🎶 Back around the time when I lived in Sweden for a year, Mando Diao was my favorite band… by far! The last couple of albums were disappointing, but the first songs on the new album coming in October are quite promising! This makes me really happy 😌
Here we go! It’s bare metal, just what I expected. But what’s there is just fine and works surprisingly well. I know what I went into… freedom, privacy, openness… no apps and a few bugs 😉 Maybe I‘ll try to find out how to support development with this.
Playing around with Android on my „new“ OnePlus One before I install Ubuntu Touch on it. This device is more than 5 years old but it feels really snappy. More than enough power for a normal user.
I didn’t read the whole thing, neither on Daring Fireball nor the article in the New York Times, because quite frankly I don’t care about the details. But while skimming over it, I saw this quote from the article:
The entire event is at odds with our current moment — one in which inequality, economic precarity and populist frustration have infiltrated our politics and reshaped our relationships with once-adored tech companies. But it’s not just the tech backlash. When the world feels increasingly volatile and fragile, it feels a little obscene to gather to worship a $1,000 phone. […]
This 100% describes my current feelings. It’s exactly what all my grumbling about the tech industry lately is about. That’s where the focus of this discussion should be. It’s not like nobody should have any fun anymore or shouldn’t enjoy their gadgets. Good for them! But it really often looks like worshipping. Apple bloggers are defensive here and I agree to some of the arguments from the NYT (again, didn’t read the whole thing). I also understand John Gruber and also Jason Snell here. It’s their job to report about this stuff, and they do probably the very best job in this field, also from a journalistic point of view. They mostly are objective, but sometimes I also get the feeling that they are a little apologetic in some cases.
My point is this: Nobody cares if people are willing to spend obscene amounts of money to get a new toy each year. What I care about is that there are way more important issues in this world, and tech companies are doing nothing against it. What they do is marketing and greenwashing at best. They have money, they have power. They should do something better with it.
While learning Python I found out that there are a couple of fun easter eggs in the language itself. Something that makes it even more compelling somehow. It’s not harmful to show a little whimsy, even in a programming language.
Besides the import antigravity link, the Zen of Python isn’t just fun, it also teaches you about the foundations of Python and programming in general:
>>> import this
The Zen of Python, by Tim Peters
Beautiful is better than ugly. Explicit is better than implicit. Simple is better than complex. Complex is better than complicated. Flat is better than nested. Sparse is better than dense. Readability counts. Special cases aren’t special enough to break the rules. Although practicality beats purity. Errors should never pass silently. Unless explicitly silenced. In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess. There should be one– and preferably only one –obvious way to do it. Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you’re Dutch. Now is better than never. Although never is often better than right now. If the implementation is hard to explain, it’s a bad idea. If the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a good idea. Namespaces are one honking great idea – let’s do more of those!
This is a great source for a couple of more advanced techniques when learning Python. One of the better programming books I`ve read…
Home-home for the weekend.
No, YouTube. I still won’t subscribe to your Premium service, even if you ask me another 3 billion times.
Trying to get an old OnePlus One on eBay to try out Ubuntu Touch. Curious how this will work… I think it’s is an interesting project and worthwhile to support their mission. Linux is far out in this game, but iOS and Android could need some competition.
Once again considering to participate in NaNoWriMo again this year. I wrote almost 6000 words for myself during the last couple of days. Should be doable if I can find the time for it. But I also have no idea at all about what I would want to write then.