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Share Your Code

code-share

code-share

It’s important to share your code, and for you to see the code other people have written. I almost never start with an empty text document when I write code. I either use my own previous code or find examples of how to do something. (And my “previous code” probably came from someone else anyway!)

I should note that I am not a “software developer” but just some guy who has been writing code since the 1980s and managed to cobble things together so they work and I can use them to get things done.

I am not some amazing coder, but I get the basics of how things go together. I have absolutely zero interest in “vibe coding” or explaining to an AI what I want and having it spew code at me.

I am, and always have been, deeply interested in learning things, understanding things, figuring things out, and solving problems. I will take the long way round to meet my goals because I don’t mind doing the work. I discover new things, and what could be more exciting than that? Saving time to do more work to try to make more money? No… no thank you.

The maniacs I know who “save so much time with AI” are still working 50+ hours a week and for what? How is life improved? I don’t know. I enjoy learning new things and don’t want to outsource that enjoyment to machines.

Now, that said, there is a quote from “The Fly” that I’ve always liked:

There’s a lot of stuff in there I don’t even understand. I’m really a systems management man. I farm bits and pieces out to guys who are much more brilliant than I am. I say, “build me a laser” this, “design me a molecular analyzer”, that. They do, and I just stick ’em together. But, none of them know what the project really is. So…

Mostly the “bits and pieces” and “those who are much more brilliant than I am” and some of the “a lot of stuff in there I don’t even understand” to a certain degree. Though I actually do want to understand it.

I just did a small coding project and I was able to find example code that got me 90% of the way there… after a bit of searching I found other example code that got me the rest of the way there. I may want to take my code further, in which case more example code will surely get me there.

But the thing is, that example code needs to exist. I need people to share their code. I hope that doesn’t sound selfish, as I also share my own code. I want to learn from other humans, and I want to share what I’ve learned with other humans.

There is some concern that forums where people ask coding questions will go away, and that would completely suck for people like me who love to see a question with multiple answers on how to do something. I found like six different solutions to what I was working on today, and it took a few tries but one of them worked quite well for my case. Another might be right for you.

If I skip the BASIC I wrote in the 1980s and jump to the 1990s when I was learning Perl (and eventually other languages) it was due to developers and other nerds publishing their code, and their tutorials and documentation and putting it out there. That is how I learned, and it’s still how I learn, and when the AI bullshit hype circus is done and gone it will still be how we can learn from each other. Human to Human… Nice.

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Experts Don’t Know

Expert

Experts say “I don’t know.”

Smart people say “I don’t know.”

Scientists say “We don’t know.”

To be human is to search for answers, to gain knowledge, to understand.

People who say they have the answers may have some of the answers, they may know some things… but anyone who tells you they have all the answers is a liar. It might be a religion, or a politician, or someone you work with… They are cheaters, charlatans, and their confidence is false.

If you think AI has all the answers, it does not… but people believe AI has all the answers, or eventually will have all the answers. This is incorrect.

If AI “hallucinates” and gives you a wrong answer, it’s like a child lying to receive approval. AI is meant to be a pleasing machine for humans in search of answers.

You will find no answers to the struggles we face as humans by looking to the machines.

Be eager to say “I don’t know… but I want to find out!”

Be Human. Be human to other humans… and be true to yourself.

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Milwaukee Critical Mass Web Site

Milwaukee Critical Mass Web Site

Milwaukee Critical Mass Web Site

Disclaimer: I used to build web sites, by writing code… by hand. I started in 1995 and probably stopped around 2012 or so.

Hey, Milwaukee Critical Mass (bike riding event) has a web site at mkecriticalmass.com and that’s awesome! I’m going to (lightly) critique a few things but before I do I’d like to say that this is all my own personal opinion. I used to be a community organizer, I used to be a volunteer, I know that when you take on extra unpaid work you do the best you can with the time and resources available. I do not expect perfection, and anything I say can be completely ignored. On with the show!

I am extremely grateful that Milwaukee Critical Mass has a web site. It’s 2025 and now more than ever we need web sites that convey information and don’t lock it up behind a corporate wall of accounts and logins and having to use some terrible platform just to get basic information. We built the web to provide open and public sharing of information and we should never forget that.

I have no issue at all with the (lack of) design of the web site. It provides information. It’s simple HTML! It does use Milligram
“A minimalist CSS framework” but I have no idea why as it seems like it’s not needed. But maybe the site will change over time and require it?

You’ll notice the screen shot above shows a date in April, yet I captured it on May 30th, which was the date of the May ride, so someone forgot to update the web site. (It’s updated now, for the June ride.)

If you don’t know where Red Arrow Park is in Milwaukee can you find it? Go on, try right now! I was able to but not without going to another web site and searching for it. Missed opportunity there to just provide the address, cross streets, landmarks, etc.

