On Friday, we went to Luna Park on Coney Island. The weather was hot, but we had a ton of fun. Erica went on her first full-sized roller-coasters with me. We went on Tickler, a spinny wild mouse, and Soarin' Eagle, a lying-down flying coaster. I was new to those ones, too, it was really fun to try it together.

On Saturday, we caught up with my Aunt Ellen and Uncle Mark, they had us over for a very nice brunch at their place.

The trip home Sunday evening went very smoothly, though it was certainly a late night for Erica, after another late night on Saturday. But she seemed to be rested well enough for the start of climbing camp this week. Then we head to Sandy on Saturday.

I finished reading Starter Villain on the train. And I've started watching Pantheon.

It's hot hot hot today and hotter tomorrow. Summer's here!

I've been thinking about AI a lot this week, in particular this hilarious take on OpenAI's approach to AI development, "If OpenAI Made Black Holes" and the AI 2027 scenario (including this very good video summary).

Still trying to make more of AI coding tools in my job. Those can be a real boost to productivity. These models aren't the best software engineers, a bit stumble-y, but they're very, very versatile, and they can write fast. It's impressive, and unsettling. As Cory Doctorow notes, It's not about whether AI can do your job per se.

Work's been chaotic, I'm moving on to fifth manager since 2022 since ours is changing teams. This was my first time reporting to someone less senior than myself in terms of span on company, team, and career, but two of my previous three managers have been less senior in some of those metrics. I'm a little fish in a big pond, struggling, even thinking this means I'm not cut out for it.

I've started playing Patrick's Parabox a mind-bending block-pushing puzzle game. Great so far. Reminds me of Baba is You, in that it's a block-pushing puzzle game with a twist: In Baba is You the rules of the game are also blocks, in Patrick's Parabox the rooms of the puzzle are blocks.

I went to PyCon in Pittsburgh last weekend, once again traveling on my own dime and time, per the new way of things at Google. At least they comped me one of their sponsor passes for reg.

Cory Doctorow did the opening keynote, on his theory of the current malaise in the tech industry. Which was quite an opening to the conference: We'd like to thank our sponsors and now here's Cory Doctorow to rip them a new one. I'm a big fan of Doctorow, and think he has a lot of insight. I really do think tech companies have gotten themselves to a point in consolidation-friendly and competition-unfriendly political environment where not only are things getting shittier for users and other stakeholders, the companies have also really painted themselves into a corner and are suffering from stagnation (even in an environment where there's some really amazing development in technical capabilities). Doctorow highlights Jay Saurik's phrase about how the DMCA (and similar laws promulgated by treaty agreements and free-trade deals) prohibiting the circumvention of digital locks makes a de facto crime of "Felony Contempt of Business Model". Doctorow's suggestion that countries should retaliate against tariffs with IP liberalization instead of retaliatory tariffs (i.e. making it possible for their entrepreneurs and firms to compete with US big tech instead of just revenge-taxing their own consumers) is certainly an intriguing possibility!

I think the world Doctorow envisions would be so much better for a lot of people, including software engineers specifically. For those at startups, sure, you could actually get your "compete with the big players" start-up funded, for one thing. But also for those at big companies, which could actually compete with their rivals, instead of just carving out separate fiefdoms and taking occasional all-in/all-out-double-time shots at someone else's crown.

I got to spend a lot of time with my colleagues, especially meeting members of the new Python Team and catching up with members of the former one, many of whom seem to have settled into some really cool Python work at Meta (working on Instagram's high-performance CPython fork or the Rust implementation of their Python type-checker). It's so heartening to see people who enjoyed working with you and are happy to see you and would enjoy to work with you again. (Not that I don't get that on my current team, it's just very reduced.) And I ran into Itamar, a colleague back from my ITA days, and Allen Downey, my CS professor from Olin. Spent most of my time at the convention center, but got to take in a bit of local color. Ate some big sandwiches at Primanti's anyways.

I spent Friday morning in conversation with Cory Doctorow at the PSF lounge in the expo hall, wandered the expo floor, caught talks on new Python features that I hadn't read up on before (e.g. template strings, the effort to escape once and for all from the Global Interpreter Lock), heard about people's fascinating projects. All the talks will be posted to their YouTube channel over the next week or two. The Python community really is a pointedly liberal and activist one, too, there's a real insistence on "Python is for everyone". Python really did carve out a unique niche in its balance of usability and "batteries included" power.

After getting back: This week has been pretty busy with a lot of city and school events. This evening was Somerville's Slice of the City pizza-party get-together for our neighborhood. Tomorrow morning, Erica's class is participating in the Argenziano Wax Museum, an event where the third graders portray people from history (this year focusing on figures from the American Revolution). Tomorrow evening is Argenziano Heritage Night, a big cultural festival at the school that Erica looks forward to every year.

Julie was in NYC this weekend for a bike ride event with her dad and Kristin and Emilia. I had a beautiful weekend at home with Erica. I belatedly realized that it was the weekend of Somerville Open Studios, and we wound up exploring several art galleries tucked into the Milk Row neighborhood on our way back from climbing on Saturday. On Sunday, we went to see the open house at the Friend Museum (i.e the home of Martha Friend; the exterior alone is a notable Somerville landmark). We caught a few more gallery and outdoor showings on our way back. Other highlights of our weekend included the art of Lexi Havlin, Kelly Ann Clark McCormack, and Akira Fujita. The scale of the event is really impressive, with over 120 places in the city participating.

The city is so beautiful in the spring. The moment that stands out most in my memory was standing under some overhanging wisteria that a whole crew of carpenter bees was busily foraging with an audible buzz.

There was some scattered rain this weekend, but the bits between were beautiful. We mostly managed to avoid getting caught out in it.

We did a lot of art activities at home, too: The big project was egg-decorating, from the Easter basket Mary got for Erica. Erica made a cord bracelet, and built some Lego.

After finishing Death's Door, I've started playing Spiritfarer . Which I guess takes a completely different take (in terms of game mechanics and whole general vibe) on exactly the same topic.