Plurrrr

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The Backslash Issue

In the early afternoon I fixed a bug in the create_page function of the Python version of tumblelog. If one used, for example, \1 in the blog title the program would stop with an PatternError exception stating "invalid group reference 1". The reason for this is that the sub method processes any backslash characters unless a function call is used. I explain this in more detail in Python re.sub gotcha.

Now, in the updated version, all substitutes are properly using a function call (lambda) instead of a string to prevent this issue from occuring. While it's unlikely someone uses, for example, \1 as an argument to --label-format and blowing up the archive, I decided to fix that substitution as well: better safe than sorry.

As usual the latest version is available on GitHub.

The Forwardslash Issue

Later, I also fixed a forwardslash issue: if one forgets a trailing forwardslash in the blog URL it's now autmatically added.

Some Other Fixes

Even later in the afternoon I learned that the Python module argpase supports positional arguments. So I removed the manual filename fetching. I also changed the parser call to parse_args instead of parse_known_args so tumblelog know warns if one has a typo in an option name.

I also made sure that an issue with the filename or the template filename printed a nice error message instead of a noisy stack trace.

Moreover, I now use a context object to pass around four common arguments. This reduces the number of parameters of several functions.

And just after I had pushed 6.5.3 to GitHub I discovered another issue: if you create a site without a blog, just pages, the archive is still partially generated. So I fixed this bug and pushed 6.5.4 to GitHub.

The Last House (2026)

A family of four is suddenly sealed inside their house with no way out and must work together to survive against both their dwindling resources and the mysterious, looming threat that is keeping them trapped.

In the evening Jaiden, Alice, Esme, and I watched The Last House. The movie was OK and I rate it a 6 out of 10.

More tumblelog fixes

Last monday I bumped into a bug regarding how the archive of tumblelog is rendered if the blog only has a date of which the year and ISO year differ, for example 2018-12-31. No link was generated to the 2019 calendar page while the page itself was generated.

The next day, while checking a calendar page on my phone I noticed that the months didn't fit on the small screen.

And today I fixed both issues and did some more finetuning. Note that because I changed _tumblelog.scss you have to regenerate the style sheet for your site using sass.

The changelog for 6.5.0 is as follows:

  • Use grid and flex instead of float in .tl-archive (styles/_tumblelog.scss)
  • Make month in calendar view smaller on small screens (styles/_tumblelog.scss)
  • Fix bug regarding year not showing in Archive for e.g. 2025-12-31
  • Use assert instead of raising RuntimeError (tumblelog.py)
  • Format year correctly in create_year_pages (tumblelog.py)
  • Catch yaml.YAMLError instead of yaml.parser.ParserError (tumblelog.py)
  • Simplify create_archive to make every year count

As usual the latest version is available on GitHub.

And another tumblelog update

In the afternoon I pushed a small tumblelog update to GitHub. The changelog for version 6.3.0 is as follows:

  • Improve typing hints (tumblelog.py)
  • Use int for years in create_year_pages and create_tag_pages (tumblelog.py)
  • Check page names are unique and don't conflict with blog
  • Format year correctly (tumblelog.py)
  • Move setlocale to main (tumblelog.py)

I really like mypy to check type hints. Together with dataclasses, introduced in tumblelog version 6.2.0, it makes the code much cleaner.

And another one plus a bug

In the evening I finished a slightly larger tumblelog update. The changelog for version 6.4.0 is as follows:

  • Replace error function with raise (tumblelog.py)
  • Replace assert with raise RuntimeError (tumblelog.py)
  • Raise a RuntimeError if tags is None in create_tag_pages (tumblelog.py)
  • Remove cast of article.html to str (tumblelog.py)
  • Handle a TumblelogError exception end-user friendly (tumblelog.py)
  • Use longer variable names (tumblelog.py)
  • Use / instead of joinpath (tumblelog.py)
  • Replace Any with object (tumblelog.py)
  • Fix exception message (tumblelog.py)

I am really happy with what the Python version has become.

However, while testing the Perl version I noticed a subtle bug which I fixed:

  • Push to pages instead of days if state equals PAGE (tumblelog.pl)

After this fix and bumping the version of both to 6.4.1 I pushed to GitHub.

Dataclasses and Type Hints

Yesterday I rewrote the Python version of tumblelog to use dataclasses. I also started to add type hints, which I finished today. I pushed version 6.2.0 of tumblelog to GitHub after thoroughly testing the new code.

Another update

While testing tumblelog I came upon an issue with the calendar overview for 2026: May and later had no entries. After some checking I found the bug: the Markdown file for Plurrrr had two times a date entry for the 24th of May! So i updated both the Perl and Python version of tumblelog to detect this issue and pushed 6.2.1 to GitHub.

