Episodes

  • Llama 3 is Here, Spending Time on Environmental Setup and More
    Apr 28 2024

    Full episode show notes can be found at:

    https://www.codingblocks.net/episode233

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    1 hr and 34 mins
  • Ktor, Logging Ideas, and Plugin Safety
    Apr 14 2024

    Picture, if you will, a nondescript office space, where time seems to stand still as programmers gather around a water cooler. Here, in the twilight of the workday, they exchange eerie tales of programming glitches, security breaches, and asynchronous calls. Welcome to the Programming Zone, where reality blurs and (silent) keystrokes echo in the depths of the unknown. Also, Allen is ready to boom, Outlaw is not happy about these category choices, and Joe takes the easy (but not longest) road.

    The full show notes are available on the website at https://www.codingblocks.net/episode232

    News

    • Thanks for the reviews! Want to help us out? Leave a review! (/reviews)
      • ivan.kuchin, Nick Brooker, Szymon, JT, Scott Harden
    • Text replacements are tricky, replacing links to "twitter.com" with "x.com" enabled a wave of domain spoofing attacks. (arstechnica.com)

    Around the Water Cooler

    • Ktor is an asynchronous web framework based on Kotlin, but can it compete with Spring? (ktor.io)
    • docker init is a great tool for getting started, but how much can you expect from a scaffolding tool? (docs.docker.com)
    • Logging, how much is too much? What if we could go back in time?
    • Boomer Hour: Let's talk about GChat UX
    • What do you know about browser extensions?
      • ViolentMonkey is a modern remake of the infamous GreaseMonkey, but can you trust it? (chromewebstore.google.com)
    • Can you trust any extensions?
      • XZ Tools backdown timeline, wow (arstechnica.com)
    • Bookmarklets still rock! (freecodecamp.org)
    • Silent Key Tester for mechanical keyboards, you can specify a wide variety of switches (thockking.com)
      • Joe's preferences:
        • Durock Shrimp Silent T1
        • Tactile Gazzew Boba U4 Silent
        • Liner Kailh Silent Brown
        • Linear Lichicx Lucy Silent
        • Linear WS Wuque Studio Gray Silent
        • Tactile WS Wuque Studio
        • White Silent - Linear
        • Tactile Kailh Silent Pink
        • Linear Cherry MX Silent Red

    Tip of the Week

    • Feeling nostalgic for the original GameBoy or GameBoy Color? GBStudio is a one-stop shop for making games, it's open-source and fully featured. You can do the art, music, and programming all in one tool and it's thoughtfully laid out and well-documented. Bonus…you games will work in GameBoy emulators AND you can even produce your own working physical copies. (If you don't want the high-level tools you can go old skool with "GBDK" too) (gbstudio.dev)
    • If you're going to do something, why not script it? If you're going to script it, save it for next time!
    • Dave's Garage is a YouTube channel that does deep dives into Windows internals, cool electronics projects, and everything in between! (YouTube)

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    1 hr and 39 mins
  • Importance of Data Structures, Bad Documentation and Comments and More
    Apr 1 2024

    Full show notes at:
    https://www.codingblocks.net/episode231

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    1 hr and 41 mins
  • Decorating your Home Office
    Mar 18 2024

    This time we are missing the "ocks", but we hope you enjoy this off...ice topic chat about personalizing our workspaces. Also, Joe had to put a quarter in the jar, and Outlaw needs a cookie.

    The full show notes are available on the website at https://www.codingblocks.net/episode230

    News

    Thank you for the review Szymon! Want to leave us a review?

    Decorating your Home Office

    • Joe's Uplift Desk Review
    • Mounting monitors, is there any other way?
    • To grommet or not to grommet?
    • How many keys do you want on your keyboard?
    • Wired vs Wireless
    • About that "fn" key…
    • Reddit for inspiration?
    • Office-Appropriate Art
      • Paintings
      • Prints / Silk Screens / Photography
      • Sculptures
      • Book Cases
      • There's a story for Outlaw about this print: https://www.johndyerbaizley.com/product/four-horsemen-full-color-ap

    Tip of the Week

    • If you have a car, you should consider getting a Mirror Dash Cam. It's a front and rear camera system that replaces your rearview mirror with a touchscreen. Impress all your friends with your recording, zoom, night vision, parking assistance, GPS, and 24/7 recording and monitoring. (Amazon)
    • Be careful about exercising after you give blood, else you might end up needing it back! (redcrossblood.org )

