PNGtools 1.0
This is just a delightfully retconned note to say that PNGtools 1.0 was released on this date.
Talking to people about AI is hard
I am not entirely sure what makes the AI debate so polarizing, although I suspect it has something to do with feeling threatened by a changing landscape. What I can say with certainty is that I find having a nuanced conversation about AI with people often difficult. It seems to me that people fall into two polar opposite camps — those who thing AI is completely great and that we should fire all the programmers and creatives; and those who think that AI is all bad and we should go backwards in time to a place before it existed.
Thinking about things
I am on vacation, as I am sure many people are at this time of year. This means the usual things for me — cleaning up the home office, this time in the most annoying manner I can think of; playing with personal projects I haven’t had time for during the year; and just… resting. Part of resting for me is reading, which is how I happened up this excellent blog post about how the expectations placed upon Silicon Valley engineering managers have changed over the last couple of decades.
Initial thoughts on Creality CFS 3D printing
I’ve had a Creality CFS upgrade for my K1 Max sitting on my workbench for probably a month waiting for me to install it. Part of that delay is that I knew it would take a while to install, and I am glad I waited.
I finally got around to doing that yesterday, and I have thoughts… First off, the Creality installation documentation is ok, but not great. I would have been in a lot more pain without Thinkering with Jerd’s tutorial video. So thank you to Jerd, whoever you may be. I also agree with Jerd that the extensive use of hot glue on connectors is super annoying. While I suspect it makes sense in terms of ensuring that devices work when they arrive to a customer, it makes upgrades super annoying and surely there is a better way. Overall I think I spent at least six hours on the install.
A self drive computer science degree, 2025 edition
What is you want to study computer science, but can’t afford university fees? Or, studied computer science a really long time ago and want to see what’s changed? Or just like learning stuff? Well, lots of schools now post their lectures on YouTube, so its entirely possible to construct a zero cost “self driving degree”, as long as you’re good enough at Canva to make your own certificate at the end. I consider this list incomplete, but in the end I decided I’d post the things from 2025 that I’d found and liked. I can always do an updated version later.
Writing my own KVM client in python
I was talking to a friend the other day about our shared mutual appreciation of virtio-vsock, and it made me wonder something. How do virtual machines on Linux actually work? I know it involves qemu and the kernel’s KVM virtual machine implementation, but exactly how do they interact? How does the kernel get qemu to do emulation tasks as required?
qemu is several things hanging out together in a trench coat, but one of those things is software which can configure Linux’s built-in KVM virtual machine functionality to run a virtual machine, and then handle emulation of the devices that virtual machine is attached to which cannot be represented with actual physical hardware. This part of qemu is called a “KVM client” in the Linux kernel documentation. Its called that because if we ignore the emulation part for now it is just literally a client calling established APIs to the Linux kernel.
The quadlock magnetic charging head is not fit for purpose
Have you ever bought a product that was a little bit expensive compared to its peers, largely on the basis of recommendations from friends? Were you then disappointed? Well, that’s me with the quadlock maghead magnetic charging head.
Tensorflow, ROCm, and version mismatches
I’ve fallen into this pattern where I do an hour or so of self-directed learning in the mornings before going to work. Until recently it was an excellent CMU course on the design of SQL database systems, which I’ve mentioned previously here. I’ve finished that, so I thought I would do something shorter and fun as a break before finding another course to do. I chose The freeCodeCamp.org hot dog or not hot dog tensorflow course. 90 minutes seemed achievable, and I too wish to know if an object in front of me is a hot dog or not.
High level themes from CloudCon 2025
I've just been in Sydney for a couple of days for CloudCon 2025. I think depending on how you count this is my third one of these events -- the event has changed names at least twice, so its actually a little hard to work out the lineage of the event. This year's conference was noticeably smaller than last years which is confusing to me for an event which is so competitively priced and branded so heavily with the hot topics dejour. That said the event was well run, in a good venue, and well worth the time. That is, this event really deserves more support than its getting. There were some clear themes from the event for me: ClickHouse is cool. Or at least I think so. ClickHouse observability certainly has potential, but I think the underlying SQL database is actually the most interesting bit. ClickHouse is also investing heavily in the Australian market right now, so I suspect they're seeing strong traction here. No one talks about "devops" any more, because its become a meaningless term where everything is devops if you squint at it right. Instead people are using the term "platform engineering", which doesn't appear to have…
Converting from setup.py and PBR to pyproject.toml
I make no claim to be an expert at this, but I did just need to convert a project from a slightly complicated setup.py / PBR configuration to pyproject.toml and thought I should write up where I landed. I say “slightly complicated” because there are a few very OpenStacky things I like to do in these things. Specifically:
- version numbers are driven by git tags not hard coded in the configuration file.
- console scripts are a thing.
- I often include data files in the built package.
So here’s an example of all of those things that is working ok for me: