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Jamie Matthews

@jamie@mtth.org

Web engineer. Director of Engineering Strategy at Certn, Co-Founder, DabApps. Python, Django, etc. Dynamic language and boutique fuzz pedal enthusiast.

50 Posts Posts & Replies 62 Following 64 Followers Search
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Right. New plan.

Most of the Python crowd are now here. Twitter is a bit of a wasteland. So if you’re here for the Django content, this is the place.

But.. I’m going to resurrect my Twitter account to talk about green energy and solar and EVs and carbon emissions. That crowd doesn’t seem to be here yet, so much.

Let’s see how that goes.

Jamie Matthews boosted

this language has always felt empowering to me, and in the last few years as typing stuff has more deeply engrained itself deeper and deeper past annotating function signatures, it just makes me feel dumb and useless.

"you don't have to use it" kind ends at the barrier of wanting to participate in an open source ecosystem that is more and more typed every day.

Jamie Matthews boosted

a faster python for everyone is better than a faster python for people who grind themselves to dust adding stupid little strings everywhere. i believe in the former and the latter is just trash.

i `from typing import cast`'d for the first time today after spending 45 minutes convincing mypy my 2 minute change was OK, and now i'm fully in the fuck types camp.

fight me.

Jamie Matthews boosted

oblique strategies for programmers:

hardcode everything

do repeat yourself

you probably don’t need that

optimise early, it’s fun

try a new language feature

maybe you can do this entirely with tags and filters

try turning your program inside out

restate the problem

the naïve algorithm is probably fast enough

it is easier to ask forgiveness than permission

it is easier to correct a wrong program than to write a correct program

create a new programming language for this

Edited 1y ago

Slow worms mating in my compost bin!

@wsvincent DabApps. A few others that spring to mind: Potato, HackSoft, Sunscrapers

Lewes District Council goes from 19 Tory councillors to zero 🎉

Tomatoes are in the greenhouse bed I built last year out of old roof rafters. Four different varieties. The plants are probably too small really, but I ran out of pots. First a layer of comfrey and nettles for nutrition, then a thin layer of compost. String anchored under the root ball and tied in to wires at the top of the greenhouse for them to climb up. 🤞🏻 🍅

Jamie Matthews boosted

I wrote a blog post, as an assignment for part of my OU module:

Amazon doesn’t care how you heat swimming pools: ICT and ecosocialism

doubleloop.net/2023/04/21/amaz

A django-readers idea for discussion, feedback most welcome: github.com/dabapps/django-read

Jamie Matthews boosted

Month 3 of trying out EVs. First Renault Zoe, then VW ID3, now Hyundai Kona. They’ve all been great so far, I’m totally convinced. Kona looks smaller in real life than in pictures.

==> Installing graphviz dependency fribidi
==> Installing graphviz dependency harfbuzz
==> Installing graphviz dependency pango
==> Installing graphviz dependency libomp

these can't really be the real names of real things.

fribidi. fribidi. harfbuzz pango!

Jamie Matthews boosted

We did it! 🎉 Django 4.2 the latest and greatest LTS release is out 🔥 Many thanks to everyone who devoted their time and effort to make this possible 💚 🌟

www.djangoproject.com/weblog/2

Wired up a Raspberry Pi Pico running MicroPython, with two temperature sensors, to my boiler, to report flow and return temperatures to my home monitoring & control system. Going to keep an eye on it over the next year to make sure we’re heat pump ready.

@carlton thank you for everything, you have made a huge difference. Enjoy doing other things! 💚

Good morning from fixing UTC -> BST transition bugs in my home control system.

Idle thought: maybe DRF Serializers should have been called "Normalizers" 🤔

Jamie Matthews boosted

Maybe it's time for the "net" in Net Zero to go. Direct air capture (of CO2 from the atmosphere) of 10 gigatonnes of CO2 per year (IPCC aim by 2050), has a *theoretical minimum* energy cost of 10% of the world's current energy consumption. And in practice it currently takes 5-7 times more than that, so >HALF our entire electricity supply. That energy would be far better spent decarbonising, until that task is complete. The aim has to be **zero** carbon, not net anything.

I asked ChatGPT-4 to write a haiku about solar panels:

Sun's rays from above,
Silent power on rooftops,
Green energy thrives.

Jamie Matthews boosted

every python packaging / virtualenv thread in the world:

"python packaging / virtualenv sucks"

"Why?"

"well when I do CONDA this or POETRY that"

See those words? THAT's always the problem.

People have no idea what "venv" does. Editing a requirements file? no way, CONDA this POETRY that, then complain

This is the lowest I’ve seen it by a long way (since I’ve been paying attention)

£20bn funding to “cut carbon emissions” says the headline. But it seems like a lot of this will be going to carbon capture projects.. which are just fossil fuel industry subsidies. Just don’t emit the carbon in the first place! Spend it on lots more wind, solar, battery storage, heating decarbonisation and

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/20

Veg bed prep

@ghickman I asked a few people including a couple of electricians. Everyone said the Zappi is best. Particularly if you have solar panels (which I don’t but hopefully will soonish).