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    1 hr and 21 mins
  • Multi-Value, Spatial, and Event Store Databases
    Mar 4 2024
    We are mixing it up on you again, no Outlaw this week, but we can offer you some talk of exotic databases. Also, Joe pronounces everything correctly and Allen leaves you with a riddle. The full show notes are available on the website at https://www.codingblocks.net/episode229 News Thanks for the reviews! ivan.kuchin (has taken the lead!), Yoondoggy, cykoduck, nehoraigoldWant to help us out? Leave a review! (reviews) Multivalue DBMS Popular: 86. Adabas, 87. UniData/UniVerse, 147. JBaseSimilar to RDBMS - store data in tables Store multiple values to a particular record's attribute Some RDBMS's can do this as well, BUT it's typically an exception to the rule when you'd store an array on an attributeIn a MultiValue DBMS - that's how you SHOULD do itPart of the reason it's done this way is these database systems are not optimized for JOINS Looked at the Adabas and UniData sites - the primary selling points seem to be rapid application development / ease of learning and getting up to speed as well as data modeling that closely mirrors your application data structures I BELIEVE it's a schema on write (docs.rocketsoftware.com)Supposed to be very performant as you access the data the way your application expects itPer the docs, it's easy to maintain (Wikipedia) Spatial DBMS Popular: 29. PostGIS, 59. Aerospike, 136. SpatiaLiteProvides the ability to efficiently store, modify, and query spatial data - data that appears in a geometrical space (maps, polygons, etc)Generally have custom data types for storing the spatial dataIndices that allow for quick retrieval of spatial data about other spatial dataAlso allow for performing spatial-specific operations on data, such as computing distances, merging or intersecting objects or even calculating areasGeospatial data is a subset of spatial data - they represent places / spatial data on the Earth's surfaceSpatio-temporal data is another variation - spatial data combined with timestampsPostGIS - basically a plugin for PostgreSQL that allows for storing of spatial data Additionally supports raster data - data for things like weather and elevationIf you want to learn how to use it and understand the data and what's stored (postgis.net) Spatial data types are: point, line, polygon, and more…basically shapesRather than using b-tree indexes for sorting data for fast retrieval, spatial indexes that are bounding boxes - rectangles that identify what is contained within them Typically accomplished with R-Tree and Quadtree implementationsRedFin - a real estate competitor to realtor.com and others, uses PostgreSQL / PostGISQuite a bit of software that supports OpenGIS so may be a good place to start if you're interested in storing/querying spatial data Event Stores Popular: 178. EventStoreDB, 336. IBM DB2 Event Store, 338. NEventStoreUsed for implementing the concept of Event Sourcing Event Sourcing - an application/data store where the current state of an object is obtained by "replaying" all the events that got it to its current state This contrasts with RDBMS's in that relational typically store the current state of an object - historical state CAN be stored, but that's an implementation detail that has to be implemented, such as temporal tables in SQL Server or "history tables" Only support adding new events and querying the order of events Not allowed to update or delete an event For performance reasons, many Event Store databases support snapshots for holding materialized states at points in time EventStoreDB - https://www.eventstore.com/eventstoredb Defined as an "immutable log"Features: guaranteed writes, concurrency model, granulated stream and stream APIsMany client interfaces: .NET, Java, Go, Node, Rust, and PythonRuns on just about all OSes - Windows, Mac, LinuxHighly available - can run in a clusterOptimistic concurrency checks that will return an error if a check fails"Projections" allow you to generate new events based off "interesting" occurrences in your existing dataFor example. You are looking for how many Twitter users said "happy" within 5 minutes of the word "foo coffee shop" and within 2 minutes of saying "London".Highly performant - 15k writes and 50k reads per second Resources we like Database Rankings (db-engines.com) Tip of the Week If your internet connection is good, but your cell phone service is bad then you might want to consider Ooma. Ooma sells devices that plug into your network or connect wireless and provide a phone number, and a phone jack so you can hook up an an old school home telephone. We've using it for about a week now with no problems and it's been a breeze to set up. The devices range from $99 to $129 and there's a monthly "premier" plan you can buy with nifty features like a secondary phone line, advanced call blocking, and call forwarding. (ooma.com)Why use "git reset --hard" when you can "git stash -u" instead? Reset is destructive, but stashing keeps your changes just in case you need them. ...
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    1 hr and 7 mins
  • Overview of Object Oriented, Wide Column, and Vector Databases
    Feb 19 2024