There are links to Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. I can’t see any of the Twitter posts because I deleted my account a few years ago when fascists took it over. For Instagram it tries to force a login and without one all you can see is “MKE Critical Mass rides start from Red Arrow Park at 6 p.m. on the last Friday of the month. Slow roll / no drop”. You cannot view any posts without an account. This might be fine if no additional information exists there that does not exist on the web site… which brings us to Facebook.

If you visit Facebook it tries to get you to log in, but you can skip than and get some information. The event is listed and if you click “More” you get more information, which is not on the web site: “We’re ending at Zillman Park for the Bay View Gallery Night Makers Market (2168 S Kinnickinnic Ave), and the tentative route is about 10 miles through downtown, Walkers Point, and Bay View.” There are a few more notes about the group ride, rules, reminders, etc… (This info is also in the Instagram posts but you cannot see it without logging in.)

But what we’ve just learned is that if you only use the web site, you are missing out on information. (We also get a link via Facebook to linktr.ee/mkecriticalmass which mostly links to things we already know about but adds two more links.)

“Okay Mr.Critic, how would you do it differently!?”

As I mentioned, I am I no position to tell anyone what to do, but I do have ideas about how I would do things…

I’m a huge fan of POSSE (which is Post (on) Own Site Syndicate Elsewhere) so that the primary source of all information is your own web site, on a domain you control, and can be free of ads, tracking, required accounts, etc.

The “Syndicate Elsewhere” part of it then allows you to share info across social media sites. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Bluesky, etc. I’m a bit hardline on not wanting to use corporate social media myself so I’d probably choose the Fediverse in some way. There’s also RSS, one of the most important technologies of the web. Using RSS allows people to subscribe to updates and do neat things with the information you are providing.

A calendar (in iCalendar format that can be subscribed to) is another great thing. Not a “Google Calendar” but a URL that you can plug into anything that can take iCalendar data. This could put every ride or event onto someone’s calendar with very little effort.

An email address might also be useful, as a means of contacting someone. Right now there the web site has no way of contacting the organizer(s).

For Milwaukee Critical Mass I may be overthinking things… Plenty of people probably just need to know “Rides start from Red Arrow Park at 6 p.m. on the last Friday of the month” and that’s enough. I don’t know if rides get canceled due to weather, or what the route is, or how long the route is, or whatever, but I’ve been thinking more about how we can make the web better for people so this post is the result of that.

I wonder how difficult it would be to assemble the tools or build a platform to make these things easier. (A platform free of corporate social media of course, so open source tools that can be self-hosted would be ideal.) I should check back in on how Scrappy Hour is doing things now.

Thanks for reading! See you on the streets!

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HomeBox for Parts Inventory

I’ve started using HomeBox to track the parts inventory for the things I build. This is something I used to do (somewhat) in a spreadsheet but I didn’t do a good job of keeping it up-to-date, and it lacked some important information. While a spreadsheet works for some things, it might not work for everything. As the only person in my company I get to choose the tools I want to use and no one else has to deal with my choices!

I know that “Homebox is the inventory and organization system built for the Home User” but I’m more concerned about the components and parts I have for my small business than I am for my own personal stuff at home… though I can see the appeal for some people.

HomeBox is open source and installing it on TrueNAS was super simple. There are plenty of features I don’t need and I can mostly ignore them… and on the flipside it doesn’t seem to be lacking too many features I’d really want.

Anyway, I’ll give HomeBox a try and see if it makes things easier for me and my (previously poor) tracking of inventory.

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Hello CryptPad, Goodbye Google Docs!

CryptPad

In my continuing effort to get away from Google (and most large US-based tech companies in general) I found CryptPad. I should note that everyone uses software and web-based services differently, and for me specifically there is one spreadsheet I constantly use for my small business. I never really use the documents or presentations that Google Docs offer, and I almost never use Google Drive. Still, CryptPad does offer all of those things, so if you need them, they are there.

There’s a lot to love about CryptPad and people seem to like it. CryptPad is an end-to-end encrypted and open-source collaboration suite and there are all sorts of options for using it, and I’m pretty sure your data won’t be used to train AI models since, you know, your data is encrypted and not even viewable by the system admins.

I am using CryptPad.fr (specifically) right now, and I make a small donation every month for the space and resources I am using. I do not mind paying some small fee for what I get, and for helping support an alternative to Google.

Public Money = Public code? Funded by and for users? Yeah, more software like this, please!

But is it as good as Google Docs? Again, it depends on your needs and expectations and what you are willing to compromise on. At first I found it “not as good” as Google Docs, but after using it a bit more and just getting used to it, I really like it, and I’ve quit Google Docs, hopefully permanently.

Eventually I’d like to self-host CryptPad. Oh, I should mention this weirdness around OnlyOffice, because some code from OnlyOffice runs within CryptPad. See this Shady Moves post. I am not concerned about any shady stuff because it’s actually being discussed in the open with CryptPad developers. This is very different than the closed-source model where you never even know what shady shit might be happening.

Do I trust open source developers in France more than closed-source developers at Google or Microsoft? Hell Yes. I expect large US tech companies to cave under pressure from a compromised administration, and you should too.