Obsession (2025)

Baron "Bear" Bailey breaks a novelty charm to force his co-worker Nikki Freeman to love him, but the supernatural compulsion warps her mind into violent obsession, trapping him in a nightmare he cannot wish away.

In the evening Jaiden and I watched Obsession. Jaiden liked the movie a lot, she called it the scariest movie she had ever seen. I liked the movie and rate it a 7 out of 10.

Some cosmetic code changes to tumblelog

In the evening I pushed a lot of small cosmetic code changes I had made over the past days to tumblelog to GitHub. Well, first I had to pull 2 commits I had made via the GitHub site because of a patch by Jan Neduchal. I used:

git pull --rebase

To get those 2 commits and to replay my 25 new commits on top of those 2. The updated version is now available on GitHub.

The Cloverfield Paradox (2018)

Orbiting a planet on the brink of war, scientists test a device to solve an energy crisis, and end up face-to-face with a dark alternate reality.

In the evening Jaiden and I watched The Cloverfield Paradox. Jaiden didn't like the movie and mostly didn't watch. I think the movie is OK, I watched it for the second time, and rate it a 6 out of 10.

The Tanith Lee Collection

Discover the unforgettable tales of one of science fiction and fantasy’s greatest authors in this bundle of Tanith Lee ebooks from DAW! Meet a Martian vampire desperate to evade the prying eyes of a private detective in Sabella. Follow people living on the dark side of a planet that might be about to contact another civilization in Day by Night. Explore the mysteries of a medieval-inspired world with a reluctant goddess in The Birthgrave. There are 26 books in total in this bundle from the master fantasist, so grab them all now at the price of your choice, and support BINC with your purchase!

In the afternoon I bought the Tanith Lee Collection Humble Bundle, 26 books in total. It included favorites of mine like Kill The Death, Tales from the Flat Earth, The Wars of Vis, and The Birthgrave Trilogy. Sadly, The Blood of Roses is not included, a book I really would like to reread.

Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail

After I mentioned a Jurassic Park anecdote the other day, I watched the movie again. I must have seen it at least ten times now. This time, I researched every computer/software I spotted.

Source: Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail, an article by Fabien Sanglard.

In the early afternoon I watched photos of hardware used in the Jurassic Park movie. Because I owned SGI hardware in the past it was a little trip down memory lane.

To Fold or Not To Fold in Vim

Each time I open in vim my freeCodeCamp Python course notes, which is a Markdown file, it starts folded. I prefer to see the entire file at start up so I added the following to my vimrc:

autocmd BufRead *.md normal zR

With zR meaning: open all folds in the file. The opposite is zM. While editing I prefer to toggle folding with za.

Lights Out (2016)

A supernatural entity reemerges to terrorize a family when the lights go out at night.

In the evening Jaiden picked Lights Out to watch together. I liked the movie and rate it a 7 out of 10.

Changing margin and paper size

Yesterday I learned how to change the margin of the PDF file Pandoc generates. But I forgot about the paper size. I live in the Netherlands and A4 is the common format here. First, I wanted to know how to check the current paper size of a PDF file. This can be done on the macOS command line as follows:

mdls freecodecamp.pdf |
    grep -i page

This reports the number of pages, the height (792 for US letter) and width (612 for US letter). The values are in PostScript points; 1" equals 72 points or 8.5" × 11" for US letter.

How to change this? Well, it turns out that with one Pandoc variable one can control both the margin and the paper size:

-V geometry="margin=1in,a4paper"

So the command for generating the PDF via Pandoc in a Docker container and viewing the output in the Preview application on macOS becomes:

docker run --rm \
-v "$(pwd):/data" \
-u $(id -u):$(id -g) \
pandoc/latex freecodecamp.md \
-V geometry="margin=1in,a4paper"\
-o freecodecamp.pdf &&
open freecodecamp.pdf

Checking the dimensions with mdls reports 841.89 points × 595.2760009765625 points which matches the dimensions of an A4 page.

History with time stamps

In the evening I wanted to know at what time exactly I had run a specific command on the command line of macOS. Could I get the history of commands entered on the command line with each a time stamp? The answer is yes, with fc (Fix Command):

fc -li 1

This lists (-l) the history from the start (1) with time stamps in ISO8601 format (-i). Note that without the 1 you get the last maximum 16 commands.

Now I could grep the output of this command. But wait, fc comes with a match option (-m):

fc -li -m 'docker*' 1

This lists all events in the history that starts with docker and shows the ISO8601 time stamp.