    Show notes at https://www.codingblocks.net/episode228

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    2 hrs and 4 mins
  • Picking the Right Database Type - Tougher than You Think
    Feb 4 2024

    For the full show notes, head to:
    https://www.codingblocks.net/episode227

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    2 hrs and 11 mins
  • There is still cool stuff on the internet
    Jan 21 2024
    This episode we are talking about keeping the internet interesting and making cool things by looking at PagedOut and Itch.io. Also, Allen won't ever mark you down, Outlaw won't ever give you up, and Joe took a note to say something about Barbie here but he can't remember what it was. The full show notes are available on the website at https://www.codingblocks.net/episode226 Reviews Thanks for the reviews! ineverwritereviews1337, ivan.kuchin Want to leave us a review? https://www.codingblocks.net/review . News Orlando Code Camp Conference is February 24th (orlandocodecamp.com)Wireless mic kit mentioned by Outlaw regarding the Shure system (shure.com)New video from Allen: JZ's tip from last episode - Obsidian Tips for Staying Organized (youtube) Is Cat 8 Overkill? No way!Check out AliExpress to save some money (aliexpress.com)Note for NAS building / Plex - 11 gen and newer Intels are your friend for transcoding (intel.com) Merge commits Thanks for the tip mikerg!Some orgs are banning merge commits on larger repositoriesShould you? (graphite.dev)Git Rebase Visualized (atlassian.com)Merge Commit Visualized (atlassian.com) Paged Out - E-Zine Paged Out is a free e-zine of interesting and important articles (pagedout.institute)Thanks for the tip mikerg!Some samples AIleister Cryptley, a GPT-fueled sock puppeteer A fake online persona that will generate content for you using ChatGPT Beyond The Illusion - Breaking RSA Encryption Encryption is basically just math - it's not some magical black box"Never roll your own crypto – it’s a recipe for problems!" Keyboard hacking with QMKHardware Serial Cheat SheetBSOD colour change trickCold boot attack on Raspberry PiCan we get some love for the demoscene?Best part…each issue comes with a wallpaper! Fun Project Ideas Want to get into gamedev or 3d modeling, or just like making cool stuff with your skills?Why not use itch.io as inspiration?See other cool games and tools that people make: https://itch.io/toolsA couple noteworthy tools Kenney shape (itch.io) Turn 2d images into 3d by adding depthExport to several different formats$3.99 Asset Forge (itch.io) Assemble simple shapes into more complex onesStretch and rotate$19.95 US ($39.95 deluxe) Tiled Sprite Map Editor (itch.io) Rich feature set, nice integration with Game Dev Tools Bfxr is a popular tool (which was an elaboration of another tool Sfxr) for generating sound effects (itch.io) Somebody made a js version too, if you can believe that! (jsfxr.me)Beeps, boops, blorps, flames Rexpaint (itch.io) An ASCII Art Editor…you just have to see itLayers, Copy/Paste, Undo/Redo, Palette swaps, ZoomWho needs pixels!? Resources We Like Kenney's Game Dev Resources (kenney.nl)What is the demoscene? (YouTube) Tip of the Week If you subscribe to Audible, don't forget that they have a lot of "free" content available, such as dramatic space operas and the "Great Courses" For example. "How to Listen to and Understand Great Music" is similar to a "Music Appreciation Course" you might take at uni. The author works through history, talking about the evolution of music and culture. It's 36 hours, and that's just ONE of the music courses available to you for "free" (once you subscribe) (audible.com)Visualize Git is an excellent tool for seeing what really happens when you run git commands (git-school.github.io)It's easy to work with checkboxes in Markdown and Obsidian, it's just - [ ] Don't forget the dash or spaces!Did you know there is a Visual Studio Code plugin for converting Markdown to Jira markup syntax? (Code)Apple, Google, and the major password manager vendors have ways to set up emergency contacts. It's very important that you have this setup for yourself, and your loved ones. When you need it, you really need it. (google.com)
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    1 hr and 39 mins