Computer Architecture Assemble!

 My next class begins soon. I'll be studying the underlying architecture of the OS and Assembky language to interact with the processor. Can't wait to dive into a fully new area for me. 

I was glad I took a quarter off to realign myself with programming. I got some good practice in and have been keeping up with conversations in the local meetup groups I ha been attending. 

For personal projects, my flask apps continue as I go deeper into the book and documentation. 

Nobody knows nothing

 Following some discussion on Bluesky I came to the realization  that I don't know how the appview works in ATproto. It was described as alternatively an API server or a server layer to organize and backup repos. Neither really encapsulates what it is but it's a large piece of tech to learn. 

Co-Working Code

 I have been able to attend a few sessions of the Seattle ATmosphere working sessions that are being hosted by Seattle Community Network.  Its been a fun time getting to discuss the network and the needed sections with other engineers. 

I've moved my overall plan to hosting my own PDS/Relay/Appview so I can be nearly independent.  The appview will most likely be a soft fork of a webapp that I can hopefully help contribute too but host my own copy for security.  For the relay, I am looking at the rsky-relay (pronounced risky) that was made by Blacksky Algorithms for my relay as I think it will also best fit into the OSS model I can contribute too.  

With Tangled.sh and other appviews beginning to show more features and users I think we will see a good adoption of the ATProto within the tech community for the next few years.  

Ruts and Shovels

 I've been attending more co-work sessions recently as it really helps motivate me during everything *gestures broadly at world*

This also shows just how deep the rut I am currently in is.  I've been planning too much and not actually coding or building. So I've recommited to getting a fully fledged project out soon. I'm going to be concentrating on building out my flask webpage but shifting from Stardew mod tracking and instead build out a webpage about my favorite myths and crytids. Coming soon!

Rusty Python

 I don't like splitting my focus too much, but I do feel the need to learn Rust to go forward.  One big reason its been on my mind so much recently is because of rsky (pronounced Risky) which is aiming to be a full implementation of the AT Protocol with Rust.  I've been watching Rudy and the entire Blacksky team as they build out this amazing tech and I hope one day to be caught up in understanding the technical implementations.

I have a huge backlog of books from Humble Bundles and even with unemployment there isn't enough time to read and take in everything.  But I think Rust Programming Language will go to the top once i work through Python some more and feel more confident in my skills.

Portfolio Work

 I worked on my portfolio projects this week getting a few new programs added to my Anecdotal Tech repository.  I also added some contextual comments as I am debugging some code and its incomplete so looks rather bad without it.  

I've also been revisiting my notes from Pycon and have been watching the sessions I couldn't make in person.  After I finish my portfolio projects (Flask App, 140+ programs, and ATProto feeds) I think I'll be diving back into animatronics and my Maxwell kit. Al Sweigart's Making Python Talk, Make Python Listen is an amazing look at what we can do with python and language processing. 

Bug Whack

At the end of July I attended a Bug Whackathon at a Bellevue Startup incubator called Venture Mechanics.  The event was co-hosted by them and the group Innovate QA to help assist local startups with testing their platforms and giving community members a chance to show off and hone their skills.

I had a great time meeting so many other engineers from different walks of life and seeing some new platforms.  This was the first of planned events to help bridge this need and I look forward to the future events to see what changes it brings.  

Seeing so many other QA Engineers and hearing their thought processes was a big help for me.  I was able to find some issues with each platform I tested, but no major bugs.  Black Box style testing was the main order of the day, though their were a few engineers their running their own software testing agents through LLMs.  

New Portfolio Projects

 I've started to very seriously start my portfolio rather than leave some half baked scripts and ideas around as my public github profile.  I found a PDF called 140+ Basic Python Programs.  I am going to go through the book helping to refine the knowledge I've gotten in my CompSci classes and will be elaborating on them to show off those skills.  I've also been attending public coding meetups and doing more networking, but more on that next time. 

Backlog

 Well I have been off for a month, unintentionally.  I made the move to iOS recently and since there is no google supported app for blogger on the platform I stopped checking my scheduled posts as much.  As it is, no big deal, I've been busy networking and working on my own portfolio to find a job in this current economy.  

My PDS is still online and I am starting to build custom feeds to host with the intent to move my account off of bluesky PDS and onto my own self-contained set.  There is a Python SDK for ATProto that I have been meaning to being to learn and will hopefully help me get this all setup.  

PDS Online

I've been keeping an eye on my PDS for the last two weeks and its working well.  I haven't done much else yet, but I want to work on a tool to copy DID from lists to make mass transfers of blocklists and feed transfers much easier.  I would like to setup an automated posting but don't yet have a good subject that won't just be post spam in the firehouse. 

I've also been working on my Flask app tracking the Stardew Valley mods my friends and I have been using.  I'm mostly learning my way around the Jinja templates and figuring out how to properly use the request library.  Once I have it setup, it will also be easy to setup the automatic downloads for updated mods which should be a nice Quality of Life upgrade for us. 

