Today I noticed that Jaiden's Brazilian whiteknee tarantula (Acanthoscurria geniculata) was upside down resting on a mat of spider silk. This is a good sign, the large spider is about to molt.
I had ordered this tarantula as a birthday present the 6th of May 2020. It had arrived the 20th of May 2020. And today is Jaiden's birthday so it's a nice surprise that her tarantula is about to molt.
Yesterday I used ChatGPT to create a palette with better contrast for the Soothe Theme by Jason Milkins. I had used Jason's Emacs theme to create the CSS file for Plurrrr but for a long time was not really happy with the contrast.
I copy pasted the minified CSS for Plurrrr into ChatGPT and prompted:
Analyze the following CSS and create a more contrast version of the color palette used. Try to stay as close to the palette as possible while increasing contrast.
This resulted in a table with old and new color codes and a short description of the action taken.
ChatGPT asked if I wanted to apply the changes to the original CSS to which I replied "Yes". This resulted in a minified CSS file which I used to test the new color scheme; much better!
Today I updated tumblelog, the program that generates this site from
a single Markdown file with additional directives, with the new style
and generated the CSS for the new style and updated Plurrrr. I also
manually edited the SVG file that contains the
logo in Emacs and
exported it to a PNG file using Inkscape. Finally, I updated the
favicon.ico.
Enjoy the much better contrast!
The better contrast style is available as soothe-better-contrast on
GitHub.
When a soldier's son vanishes at a US consulate, she illegally remains on the premises to search for him, unknowingly entangling herself in a dangerous conspiracy.
In the evening Alice, Esme, and I watched Exterritorial. The movie was OK and I give it a 6 out of 10.
In the afternoon I finished The Green Pearl by Jack Vance, book 2 in the Lyonesse trilogy. It was a very good reread; recommended.
Wicked King Casmir cannot control Madouc, the wild and willful changeling secretly switched at birth with Prince Dhrun, rightful heir to the throne. So Casmir ordains a quest: whosoever brings him the Holy Grail will have Madouc for his bride. But the fairy-born princess chooses to decide her own fate, and sets out with a stable boy to find the grail herself. Meanwhile, a spiteful wizard seeks to undo the spell that prevents the war-torn Elder Isles from sinking into the sea.
The third volume in Grandmaster Jack Vance’s Lyonesse trilogy brings the epic tale of the Elder Isles to its magnificent and melancholy conclusion. Madouc won the World Fantasy Award for best novel.
In the afternoon I started in Madouc by Jack Vance, the final book in the Lyonesse trilogy. My copy of the ebook came with a great image cover by Luc Desmarchelier.
In the 1980s, a determined criminal-minded Cuban immigrant becomes the biggest drug smuggler in Miami, and is eventually undone by his own drug addiction.
In the evening Alice, Esme, and I watched Scarface. Although a bit slow at times I liked the movie and give it a 7 out of 10.
When a gunman enters an Apple Store in the heart of Amsterdam, the police face a delicate challenge to resolve the standoff. Based on true events.
In the evening Alice, Esme, and I watched iHostage. I liked the movie and give it a 7 out of 10.
In the afternoon I finished Suldrun's Garden by Jack Vance, book 1 in the Lyonesse trilogy. It was an excellent reread; recommended.
In the second volume of the Lyonesse trilogy, new threads are woven into the epic tapestry begun in Suldrun’s Garden. While war rages across the Elder Isles, King Aillas’s true love, Glyneth, is carried off to a parallel world by an amoral magician in the pay of the wicked King Casmir. Meanwhile, a sorceress’s malice, condensed into a green pearl, passes from hand to hand bringing poignant misery to whomever it touches.
Jack Vance conjures up a tale of war and politics, magic and derring-do, presented in the inimitable style that has made him one of fantasy’s acknowledged grandmasters.
In the afternoon I started in The Green Pearl by Jack Vance, book 2 in the Lyonesse trilogy. My copy of the ebook came with a great cover image by Luc Desmarchelier.
Today I noticed that the time on my Mac Mini Late 2014 (Yes, it's
still running) was way off. So I used the sntp program to reset it
as follows:
sudo sntp -sS time.apple.com
Options:
-s: OK to 'step' the time with settimeofday(2).-S: OK to 'slew' the time with adjtime(2).A smarter Dockerfile linter that helps you build best practice Docker images. The linter is parsing the Dockerfile into an AST and performs rules on top of the AST. It additionally is using the famous Shellcheck to lint the Bash code inside
RUNinstructions.
In the evening I checked out a Dockerfile Linter with some of my Dockerfiles.
Today I pushed two minor updates of tumblelog to GitHub. The first
update was to version 5.3.8:
The second update was to version 5.3.9:
As always, the latest version is available at GitHub.
Today I used the so called quotient rule for logarithms: log(a/b) = log(a) -
log(b), to eliminate a call to the log function twice in the tag cloud
algorithm I use in tumblelog.
After I had optimised the tag cloud algorithm of tumblelog in both
the Perl and Python version I posted the Python version of the
algorithm in reply to a question on Stack
Overflow.
Also today I made the Dockerfile for resume-pandoc more robust. This is a LaTeX resume template for Pandoc and can be used to generate a PDF of a resume written in Markdown.
Today I pushed another small tumblelog update with the following
changes:
As always, the latest version is available at GitHub.
A pilot transports an Air Marshal accompanying a fugitive to trial. As they cross the Alaskan wilderness, tensions soar and trust is tested, as not everyone on board is who they seem.
In the evening Alice, Esme, and I watched Flight Risk. I liked the movie and give it a 7 out of 10.
Today I pushed a small tumbelog update with the following changes:
or instead of and in conditionalAs always, the latest version is available at GitHub.
In the afternoon I finished The Asutra by Jack Vance, the final book in the Durdane trilogy. It was a very good reread. I can highly recommend the Durdane trilogy!
Take a doomed princess, a dispossessed prince and a wicked king, a vengeful magician and a melancholy witch; now add faeries, ogres, changelings, scheming barons, wanderers who are not what they seem, robbers, orphans, and a race of hardbitten warriors at war with all humanity. Stir in politics, intrigue, plots and assassinations, battles and sieges, then set it all to simmer in a mythical archipelago across the western sea before the time of Arthur.
Jack Vance draws together the threads of fairy tale and pagan myth to weave an epic tapestry of adventure and intrigue in the Elder Isles. The result is a masterpiece.
In the afternoon I started in Suldrun's Garden by Jack Vance, book 1 in the Lyonesse trilogy. My copy of the ebook came with a great cover image by Luc Desmarchelier.