Two years ago, just after the death of Richard Adams, I reread the book of Watership Down for the first time in many years, having originally discovered it when it was new in the mid-1970s. There’s a beautiful new adaptation, an animated miniseries made by the BBC and Netflix.

This adaptation is largely faithful to the original book: The brave young rabbits striking out on their own before their home warren is destroyed; creating a new warren on Watership Down; the war with the to­tal­i­tar­i­an warren of Efrafa; the peaceful aftermath. One short­com­ing is that although the voices …continue.

2018 was a mixed year for Emma and me.

At the start of the year, I was the principal engineer at MetaBrite. The year started out well initially, as we had moved to much larger offices at the end of 2017. In late January, a number of people were laid off, when it became apparent that the old business plan would no longer work. In late March, the company died abruptly when we lost our principal source of funding. I spent April looking for a job and received several offers.

I joined Stripe‘s Seattle office in June, where I work on the Edge team, which is "ensuring Stripe’s continued existence on the Internet". It’s been a …continue.

Before I begin to describe The Heart’s Invisible Furies with abundant spoilers, let me say two things. Despite what I describe below, the book is very funny, as Cyril recounts his frequent fuckups. You would never know, from reading the back cover or the excerpted reviews inside, that Cyril is gay. Yet Cyril’s sexuality is the central theme of the book. I can only assume that this is a marketing decision, with which I strongly disagree.

16-year-old Catherine is forced out of her Cork village by the parish priest, when …continue.

In 2016, I threw an Election Night victory party for Hillary Clinton. It turned into a wake.

In 2016, it was obvious to me and to millions of others that Trump was unfit to be President. There were weak excuses that he might turn out to be more pres­i­den­tial after the campaign was over. Instead, we got the worst president we’ve ever seen in the US. Morally unfit. Tem­pera­men­tal­ly unfit. Ethically unfit. A patho­log­i­cal liar. A shatterer of alliances. A demagogue, stoking the flames of right-wing violent extremism.

In 2018, there are no excuses for not seeing how dangerous Trump is. Trump himself is not on the ballot, but this is nonethe­less a referendum on Trump. The Republican …continue.

Brendan Gregg’s Brilliant Jerks in En­gi­neer­ing is an excellent discussion of the "No Asshole Rule" applied to software engineers.

He posits two kinds of brilliant jerks, the selfless and the selfish. You might call them unempathic and so­cio­path­ic, re­spec­tive­ly. The former, if they develop some emotional in­tel­li­gence, are worth saving. The latter are simply toxic and probably need to be fired.

I came across an in­ter­est­ing post on Medium earlier tonight, How to talk to people you disagree with.

It can be hard to have a fruitful con­ver­sa­tion with people you’re at odds with, especially online.

Jeremy Caney has 10 sug­ges­tions:

1. Leave the insults at the door
2. Understand what’s driving their views
3. Speak to their values
4. Know what you’re talking about
5. Ac­knowl­edge when you’re wrong
6. Stay focused on the issue at hand
7. Be prepared to take heat from your team
8. Don’t expect ca­pit­u­la­tion
9. Know when to walk away
10. Be mindful of the onlookers

The Git Diff utility is much more functional than the standard command-line diff.

To see changes relative to the staging area (aka the index), use git diff.

To see staged changes, use git diff --staged (or --cached).

To see changes side by side on a line (where it makes sense), use the --color-word option.

To compare two arbitrary files in the file system, use git diff --no-index.

To try some other diff algorithms, use the --patience, --histogram, or --minimal options. The default diff algorithm is --myers.

Lots more at the docs.

Coco is another delightful movie from Pixar: It’s a magical tale of a Mexican boy who pas­sion­ate­ly wants to play music, even though his shoemaking family has rejected music ever since his great-great-grand­fa­ther pursued his own musical ambitions and abandoned his wife and child—the eponymous Coco, who is now ancient. Miguel discovers that his despised ancestor is none other than Ernesto de la Cruz, the most famous musician of his time. In order to enter a talent com­pe­ti­tion on Día de los Muertos, he steals Ernesto’s guitar from his mausoleum, whereupon he is trans­port­ed to …continue.

Seattle traffic ground to an eight-hour standstill today after a propane truck overturned on southbound I-5. Both directions of I-5 were closed until the truck had been emptied enough so that it could be righted. The wet winter weather didn’t help, as snow fell in­ter­mit­tent­ly.

Given the danger of a massive explosion, this was the right thing to do. Had the truck gone up, the outcome would have been much, much worse.

Still, it drives home (heh) the fragility of our in­fra­struc­ture. The closure’s effect rippled throughout the region’s roads, causing a systemic failure of the road network. Snarled traffic and chaos everywhere for miles.

We’ve had two similar incidents in recent years, both involving spillages of …continue.

I’ve had stitches before, but never from a self-inflicted cut. Five stitches this morning from a bread knife slipping on a stale loaf that I was going to toast. I never did get that snack.

For­tu­nate­ly, it hasn’t been painful. The stitches should come out in 7–9 days. Meanwhile, typing is awkward and slow.

My brother David when he was eight or nine nearly ruined his thumb with a chisel. He was using it to make a wooden sign for his cub scout troop. The chisel slipped and jammed into the back of his left thumb. He didn’t sever the tendon and he got the full use of his thumb back, but he …continue.