Adventures in the ATproto

I started up my own Bluesky PDS last week.  I used digital ocean and the premade image to make life easier for myself and give myself a digital playground rather than get bogged down in local networking.  Eventually I would like to host my own PDS fully from home, but I have a lot to learn before we get there.  

Setting up the PDS was very straightforward as they have good documentation online as well as active discord channels.  I did have to reset the password on the test account I created as I didn't copy it down correctly but it worked well fast and the account is online now.  The PDS is at codeslice.quest 

The name is just a fun domain I grabbed for this project, I always liked the term code slicer from Star Wars and quest domains are priced as a reasonable buy right now.  

I did sign up for a free Resend account to add email auth but something is still misconfigured there as it still has not verified my email.  I'll be debugging that this coming week.

Looking forward to starting to automate posts and other operations through scripts, maybe even create my own lightweight posting app. 

My own PDS

A few days ago I started up my own ATprotocol PDS.  I want to get deeper into the fediverse.  I was able to attend the first ATmosphereCon last year and it was wonderful to hear everyone's ideas.  

I spun up the PDS on Digital Ocean using my own domain.  I wanted to originally self host on a Raspberry Pi 4b I have sitting around but decided a VPS would be better.  One, because I can host it in the EU for better stability and privacy (yes it's a public protocol, but how that data can be used is also important). Two, I get familiar with a platform other than GCP, and three, it will hopefully be the springboard into some portfolio projects around the fediverse.  

Looking forward to what I come up with and learning on this journey. 

Upgraded

I've been working on finally transitioning to Windows 11 on my desktop.  

I've almost got my data backups done.  I've got my Synology NAS setup in RAID 1 holding all the photos and videos I've digitized over the years.  

I still have some personal VHS tapes to transfer over and a bunch of CDs to copy as well.  

I'm still looking for a physical data storage medium.  CDs have too short a shelf life and more and more cd drives are going out.  

Flash storage is nice but unpredictable and I'm not sure I would ever keep track of that many USB drives.  

The search continues for now. 

Class defined

I finished my latest class at Oregon State on my way to my CompSci degree.  I'm taking a quarter off to concentrate on job searching, and to drill in more leetcode problems to help reinforce the concepts I've learned in my classes.

Outside of python, I'm think Rust will be my next step for learning.  

But for now, I'm back to digitizing my old notes in markdown for eventual hosting on a GitHub blog. 

Conference Ends

Quick last post about PyCon 2025.  I'm definitely headed back in the future.  The networking opportunity and genuine connections made at every table make it the best conference I have attended.

I just finished up my Data Structures class at Oregon State and am going to be taking the summer quarter off to concentrate on my job search.  

I'm also going to buckle into my portfolio and try to get a few finished projects online.  

PyCon inspiration

One thing going to PyCon did for me was to really inspire doing some work on my own.  

I'm taking a quarter off from classes at OSU and going to concentrate on my job search and building out a few small web apps for my portfolio.

Listening to so many people who got into using python through sheer luck is such a great motivator.  It reminds me that we can take the time we need to learn what we need.

There was also a very grounded sense of use around A.I. and the outlandish claims being made by the technocrats.  Everyone I met was very knowledgeable about how machine learning could help us, but never replace us.  

PyCon First Timer

It's been an interesting run since the pandemic started.  Hard to convince myself that large in person meetups are worth it, but PyCon was actually quite easy to dive into.  

My fellow attendees and the staff were helpful and full of pride for being there, creating an atmosphere full of acceptance and excitement.  I even signed up for a few volunteer shifts at the registration desk thanks to how good I felt.  

I'll get into specific talks I attended next week, but I'm still riding the high from the conference even now two weeks later.

PyCon US 2025

I attended PyCon in Pittsburgh PA this past week and it was a great time. Beyond all the great talks and speakers there was a huge sense of community that I came across the entire weekend. 

Comparing to other conferences I have attended PyCon really sticks out.  Every conversation I got to have over lunch or in the hallway was uplifting and really showcased the diversity of the language and the people using it.  

I also had a few "celebrity" encounters, breakfast with Bruce Eckel, a nice chat with Al Sweigart over OCR packages, and even got to say hello to Dawn Gibson-Wages and talk current state of the industry.

My next few posts will be about the conference in greater detail.

Type this: Data

Learning about abstract data types right now in class.  I'll admit with our government now openly kidnapping citizens to send to death camps in foreign countries makes everything seem silly.  Yet I continue with the learning journey I've always been on.

This course is a great introduction to ADTs and their uses. I'm looking forward to using it in my projects going forward. 

Deconstructed recursion

The last two weeks of assignments in my classes have been about recursion.  This week for our assignment we had to rewrite a linked list class so that each method used recursion.  

Adding and Removing made the most sense.  It was easy to find the bad cases and then call the method again.  I used a helper function for each method, made it easier to comply with other parameters from the assignment.

I'm still confused on the formatting of some things.  I had used a few else statements after the if statement that was funding the base case, but had to remove most as it was causing an endless loop.  

I also had to rewrite the reverse method a few times until I remembered to include a temporary counting variable.  Will have to find more leet code problems to test myself going forward.